<p>I want advice on how to go about this. I want my brother to go to a good college prep school. My family are immigrants and I never really had a chance to go to a prep school myself, but I want my brother to have it better.</p>
<p>My brother is going to seventh grade next year, so he does not have to worry about it much, I think, until next year. How should I proceed with this? I have very little idea what to do but I would really like to know. Thanks for any help in advance.</p>
<p>I’m not a parent, but I’ll help.</p>
<p>Wait until next year to start. Boarding schools start in 9th grade, so the year a person applies in is 8th. Your brother just has to make sure to get good grades this year. Next year is when you begin all the applications, but it doesn’t hurt to look now at some boarding schools.</p>
<p>How exactly do I “look” at boarding schools? Is it subjective or am I supposed to be searching for something specific?</p>
<p>Well, there’s Google! You can go on their websites, preview their academic pages, photos, athletics, etc.</p>
<p>A good website is boardingschoolreview.com . It lists a lot of boarding schools, and it provides some statistics and background on them. You can search schools through name and also various criteria they provide. Say we wanted to look up Blair Academy. We would go to the search bar (top right hand corner) and type “Blair Academy”. The first listing is the school’s profile, so there you can look at it. We could also type in “Blair Academy” into Google to see the school’s website.</p>
<p>The Wikipedia pages for most schools are quite good. Use that in conjunction with Boarding School Review to get acquainted with the schools. </p>
<p>It’s never too early to figure out how well your brother does on standardized tests. He should plan on taking next June’s SSAT as a tune-up so he knows where he needs additional work ahead of the Fall 2012 test. By this time next year he should have a short list of 10-12 schools max. Visiting a few between now and then is a good way to spend long weekends.</p>
<p>This board has a good supply of knowledgeable people who you can track down and ask questions. See this thread:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/prep-school-admissions/667365-resource-list-current-bs-parents-students.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/prep-school-admissions/667365-resource-list-current-bs-parents-students.html</a></p>
<p>Another good starting point is Boarding School Review (.com). It gives snapshots of many of the boarding schools in the U.S. in such a way that it’s easy to compare them on various points that may be important to your brother, e.g. geographic location, size, common college matriculations, sports and activities offered, single sex vs. coed, and so on.</p>
<p>Oops! I just realized that kraordrawoh mentioned BSR too.
Once you’ve done some preliminary research you will want to contact the schools directly for their “viewbooks” as they’re called, with an eye towards ultimately creating a list of 6-8 schools to apply to (fewer if your brother will only want to go away to school if he can go to certain places, probably more if he will be needing financial aid). Campus visits are very helpful if your family can manage the travel costs.</p>
<p>@Yacova,
Contact directly the schools you have an interest in, and ask whether they will be doing a roadshow/visit in your area.</p>