It doesn’t make a difference, but I’m just curious. How many people used Gateway to apply to boardings schools and how many people used SAO? (I used Gateway)
i used both because some schools didnt take SAO, but i like SAO so much more.
SAO has a standard set of essays that can be used for all the schools on there… so you dont have to write as many essays as you would have to using gateway (comparing schools that accept both sao and gateway)
some SAO schools have additional supplements (1-2 extra essays on top of the standard SAO ones) but most of those that i applied to on SAO didnt. those werent too bad though
on gateway, each school had 4-5 of their own individual essays which was pretty exhausting
^i wish we’d known that when DS applied. He applied to 11 schools and we used Gateway. He was an essay writing fool! I’ll keep this in mind for buuznkid2!
As an applicant, I, for some reason, thought that it would be beneficial to apply to most of the schools through Gateway which means that I had written many more essays than I truly needed to.
Several schools, such as Andover, and starting this year, Exeter, are only available on the Gateway application portal, which means that you cannot fully avoid writing many essays.
Some schools utilize both to make it easier for applicants to apply if they only use one of the platforms, but for me some schools that I applied to only used one or the other, so it really wasn’t beneficial for me.
While some schools choose to allow applicants to use both platforms, some may prefer one over the other, like Milton, who says to apply via Gateway on their website, and strongly suggests that applicants apply through Gateway in their admissions viewbook, but does offer applicants the ability to apply through the SAO.
I used SAO for all the schools except for PEA, PA, and Choate because they only accepted Gateway. I found the SAO to be much more organized and easy to use than Gateway. I was actually going to apply to all using Gateway (thank goodness I didn’t), but one of the schools only used SAO, then I decided to use SAO for all the rest since I was more comfortable with it (except for PEA, PA, and Choate).
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I used Gateway, but I wish I used SAO. Much less essays, but I didn’t apply to too many schools, so it wasn’t as bad as some people had it.
Only 2 schools out of the 6 I applied to took SAO (ugh) but I definitely prefer it to Gateway. So frustrating when you write a great essay you want everyone to see-and it just so happens to be for your last choice.
I recycled many essays for the Gateway applications, but Choate had a smaller word limit so I had to cut out some bits 
I’m honestly proud of my essays, but I haven’t read any others so I’m not sure where I stand compared to the other applicants.
@emro12, I know the feeling. My best essay by far was for my last choice school, which I completely BOMBED the interview at.
I guess it depends what the schools support, as mentioned above; something to note though, I did have a friend who applied to a school on both the SAO and the gateway, and the AO said something about preferring the gateway as the schools can choose their own essay topics.
@brassarrow my dad had to cut out more than half for Choate’s parent statement 
Ouch. They should offer a larger word limit, IMO.
I lived how Deerfield had no word limit. I felt it really allowed me to express myself.
Sure the no word limit thing for Deerfield was great, but I slightly felt pressured to write a lot since I felt like they expected it, but I stuck to my average essay length. I just really hated the small limit for the “short response” question as I wanted to write so much more than the 1600 characters that they gave us.
I was really annoyed by the Loomis Chaffee essay because there was not a set word limit in the actual portal, just a maximum character number, but in the print preview version, where we were supposed to review the application before submission, there was a word limit, therefore I had to go through and shorten my essay to fall within the word limit.
I typically have double taking parts of my essays out. I accidentally wrote an essay length response for a short answer and had to take around half out so I’m not sure how good it was… 
*Trouble (sp)