<p>We received this email from Hotchkiss, to which our reply was to remove d from waitlist:</p>
<p>Greetings from Hotchkiss,</p>
<p>Please excuse the informal nature of this email, but we wanted to give everyone on our waiting list some updated information regarding our enrollment for next year. For the past several weeks, the Admission Committee has been working through the final phase of our admission cycle. As you can imagine, it takes some time to review the enrollment figures for the upcoming year and to assess the various possibilities of changes in our enrollment picture.</p>
<p>Traditionally, we have been able to go to the waiting list during the spring and summer months for a handful of students. However, it is always difficult to predict if we will have any further openings. We understand how difficult it is to wait and we want to assure you we are watching these numbers very carefully.</p>
<p>In order to keep our records updated, we ask that you either telephone our office or respond to this email to confirm your desire to remain on the waiting list. If we do not hear from you by May 7th, we will assume that you have made other plans for next year.</p>
<p>Thank you for your continued interest and patience. If you have any further questions about our waiting list, please feel free to call our office at 860-435-3102.</p>
<p>Sarum, none of this seems to lead us in the direction that you have alluded to: emerging attrition as overextended and undercapitalized parents open the envelope and inspect the $45,000 bills.</p>
<p>This is a late comment to something a few posts back----but I was surprised to hear so many of you say that schools don’t discuss candidates with each other. I find that many of the schools do indeed discuss candidates with each other. .</p>
<p>I can think of two recent examples of schools in CT calling each other about candidates. One, about a student who claimed to have a WL at a top school the prior year. They called that school and found out that wasn’t true and the parent had lied to them. I don’t think they call and hash things over in regular situations—but if there is a question, they don’t seem to hesitate to make a call.</p>
<p>How about WL students getting in because parents are refusing to send their admitted kids away to school during a pandemic? Especially if the kid needs to fly to school? Maybe homeschooling is the way to go this Fall?</p>
<p>In looking back at this admissions season, it appears the predominant POV that there would be lots of waitlist movement there year because of the economy has not really happened. In fact, most schools had the opposite phenomenon–high number of applications, very high yields and very low need to go to waitlists. My theory is that, this year more than others, the pool of applicants self-selected before they applied and the skittish just passed on applying. So those who dared to apply were a more concentrated group of “ready to commit” either because they were very upfront about the needs financial aid or they knew could swing it regardless of the economy. Any other theories?</p>
<p>Erlanger you can’t call the game over yet in the 7th inning. The BIG check has yet to be written by parents, and the effect of the upcoming specter of the Fall Flu Season hasn’t been quantified by those families that will have to fly their children to school.</p>
<p>Erlanger, those are very perceptive comments. I would not have come up with that, but it make intuitive sense. Nevertheless, I still agree with Sarum that they have yet to see the invoices!</p>
<p>I was curious to see what would happen this admissions season too. I thought there would be a downturn in applications across the board. But I was wrong. However, what did happen was similar to what happened to the colleges. Applications to St Pauls, Choate, Deerfield very up or very steady, similar to the applications at Harvard, Yale, etc.</p>
<p>But on the other end, applications to boarding schools which are not among the 20 or so often called “top tier” are down. Just as applications to lesser name colleges are down.</p>
<p>One of my clients was a hedge fund manager who lost 3/4 of his life savings this year. He had originally had a list of 10 schools for his son to consider. After losing so much money, he said that now more than ever, he wants his son to go to a top tier school to be better positioned in life. He would spend anything for him to go to a Deerfield type of school. But conversly, he cut out even excellent schools which weren’t top tier. His son did get into a top tier and he is going. </p>
<p>I’m no expert, but maybe there are lots of people out there like my hedge fund manager</p>
<p>Sarum, I don’t think boarding school parents will choose to keep their children at home due to fears of a flu pandemic. A student is safer at Deerfield, or Northfield Mount Hermon, than he is in New York city. </p>
<p>Dorms are great places to spread germs, but I think they probably pale compared to the real engines of germ dispersion: public elementary schools. Our public elementary school can’t use any cleaners which might even frighten a virus, let alone kill it. It all has to be environmentally safe, which means the school is a petri dish.</p>
<p>Yes, newyorker22, I think your analysis is close to the mark, as I have expressed elsewhere on CC. With the economy and the future darkening for so many these days, parents appear more willing than ever to expend their dwidling funds on their children’s education in order to help them secure the shrinking opportunities we fear lie ahead. Some folks on CC don’t seem too interested, pleased or concerned about these thoughts. I understand; these ideas are not at all cheery. Still, I think that each of us must to do the best for our kids the best we can. Hope for the best, but plan for the worst; not a unwise mantra these days.</p>
<p>Periwinkle as a Parent of boarding Preppies, I am only concerned about the travel to and from school. Our family is in California, and it takes 8 hours of traveling by plane & bus… at least …to get to their schools in New England. That is the time as a parent I would be most worried about:) The health departments at the schools I am affiliated with are top notch and I have no worries that if any of my boys become infected, that they will receive the best care available.</p>
<p>Does anyone know whether or not Exeter has taken any kids off of its wait list yet? If Exeter has taken any such kids, please provide, if possible, the class of each such child and the date Exeter extended an offer of admission to that student. Thanks much.</p>
<p>Hello all! I have two PEA kids, and word there (although indirect, on the grapevine, for whatever that may be worth) seems to be that no one’s heard of any incoming prep day students or boarders being invited from the waitlist yet, but that some small number of 10th (& up) waitlist kids may be coming.</p>
<p>Momalot, thanks. Such seems to be the buzz from what I have gleaned. Let’s try to keep all posted here of any movement on the Exeter front over the days to come.</p>
The BIG check has yet to be written by parents, and the effect of the upcoming specter of the Fall Flu Season hasn’t been quantified by those families that will have to fly their children to school.</p>