@chemmchimney To be honest, I’d like to hear the story of your second daughter. Did she take extra classes at BS?
@mondaydevil She did - she took an extra class a few semesters, took classes two summers including a pre college program before her junior year and met her school’s graduation requirements a semester early. She is on a college gap semester in Nepal right now and will return in time to march at her official graduation.
The Class of 2024 is going to be known as the Class of Covid-19. Sadly.
ooof
Also besides being known as Class of Covid-19 they probably will not have the fun of a revisit day. There have been a few schools that have already cancelled.
@mamduke3- many schools have cancelled Revisit Days! I think most in NE now have.
I just wanted to post a note to the community of parents/adults who made such thoughtful comments in the threads. I wanted to post there but it seems most were shut down by the time I read them. Thank you guys for posting such meaningful, thoughtful posts. Even if some people didn’t listen to what you were saying, there were many lurkers like me who did.
My wife and I never went to boarding school, nor considered it (public schools). We grew up and live in the mountain states region, and were completely unfamiliar with it. But our son really liked the idea of it and so we’ve tried to learn as much as we could by buying the available books on Amazon and reading things like this forum.
He’s all in on the idea, and I’m not worried about him.
We ended up having him apply to too many schools (17) because we had no idea which he would get into and I didn’t want him to aim too high or low and get rejected at all the schools he wanted (and there were some forum comments that said this was not a year to apply to too few). His mother and him visited a bunch on a one week trip, from some top schools like St. Paul’s to many lower tier (in the rankings at least because when you have little else to base it on it’s hard to ignore something like a niche.com site to help you make sense of which of the 300 to apply to).
Frustratingly, it turns out he wasn’t admitted to most of the schools he visited (in the top 1/2 of the rankings of those he applied to). The ones in the more competitive tiers that did offer him admission (top schools were Middlesex and Peddie) were not ones we could make happen with the schedule on our onsite. Waitlisted at a bunch of others like Exeter, St. Paul’s School, Choate, etc). My son is a friendly, easily adaptable kid who isn’t an academic star or athlete or any super standout (public school, almost all As, mid 80’s SSAT, no real extracurriculars because I never thought middle schoolers had them!). I’m sure he’d be fine almost anywhere as he’s very adaptable and always lands on his feet. He isn’t super “pointy” as the threads talk about. The idea of “fit” is hard then because you look at any of these schools and they seem great from their website.
With Caronavirus and our location, no chances to visit Middlesex/Peddie now. I guess he’ll choose Middlesex based on rankings (hence my handle), but hard without visits and with us never having any experience ever with boarding schools. We’ve declined the waitlists as I guess I buy into the “love the one that loves you” philosophy and they would be long-shots anyway. We let all the other much lower rankings schools (most in the know of our choices so that they could offer a spot to other kids on their own waitlists. So it’s really just between those two guess.
If anyone on this thread actually visited these campuses or have kids at these schools (Peddie and/or Middlesex) in recent years with your own kids, I’d sure appreciate any private or public feedback/thoughts you had, given our situation. Even if just so I can help advise my son.
I do not have a kid who went to either school but am familiar with both. More so Peddie as it is local. Both are excellent choices (as are, I am sure, many of the others you are not short-listing.)
I would say that Peddie may feel a bit less intense than MX. It also is bigger and is a bit more diverse and has more “types” of kids… I think both have nice communities. I get the sense that a kid who isn’t exceptional (saying this generally, not about your son!) might feel more valued at Peddie.
MX has a more traditional NE BS feel and is the more recognizable name, so if that was the vibe you were looking for (which it seems from your list, may have been the case, MX may be it!
I would also consider what your son likes to do with his time. I hope you can reach out to @carpoolingma re: Peddie.
@gardenstategal Thanks for the tag.
@middlesexdad I sent you a pm.
@middlesexdad tagging @Atria who is a current Middlesex student and I assume home with nothing to do but online learning 
Could anyone who attends Middlesex advise of a good cell phone carrier that receives good reception on campus. Thank you.
@middlesexdad First of all congratulations on all your DS’s acceptances!
Now for some bias: MX has been one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. The community and the writing program have been the things I’ve come to value the most. Feeling quite nostalgic right about now because with the recent extension of break and the impending online school, it feels like I’m already saying goodbye to MX (and I’m so not ready, neither are the rest of the seniors). MX has been amazing (and even though I’m sure Peddie is wonderful as well) it’s a decisions that you won’t regret. I’ll PM you :).
@soulsurvivor I’ll get back to you on that (currently phone-less so I’ll ask a friend)
(thanks for the tag @one1ofeach )
@soulsurvivor my friend recommended t-mobile
There are parts of town where no cell service has service - just FYI
In the general area Verizon is best, but has a big dead spot in the center of town.
Thank you!
Anyone else headed to Cate? My DD will be in the 2024 class!
Anyone else now struggling with whether to send their kid to boarding school next year? We are really struggling with making a commitment on April 10 when we have no idea whether there still will be restrictions in the fall, and yet our daughter will be crushed if we don’t let her go. So far, one school has offered to defer her acceptance, but I think it would be so much better for her to start in 9th grade. Are others also grappling with this?
We are struggling a bit as well. It’s so hard to make a confident choice without being able to go back to the campuses, especially as my daughter was waitlisted at her first choice and rejected from her second choice. We are (foolishly?) still holding out hope for her first choice, but also have to start making a decision on the two schools to which she was accepted (we let a second waitlisted school know to take her off that list). My daughter has been quite stressed about this decision, and has even said a few times that maybe she’ll just stay local (however, we never had that as an option B, so we’d really have to scramble at this point to make it work). Fingers crossed we come to a decision that we’re all excited about soon!! And I really hope that we can at least drive through whichever school she choices sometime this summer so she can get a bit more acclimated to the campus before school starts.
@cityran Our experience as a family with 2 (soon 3) kids at BS is that the total immersion experience of living on campus, virtually unlimited access to faculty, the time efficiency of having classes/dining/sports/ECs/dorms in close proximity so vastly trumped LPS that unless you were really worried about the quality of faculty at your third choice school, BS is probably a great choice. All the best!
Oh I know!! I went to boarding school many years ago, and understand the unparalleled value. Not to mention, we have no local options that even come close to the education boarding schools offer. I know BS is the right decision for her, but she, understandably is a bit hesitant bcs until she’s made her decision, she can’t really put all her focus into that school.
Someone we know likened it to house shopping. You have a list of 10 things you want from a house, look at 6 houses, none of them have all 10 things you want, but you figure out your favorite one, reason yourself around the things the house doesn’t have that are on your list, and fall in love with it . You make an offer, start dreaming about moving in, what paint colors you’ll use, how you use each room, etc and then someone else buys the house. So then you have to muster up the energy to pick a new house, work around the things it doesn’t have and fall in love (again). Except in that scenario, you get to go back and look at the other houses so you can fall in love with one of the other choices. She doesn’t have the option to go back and fall in love with the other schools, so whatever decision she makes will be done half heartedly. I know it will all work out in the end, because she does have two amazing options, Im just sad that we won’t have the normal excitement about choosing a school bcs of the way things have played out. We were really relying on those revisits!! Hopefully the virtual revisits will help generate that excitement for one of these schools over the other. Or better yet, we get a phone call from admissions at choice #1 offering her a spot off the waitlist! 
As a side note, I had been reluctant to encourage her to choose a first choice for this exact reason. My sister recently went through the BS process, along with several of her friends, and STRONGLY encouraged us to choose a first choice and let the school know they were her first choice. My sister felt there was a strong correlation between her son’s acceptance to his first choice and the acceptances of her friend’s kids to their first choice based on writing that first choice letter. In hindsight, my advice would be to discourage picking a first choice (like I’ve read so often on here). I’ll be trying that approach in two years when we get to do this all over again with our son!!