We heard a lot about them at NCAA sports and at many of the flagship state universities (and most of the LACs).
Are there active recruiting activities at the competitive boarding schools? If so, how/where should a prospective student get started?
At the admissions office or to reach the coaches? Would they be well received as fair questions?
I would imagine this is mostly a topic/question of the parents, but welcome perspective and experience sharing from all.
In general, no. Less selective schools are more likely to have scholarships not based on need than the highly selective ones. Need-based FA is available at almost all schools, although some are more generous than others.
In general, yes. But it depends also on the school/sport.
Contact the coach. Almost every boarding school website has a link for athletic inquiries. e.g.
https://www.exeter.edu/athletics/prospective-athletes
Again, depends on school/sport, but generally one would contact the coach first.
Yes, but with a caveat. If the coach is a FT employee, then s/he also teaches and is potentially also a houseparent. If s/he is a PT employee, then odds are that s/he has another job as well. So be respectful of his/her situation and do not inundate with meaningless questions.
Thank for sharing your insight.
I wanted to take a deeper dive. What are some of the (boarding) schools providing academic scholarship? I’d presume top tier day schools around NY metro offer need-based aids or racial-specific aid⬆️.
Look at Mercersburg. Ours received an academic scholarship, but ultimately took an academic scholarship to a private day school. There are half tuition scholarships as well as smaller merit scholarships. It is also a very strong school.
You may want to look at George School.
Most of the BS prefer to use their funds for true FA so if you are capable of being a full pay family, you are going to have a hard time getting FA (because the schools also want SES diversity.) But there may be smaller merit scholarships available that are not based on need.
There are some boarding schools that have merit scholarships (Kent, Mercersburg, George School). If you look at Boardingschool Review you can search for merit scholarships.
We found that FA calculations at several boarding schools (and a few days schools) were more generous than the colleges. All the HS considered sibling tuition in their calculations - most colleges didn’t.
Some schools DO give athletic scholarships regarless of how they are classified. For example, at the Mercersburg Open House, I was on tour with a mom whose son was being recruited for Basketball. She told me he was a C student at a public HS in the region, but a basketball superstar. The Mercersburg coach would come watch his games (on his own initiative) and specifically asked him to come to Open House and apply for 11th.
Soooo, I would say that is probably “athletic recruiting” categorized as something else (ie., need-based FA as I’m not sure merit applied here). Both Mercersburg and Peddie do that for swimming, also. I know of swimmers getting letters from Peddie.