Do admissions offices at elite boarding schools coordinate/compare admission offers? This is merely my suspicion. I have nothing to back it up, but maybe (probably) one of you knows more. I’m just suspicious that these schools don’t have more of an overlap of admitted students since many of them are looking for similar qualities. Also, I’ve heard how important the yield number is. Like I said, this is all conjecture, but I thought I’d ask.
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No.
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No.
If you look at results from previous years, plenty of kids have choices.
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Based on my family’s experience, the answer is definitely “no.”
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Thank you for asking this question! I have wondered about this as well. The way a certain group of elite boarding schools present themselves together as a unified ten school consortium, highlights this question. It would certainly be helpful and mutually beneficial to these schools to share information and their intended acceptances.
Maybe the other posters are 100% correct, no schools share admissions information. Hopefully everyone’s answers are based on direct knowledge. If I heard that a particular student got into many of the schools in the Ten Schools Admissions Organization, it would not really answer the question … that one student may have been exceptional in one or more ways.
I still wonder if decisions on some students that are very good but not exceptional are coordinated between multiple schools? Who knows, I certainly do not know …. but I have assumed it is probably the case.
The vast majority of “unhooked” students who are very good but not exceptional don’t get in to any of the most elite boarding schools.
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One thing that CAN happen is that a student applying from a middle school or JBS with good BS placement or an (international) student with a well-respected counselor MAY have a counselor who speaks with their schools. And if the counselor indicates that a school isn’t near the top of a kid’s list and the kid has a good shot at schools higher up the list, the less loved schools may decline the student. The reality is that there aren’t a ton of students in the pool in this situation. But I would guess that the boys from Eaglebrook, for example, experience a version of this. The counselors want to be sure everyone gets acceptances from schools they’d be happy with. My sense is that few families who are here on CC need to fret about this. And in any case, it’s not the schools who are sharing the info with each other. That would be really unethical.
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Do these calls from an applicant’s counseling office help? Does it matter help more if it’s a school known to the boarding school?
Responding to @VisibleName2 IMHO if your student attends a well known JBS, the guidance counselor at that school has a vested interest in securing admissions to boarding schools and probably has a relationship (even longstanding one) with the AO’s of different boarding schools. In some cases, the students attending certain JBS’s and/or day schools might even be the children of faculty at boarding schools in close proximity. Also, if your student is a stand-out athlete this will be very much a factor for BS’s looking for talent….often comes from JBS’s or prep schools they know - especially for certain sports.
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I do think coming from a school that is well known to a boarding school (has sent students to the BS in the past and those students were successful) does help. It isn’t good for anyone involved to admit a student who ends up struggling or ends up leaving. I believe admissions like “known products” from schools they know have educated students in a way that will help them be successful at their BS. I think this is true for colleges as well. That said, in no way is this a guarantee - it just think it can be the thing that pushes a student from a “waitlist” pile to the “accept” pile.
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I think it’s more about context. The schools know how to interpret info from these trusted advisors. I wouldn’t say it necessarily helps - they could just as easily say to a school that doesn’thavea pool “they really prefer programs where they can swim all year.” But I think it may result in higher yield for the schools and better fit for applicants (done right).
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