Completely inexperienced dad looking for some guidance

Prep School Admissions Prep School Parents
21

SSAT this year:
A few schools have already announced test optional this year. Hotchkiss and St. Paul’s come to mind.

A few schools (like Grier) seem always to be test optional.

Most schools I have reviewed are still officially requiring SSAT, but say that they will not make a lack of SSAT a barrier, so to reach out if you can’t take it.

As the SSAT season is just starting, we’ll see how the logistics shake out with their “test at home” program. If it’s a disaster, I would imagine it would be quite common not to to be able to take the SSAT. If the home test version is smooth sailing, then I would imagine most students will end up taking the SSAT, with a few who could not, who would not be penalized.

In any case, we are proceeding as if we will need it this year. In the case of smooth sailing on the home test version, I would have a hard time making the case to an admissions team that we couldn’t manage the logistics.

Just my read of the situation this year. I suspect we’ll know in a month or two if the SSAT is truly going to be expected or not. For now, it (mostly) is.

22

As someone who went to a public high school with 2,000 students (ok, in the dark ages) a boarding school’s population is COMPLETELY different! There won’t be a slacker group, for one (imho). The kids will all be varying degrees of bright, all will value doing well academically, many/most will be focused on goals and aspirations. So yes, I do think your daughter will find her people at a boarding school, even one that is small. (Also, if a boarding school has a small day population, then yes, almost all the new kids will come in knowing no one else, and so be in the same boat of making new friends at the beginning)

23

Happy you made a thread :slight_smile: Figured you’d get the best replies from the most active, experienced parents.

" I know that my feelings on the issue don’t matter,"
-Wanted to point out that every school we applied to had a pretty extensive set of questions for the parents to answer/submit. So in fact you’ll have ample opportunity to strategically share and shape the narrative about, among other things, why your daughter isn’t more involved.

" I just am a bit unsure how much it tells them about the kid rather than the parents (which I guess reflects poorly on me). "
-You can definitely let schools know, in the right way :slight_smile:

24

Just one wild thought: In addition to boarding school, you also could think about private high schools in your area. For example you might want to see if there is a Waldorf high school or a Montessori high school near where you live.

I used to claim that our local Waldorf high school had 90% of the academics with 10% of the stress compared to our local typical American suburban high school. I think of typical suburban American high schools as being quite stressful. Then our daughter went off to university and started pulling off A+'s in her most difficult classes. I realized that she was even better prepared than I had realized. Other than the lack of AP’s it might be 110% of the academics with 10% of the stress.

Both Waldorf and Montessori schools stress team work and at least in our experience seem to be less prone to the “clique based social life”.

25

@DadTwoGirls that has been in the back of my mind for the last year but I’m coming up short.

Our only realistic option for private is the local Catholic school. Catholic is not my first choice but not a dealbreaker. The bulk of the kids there are what passes for high society around here. By and large those are the kids who think they are better than everyone else that she gets really annoyed by. S18 was happy when he got to middle school, because the bully kids in his elementary school all went to the Catholic school. The academics are also probably a step down, at least for the kids who are on the college prep track. So it’s not a good option.

The other option we have is that in our state it is extremely easy to transfer to a different public school, unless they are already over-full and not taking new students. My niece just switched to a different school pretty last minute this summer, due to mean girl problems. I don’t think for D that is a good solution though. We are already in the “big city” (pop. 30,000). Everywhere else nearby is going to have maybe 10-20 kids in a grade, total HS less than 100 students. My experience with that (I went to one of those schools 30 miles from here) is that it is pretty cliquey. Half of the kids I graduated with started kindergarten together. Plus they are going to be pretty conservative, and pretty closed minded on average if for no other reason than they know very few people who aren’t straight and white. So again, for D it’s a step the wrong direction. None of them have academics even approaching the quality of our LPS.

26

Just my 2 cents:

  1. Stay away from the top 10, unless your D8 sees something she really falls in love with.
  2. Even those not in the top 10 can be generous with FA if they really want you.
  3. College placement is taken much more seriously than in PS.

My kid gravitated towards coed schools that were originally/historically all girls. They seem to kinder, gentler places.

27

@stalecookies thats a super interesting observation about CI-Ed schools that used to be all girls. The only one I can think of is masters. Can you share others?

28

That’s interesting about the historically all girls school observation. I have heard the same thing with regards to colleges. The not politically correct but probably accurate way a couple people explained it to me is that historically schools like MHC, Vassar, etc. were where society sent their daughters to learn to be good people. They sent their sons to the Ivy league to learn how to be successful. Different priorities. Even though schools like Harvard and Vassar are coed now, some of that historical ethos still is present. Essentially they were the kinder, gentler version of the Ivy league.

@stalecookies I think she will avoid the top 10, for a couple reasons. First, I think as an above average but not brilliant student who is a participartory athlete she has almost zero chance to get admitted especially with FA. Second, I don’t think she would be happy with people who want to go to a place like that. 2 of her 3 siblings have that competive drive. They don’t want to be the best in their pool, they want to be the best in the best pool. I think she is smart enough to swim in that pool, but she just doesn’t want to. She wants to do good, in both senses of the word. She wants to make the world a better place, and she wants to be successful. But if you are a bit more successful and a bit smarter no worries, that’s ok with her. I’m guessing the top BS are like the top colleges. Filled with people who want to be the best of the best. I don’t think she would thrive in that environment.

Maybe avoid the top 30 or so? Not sure where to draw that line. Our LPS has good academics for the kids who seek it out, and I don’t want to go backwards. But a lateral move academically is fine with me because I think there are a lot of other benefits she would get. My guess is that the top half of BS would fall into that category.

Fit obviously will be most important, although I’m guessing there are several schools that would be a fine fit, and honestly it’s probably hard to know that for sure until you have been there a year.

I will be thrilled with the college placement improvement. S19 is at an Ivy, and that is 100% my doing not the school’s. 90% of their time is spent with the kids who they are trying to get to just finish HS, or to maybe get to cosider the local directional or CC instead of making a career out of fast food. The smart kids are pretty much left to fend for themselves. Also there are 4 counselors for over 1500 kids. They just don’t have time to help the kids who are probably going to college somewhere even without their assistance.

29

A quick point in case someone hasn’t brought it up: you would decide actually on April 10th, so you could easily take the “let’s explore this” for the next few months.
Also — Agree that visiting is helpful. I am picturing visits still happening for spring revisits. (Which if I had to choose might be the more important of the two classic visits — interview and revisit day.)

30

I am hardly an expert on BS, but after reading about your D, these two schools sprung to mind: Northfield Mt. Hermon and The Putney School.
I like their mission statement:

Education for the Head, Heart, and Hand
Northfield Mount Hermon engages the intellect, compassion, and talents of our students, empowering them to act with humanity and purpose.
https://www.nmhschool.org/about/nmh-mission

Putney is a progressive school that focuses not only on academics, but on "cultural fluency, self-reliance, an appreciation for manual labor, an appreciation of fine arts, and a capacity for the ‘hard stretching of oneself.’” It’s worth reading about their core:
https://www.putneyschool.org/the-putney-core-2/

31

There are mean girls at boarding schools too. She’s going to have to deal with them no matter where she goes to school.

32

@twoinanddone fair point. I think my biggest issue with the current situation is that to avoid that group right now she’s hanging out with the slackers. I’m guessing at these places there’s not really going to be a big slacker group to hang out with. So even the unpopular girls are still going to be smart and working hard in general.

I don’t really know to be honest. Like I said this is something that I hadn’t even considered until this week. So I definitely have not thought through all of the pros and cons. But I think she is overall not super happy with her friend situation, and for different reasons her mom and I are not either. I want her hanging around people who have bigger ambitions.

I think to a certain extent that most kids, most people for that matter, to a certain extent behave in a manner consistent with their peers. If your peers are trying to get in the Harvard, you’re probably studying pretty hard and trying to build a similar resume even if you don’t care about Harvard. If your friends are just trying to get a C to graduate, it’s a lot harder to get motivated to get that A+, or to have your evenings busy with EC’s and homework. If you have a couple friends get pregnant and drop out, you start thinking that might not be a big deal.

I don’t know. I’m a worrier. Her siblings had a very different type of peer group, ave I think that is part of what made them successful.

33

I’ll share with the thinking that these threads become reference for future parents. But OP feel free to ignore what doesn’t feel right for you and your family.

You may well decide BS isn’t for your DD next year. But, if it’s to stay home and “build a resume,” I might invite you to reconsider. At 13, her “resume” can begin, and what an amazing place to do that: at a school where everything is right there! Every activity, every resource, full-time faculty living on campus, activities and sports and interesting classes and clubs. She is a ground-floor opportunity and there will be some admissions teams that see exactly that, and will love to have her join their community. (Like I keep wondering: what is making her a SJW? Not to answer here necessarily, but for yourselves.). She sounds like the perfect candidate for trying new things at BS.

I sat in on two different school admissions zooms today and both said: we don’t just want kids who have done amazing things – we want kids who are eager to do a lot of new things! Schools have lots of activities to fill with limited numbers of students, so eagerness to step into those roles may matter even more than the genius one brings.

It’s easy to think that kiddos must have cured a disease before going to boarding school. But I promise you: regular kiddos who have hopes and dreams for the future absolutely get into amazing schools with fantastic FA. My DD is unhooked kiddo with strong but not crazy-good academics, soft SSAT scores, from a well-represented state, we are high income for an FA application, and she ended up with 8 amazing offers all with FA or merit – 6 of the 8 were truly more generous than we ever expected. So, if you were my friend in real life I would say: don’t stay home just to build a resume for a year. Life’s too short, and even if building said resume results in getting into a slightly more competitive school – so what? It doesn’t even sound like a “tippy-top” school is desirable anyway.

Note that most of the “non-top-10” schools accept the SAO (the common app), so it’s really not a crazy amount of work to do multiple applications. 1 fairly short essay and a few even-shorter essays (last year it was 5 total; this year it seems to be 4). The recommendations and transcripts all get submitted once and are sent to all the schools. And then zoom interviews. It’s really rather manageable, if you want it to be. (The real work is in digging in deep to find the gems underneath – but that almost doesn’t count as work IMO because it’s such a good life experience for a child to reflect on themselves. We spent a couple of weeks doing the digging and figuring out what her life narrative was, but my DD wrote the first draft of all 5 essays in about 3 hours.)

34

My son was an average student with average activities. While I have no idea about financial aid, I will tell you to dig deep on CC because so much of the conversation is centered around the big name schools. THere are so many lesser known schools looking for the “nice” kid that will blossom in their school. Your daughter sounds like a great fit for the under represented schools on CC.

She’ll still get a great education. She will find others like her. And in terms of a college search, she’ll get way more attention than she will in your LPS. Forget the rankings, go for fit and you’ll both be very happy in the end.

In terms of her reasons for applying, I think that may be exactly what some schools are looking for. And don’t worry about EC’s that she hasn’t done, starting thinking about those she might want to do and mention how she would now get the chance. OA can differential between those that have done activities to build a resume, those that have done activities because they have the resources and those that haven’t done much, but are excited about the opportunity to try new things.

35

@dadof4kids

Your last comment about your daughter avoiding the mean girl/athletes and hanging with slackers reminds me a lot of my daughter (who remained in LPS while her brother was in a Montessori school and then boarding school). I’ll be honest. I wish I had moved her sooner. I waited too long and now she has no interest in applying to boarding schools let alone a lot of motivation to get ready for a competitive college, so I totally get where you are coming from.

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36

@Calliemomofgirls thanks! I’m slightly encouraged with the way you explained how filling in applications times who knows how many schools wouldn’t be as hard as I imagine they are. I have a feeling those of us that had not been through this process feels overwhelmed with information and all the things that need to be submitted. I am. And SSAT. We’ve started looking into SSAT this holiday, some days I feel good I think my kiddos are fine but some day I’m worried they may fail! So many unknown factors.

I can totally relate to @dadof4kids situation, I understand that my DD will fall into the category of unhooked student so a lot of the scenario here is similar to what we have such as looking for fit school. I have been thinking and reading a lot, I still yet to find the one school we really love and I guess it will not be until the end that we find one. At the moment I have about 12 on my list (that is where my overwhelming feeling come from).

And to top it off I don’t think my DD is crazy about the idea of BS. I wish I was young again! I would jump on the offer.

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37

My kids did not take the SSAT and got into the their first choice schools. We simply explained to the admissions officers that we do not believe in high stakes admissions tests and came in armed with research showing that these tests do not actually show potential within the school. I saw having them prepare for, and thus stress over, a test that others spend thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours preparing for as a waste of their time. As 8th graders they should be more focused on their passions, their current school, etc.

I did provide an Iowa test score so they could check the “standardized test” box. We had one school push back on our request, so we made a deal. The kids would complete their applications and then I would notify the school. They would look through the application, recommendations, etc, and determine if it was really necessary. We did that, and the school came back saying it wasn’t necessary.

They did not apply to any acronym schools as those schools simply didn’t interest them (and only one is within commuting distance and is known for being not particularly nice to day students), so perhaps we would have had more issues there, however they were both accepted to all of the schools to which they applied, both of which are excellent schools and referred to here on CC reasonably often.

My point is, don’t stress over the SSAT. If your kid takes it, and doesn’t do as well as expected, that is fine. Many of these schools use it as a lower ranked data point and that’s it. Or, if your kid doesn’t take it - especially this year given the Covid situation - they will still get into an excellent school.

Quite honestly, I’m surprised there hasn’t been much more of a push back on the SSAT or ISEE. Given the number of colleges that are realizing that the SAT does not predict college success, one would think that the BS folks would start to realize that, too.

FWIW, my kids were unhooked and while they had plenty of EC’s, they were not on the top with regards to athletics. They both received very generous FA packages from their respective schools.

38

I completely agree with not using rankings to create your child’s list of schools. But that should go both ways - don’t exclude schools that aren’t the top such-and-such, AND don’t exclude schools that are the top such-and-such.

Deciding to exclude schools based on their admittance rate may make sense, but it sounds like your family are no strangers to navigating selective schools. Maybe your child really syncs with a so-called acronym school and she doesn’t hesitate to compete for admission. Believe it or not, the acronym schools are filled with mostly normal kids who are not recruited athletes or started their own charities.

All schools are worth considering at this point in your journey.

39

@kschretz oo wow I didn’t realize that it is possible to apply without ssat. We spent this summer studying here and there! As I said some days I think they know the material(math especially) some days however I think they could fail the analogy section. Yikes

I too don’t believe in spending thousands to prep for tests as I believe they can learn if they are disciplined enough. I’m trying to instill consistency and determination.

40

Don’t obsess over test scores. The simple purpose of the SSAT is to indicate to a school that an applicant can do the work. That’s it. Nothing more. No school is splitting hairs among applications based on SSAT scores. The scores get about a ten-second look, and top scores are not a hook especially when so many are achieved by superscoring.

Don’t obsess over ECs either. These are middle school kids. Our son listed two, that’s it. Also, he had never participated in a sport a day in his young life so, obviously, the school saw something else in his very brief application.

As for FA, most of the schools discussed on these boards hover between a 60/40 to 70/30 FP/FA ratio. Statistically, it is much harder to gain admission from the FA pile. If a school is willing to pay for a student, that student is bringing something very shiny to the table, so your student would be competing not only for limited dollars but also against some of the most desirable applicants. But not to despair, @Calliemomofgirls advice in #32 is spot on. Your child IS special; she just needs to let her unique voice come through on her unpadded application.