DS applied to 1 boarding school and 1 day school. However, he knew that our local public school would be good enough for him so that was his safety. Because LPS was a good safety, DS refused to apply to schools that he felt he wouldn’t 100% want to attend. DS has occassionally wondered if he could have gotten in to XYZ (EAL or whatever acronym you want to use!) school, had he applied. And, in retrospect, I am glad DS didn’t apply more widely as then he might not have ended up in this current school- which has been so perfect for him!
I’m doing 3 because my school goes to high school. Worst-case scenario I go there, which I would have no problem doing.
We took a different approach regarding financial aid. Rather than apply to more schools, we looked at each school’s endowment and evaluated the likelihood that we would receive FA given their FA budget. We only applied to schools that were a fit on all criteria (geography, sports, academics, etc.) and had large enough FA budgets that we felt confident that we would receive what we needed.
Funny @HMom16 but the school that gave us FA had the smallest endowment of all those we applied to.
Same…smallest endowment = the largest award.
We have no appropriate local options. What might be a safety for some might actually be a reach for DS. We picked out schools that met our academic criteria (academic support with opportunities to excel in areas of strength), have the sport he wants to play, seem to fit our academic/family values, and seem like they fit DS’s personality. We are left with 8 schools that we are very excited about and DS says he’d love to attend any one of them if accepted.
Although we are full pay, it will be a major struggle to do so.We could add a bunch of “safeties”, but at that point, I believe I’d question if I’d be comfortable spending 70K on a school that I didn’t feel as strongly about.
@vwlizard super smart. We applied to schools we knew DS didn’t really like partly because we had already wasted a trip on interviews and he had already started the application. We won’t do that for buuznkid2. That was something we both regret doing. But in the end, it didn’t matter because he absolutely loves St Mark’s! And he knew he would the second he interviewed/toured there!
@buuzn03 Did you have any local options? That’s the one thing that scares me.
@vwlizard absolutely none…plus no continued hockey for DS unless we moved the 6 hours to Dallas, so an online (like Stanford’s online school) wouldn’t have even been an option. I don’t know what we’d have done…
@buuzn03 I took notes on how I felt about a school right after visiting, they’ve been really helpful. I had so much fum on our trip; definitely won’t ever forget it.
I’m doing five, but I visited six. My backup is my public hs which is pretty well ranked and I applied to one match school and four reaches.