We are right in the middle of all things BS applications. I am beginning to think about Parent Statements for the BS applications (I tried to find a pre existing thread, but new to CC formally today). CC has been such a helpful place for context and insights - curious if the CC community has any guidance, feedback, opinion etc regarding Parent Statements?
Use them as an opportunity to give your perspective as to who your child is. Don’t just list their accomplishments or how great they are at the things listed in their application. Questions like “how do you see your child contributing to the school community” or “is there anything else you’d like to share” are great opportunities to share fun or quirky stories that highlight unique characteristics that never come through in a list of activities. And it’s not about sharing what they’re good at…it’s sharing what they enjoy and how they interact with their world. For instance, we wrote about one son’s love of cooking and shared some of his more interesting and gastronomically incompatible creations. IMO, the AOs want to read about real people, not SSAT-acing robots. And if they are looking for robots, you don’t want your kid there anyway.
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This is just my opinion, but I suspect these are mostly used by schools to suss out the parents who will make them crazy, to make sure that the parents are on board with their kid’s application, and to hear that the parents expectations align with the school’s offerings.
I think that there are so many great reasons for sending kids to BS, and so many ways to describe who your wonderful kid is that you don’t have to be wildly strategic about this part.
@skinridetheeast: Here is some discussion from the archives:
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/prep-school-admissions/1905957-parent-statement-length.html
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/prep-school-admissions/2052199-parent-response.html
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I have no idea how important they are, but I suspect they are good for
(1) ao’s sussing out the pita parents
(2) parents filling in a missing piece in the kid’s app. Eg there might be a quality or activity or a life challenge that didn’t get covered in the other parts of the app.
Reminder: do not be more interesting than your child 
@ChoatieMom
Haha. I was thinking to myself “there was a great thread about farting glitter wasn’t there??” (Apparently it was butterflies that were coming out, not glitter!)
Where did all the fun threads go?
I think they are gone, replaced by pandemic induced stress. It’s really a different world right now, from little things all the way up to really big things.
I miss fun threads!
We took the opportunity to point out the things about Lizardkid that wouldn’t be things that would jump out on an application or in recommendations and to explain why we were looking at boarding schools.
I also miss the fun threads! Thankfully we have @ChoatieMom to dig up all the classics for us!
this response is filled with privilege. the insinuation is that someone with great scores, grades and academic accomplishment - are just robots? give me a break.
Maybe read it again. There is no such insinuation. The point is to not write an essay that makes your child sound like a robot, because you’re not telling about all of the other wonderful things about them.
“Filled with privilege”? Really?! The privileged response would be to emphasize their test scores, which have been clearly demonstrated to correlate most with family income.
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You haven’t read enough Chance Me threads, where half the threads seem to be started by people scoring above 95th percentile, took calculus before becoming a teenager, loooovvvve debate team and politics - and yaaawwwn.
The grades, the scores, the accomplishments - they don’t look at the parent statement for that information.
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