Most of the discussion and advice here is about boarding schools. In which ways is the applying to competitve day schools similar to, and different from, boarding schools? (This sounds like an essay question … “compare and contrast…”)
The better question is “but why?” Andover, and its peers, do not need or want to limit their applicant pool.
I misphrased this, then went back and deleted the entire section.
Most people here seem focused on boarding schools and I just am unsure how their advice might change for a competitive day school which necessarily can only draw from a local applicant pool.
Some kids apply to both. BS have a longer school day which translates ( often) into a tighter community. Competitive private schools can have similar stats and matriculations but be very different. When people live somewhere the connections are deeper. Think of being a commuter at a college and living on the campus. You are going to have a different experience.
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Are you asking about the difference in admissions? Or the experience once there?
Hello,
Thanks for the reply & yes I am looking for the difference in admissions.
For example, the “chance me” threads are full of great sounding kids applying to a set of competitive boarding schools. And most of the replies are along the lines of “you sound like a great kid, but, it’s a coin-toss” or “apply to more schools and less selective schools.”
There aren’t many threads about competitive day schools, and I’m trying to understand where they fit in.
In terms of raw numbers, if a school has an average 85th percentile on the SSAT, there’s a larger pool of kids on the national level that can fit in that bucket, than from any given city. Similarly, it’s eaiser to a good athlete/musician/mathemetician/etc at the city level than at the national level.
But I haven’t really seen much discussion of how admissions look different at the competitive day school level versus the competitive boarding school level. It might be that there isn’t a lot of overlap for people to know … we are only applying to day schools while I take it some people are only applying to boarding schools.
I think there are similarities. In places liked NYC, it can be very competitive but I think that more students participate in EC outside school (sports, music, etc), so you might not see those things creating hooks the way they would in a BS. Sure, it’s great that a kid is a top violinist but she’s probably going to stick with her prestigious youth orchestra over anything the school does. Likewise, there may be more activity around connections (in admissions) at some day schools.
The biggest difference, of course, is that day schools are limited to what is commutable. This means it’s probably easier to understand the pool… Remember too that BS are screening for kids who will be able to function very independently and who will be able to create “family” in their community. That kind of social “fit” matters far less when a kid goes home every night.
Some excellent points here, thanks, that was illuminating!
I was wondering about a subject you mentioned - the “prestigous youth orchestra” which I’m going to change to athletics. So there are a few boarding school (and college) threads about athletic recruiting to boarding schools, how the kids or parents are talking to coaches, who in turn boost those kids’ chances at admission.
Does that happen in day schools too? Because the primary case to me, if a kid was great at soccer, they’d primarily be working through club sports over school sports. So I can see why being great at soccer is good for admissions generally, but is there the same type of “recruiting” going on at day schools for athletes?
Finally, the “connections” thing might be a problem for us (being un-connected to anything). Is there a way to understand how much they’re pushing the scales for connected people? I have some sense of the local pool, and feel like there’s a reasonable case based on merit alone, but there are all types of groups out there getting boosts (and we’re not one of them) and that is the part that gives me pause.
With very rare exceptions, BS kids cannot compete in club sports. The primary obligations are to the school and its required activities which make it difficult/impossible for even a day student to leave the campus before 6. Combined with the fact that many BS have Saturday classes, the logistics become a challenge.
So while BS kids do get recruited, particularly in more niche sports, the 1% of the 1% high caliber athlete is usually competing at the club level and attending an LPS/day school, specialized sports academy, or is homeschooled.
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@skieurope notes why this difference exists. The BS needs the athletes to fill out its teams in a competitive way so they recruit. Day schools may not need to do this (although there are some Catholic schools, in particular, that have fearsome teams, especially football!) I think being an athlete can still help – it’s part of who the student is and if they are on an elite track, it will help with college admissions as well – so it’s not useless, but it may be a plus rather than a hook.
Connections matter more at some schools, and are more likely to come into play when there are relatively few seats available.
When you are going through this process, whether for high school or college, it’s easy to feel like everyone else has an edge. All you can do is craft the best application you can. And don’t lose sight of the importance of making a good match in terms of fit. Not all good schools are good fits for good students.
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Thanks!
I’m sorry for being dense … what’s a hypothetical example of a good student with a bad fit at one school and a good fit at another? (Being a public school kid, I never thought about “fit”).
I understand the boarding school example where they want kids that are very independent. Independence, seemingly, would be good anywhere, just more important at boarding school.
I can also see that arrogance would be a negative, but it’d be a negative everywhere.
But are there traits that are a positive in one place and a negative in a different place?
I saw another parent who was applying to day schools saying his kid was a regional or national track athlete … would they be expected to contact coaches at the day schools they’re applying to? Or is it sufficient to just list it as an EC?
If you just want good credit for an EC that requires dedication, listing on the application will do that. If you want the coach begging the admissions committee to admit you, you might want to contact the coach first and not just hope that they figure out that you are a good addition. I have more experience in college recruting, but I think it will work similarly. The coach only gets pull on a certain number of apps. You want to make sure that you are one of them.
The vibe I got during our middle school information session was - athletics are no-cut, they want everyone to participate in a sport regardless of their athletic ability. It felt like the coaches and the kids were stressing the comraderie / exploration aspect of athletics, rather than the competitive aspects. And that made me think that trying to contact coaches at his particular school and bragging about your kid, wouldn’t be a good “fit.”
Perhaps competitive sports play a bigger role in high school than in middle school? That is sensible - go explore, have fun in middle school than buckle down and specialize in high school.
Re: fit: Schools have personalities just like families do. Kiddo has a friend who I always thought wasn’t quite a fit for his own family- which is quite gregarious and he is more introverted. It is kinda like that.
The elements that go into school fit tend to be how intensely the competition is felt, how college-y the campus is, how involved the adults are in a kid’s life, how strict the discipline is, how structured study hours are, how remote/isolated a school is, how big the school is. Traditions, how they build community, etc. That kind of thing.
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All of the above. And some schools have more structure, such as assigning supervised study halls during free periods, whereas others let kids decide how to use free periods. Some kids might chafe at the former whereas some kids might need it.
Some schools are very competitive whereas others are far less so. Some may be more artsy or more sporty. Some may have a culture in which wealth is normalized. These things are neither good nor bad but your kid might fit better with some of those.
As for the coach, it sounds like your inquiry should be around how your child would best be served in terms of sport. Looking to stay with same out of school elite team? Will this be in lieu of school team or does school require participation on their team? What’s the policy on missing class for non school sponsored sports? I think you can, and should, understand this if it pertains to you and it may lead you to the recruiting question.
To clarify for future readers: boarding school soccer players who plan on getting recruited to colleges 100% play club soccer.
Day schools, because of their limited applicant pool (geographically) tend not to be as competitive as boarding schools. They are kind of in different worlds. Some boarding schools are recruiting internationally-- there’s a pipeline from Ghana and other African countries to boarding schools, as well as some Europeans. Jack Harrison being a notable example.
I think my kids are quite a bit younger than yours. What age did you know / they know they wanted to be recruited? And when does that process even begin - I’m unclear whether middle schools care about athletics beyond it being a good extracurricular (versus holding a special position like in colleges). Do most boarding schools reserve spaces for certain types of athletes? Do most day schools do that? This is a whole new world to me (and I also don’t really understand what threshold of athletics would lead to recruitment at different levels). Are there good articles about this?
@floating123 you might consider a new thread, since this is kind of a new topic. To answer your questions – my son did not know he wanted to play soccer in college (he had a dim grasp of what college was!) in 8th grade. However, he did have a burning desire to be the best soccer player he could possibly be, whatever that meant.
I suspect different schools have different policies with regards to athletic recruitment, and also it depends on the sport. Some schools have chosen to focus on certain sports and not others. So, it depends! But it is not anything like college recruiting. At the schools I know best (Millbrook and Hotchkiss), they are interested in fielding competitive teams, but they are primarily focused on the academic side of the application.
As for when recruiting starts – for college? Again, it depends on the sport, the sex of the player, and the level of the player. Top D1 men’s soccer recruits are on schools’ radar in 9th grade and 10th for sure. Lower level D1 a bit later, D3 mostly junior year into senior year.
Let me quickly say these are broad generalities and there are always exceptions to the more typical recruiting path.
As for boarding school recruitment, kids that get “recruited” are kids that would make varsity in 9th grade, even being a starter in 9th grade. In soccer, they would have been playing club soccer for a few years already. You would reach out to the coach, and express interest, and hopefully have something – video, on the roster of a well known team – that is proof of the level of play. And then I expect the coach’s support is helpful, but is not enough to get you in. This is speculation on my part, but for example, if the school decides it needs another 9th grade boy day student, and there are four good candidates to choose from, the school would choose the boy who also can play on the soccer team – he brings one more thing the school that maybe the others don’t bring.
Anyway, I truthfully don’t know a ton about prep school athletic recruiting; we only applied to a couple of schools for non-soccer reasons. If you were really pursuing athletic recruiting, you’d figure out which schools excel/emphasize your sport, and apply to them, but we didn’t do that.
This may not be relevant, but California does not allow sports recruiting for high schools, boarding private or public. Doesn’t mean schools don’t consider the sports prowess of particular applicants- just that they can’t go seeking out athletes.
My impression is that the policy does change the vibe on campus compared to schools that recruit. Sports won’t be so central to the school culture. I am not aware of post-graduate programs being a thing in California for example, and I would guess you have fewer students who apply as repeat ninth graders. So the student body skews younger. I haven’t ever seen data on that, though - I could be making that up.
I will say, if your intention is to get recruited for college in a sport, while it does happen, Cate is not your best choice. Too small to field the high caliber teams in all sports, and not enough exposure to scouts. Other bs in Cal, and smaller bs’s everywhere, probably have that limitation.
I’m happy to help with my past experiences, but I think it really depends on what city you are looking for and what sport. Are you in the Boston area? If so, I can’t help there, but in NYC, it’s cutthroat for day schools and some of it is determined by money (by that I mean billions, not a million) and celebrity, along with being smart. I have extended family who chose to go the athletic route, but (as others mentioned above with regards to soccer), you know pretty early on. My family member went to Waterville Valley Academy at an early age and then continued on from there. I know families here in NYC who pulled their kids out of places like Spence (which is very hard to get into to begin with) to homeschool to pursue their sports. The only high caliber athlete I’ve heard of at a private NYC school is Lia Neal (swimming/CSH) although some of the catholic schools do well with rugby (Xavier). Blair has a nationally ranked wresting program, so one could be a day student there.