My personal M10 freak out has more to do with the post decision process than the actual decisions themselves. At this point soxkid doesn’t have a clear BS first choice - they all are excellent schools. If we are fortunate enough to receive multiple admits it is not selecting which one that concerns me. My concern is that soxkid is being pulled back into her local public school due to a fairly recent boyfriend. By recent I mean 2 months. This is not a dad being nervous about his little girl having a boyfriend, he is a great kid and I’m very comfortable with the relationship. My concerns is that as we go through the decision process just how much will having a boyfriend influence soxkid’s thought process? How do I help her keep the relationship in perspective? This could all be my personal issue, soxkid has not expressed a sudden desire to stay local. But as M10 approaches I’m trying to prepare myself for the potential conversations. Any advice will be appreciated. The situation I want to avoid is that SoxKid decides to return to the LPS, the relationship ends, and SoxKid regrets the decison not to go to BS.
Tell her there will be many decisions ahead of her that she will be tempted to make based on instant gratification vs. what is best in the long term. This is a great first test among many and she needs to start building this life skill now. The trick is to write down the likely consequences – my father always had me take out a notepad and write “If I do this, what could happen?” and “If I do that, what could happen?” Then write down all the possible outcomes in a simple list. My father, who is an engineer, was a big fan of “What could go wrong here?” thinking. It saved me countless times. Good luck!
I don’t know… but if she decides to stay local, I don’t think there is much that can be done. Hopefully, if the worst scenario does happen, she would learn a lesson and won’t repeat the same thing with college applications. I think that happens a lot in college, and I saw in graduate school and beyond. So I guess some people do not learn.
I do think kids make this mistake going into college as well, and the best you can do is to try not to make it sound a choice (and try not to say the REALLY a tempting thing, which is: “Of COURSE you’re not going to end up with your 8th grade boyfriend!”). Focus on what she’d be giving up by turning down BS (and, therefore, on what is best about BS), and say of course there are lots of vacations to still see the boyfriend and that, these days, they can even skype every day. And hope that revisit days are really exciting. Until she decides, I’d focus on the BS stuff and not talk too much about the boyfriend or that it’s a choice. We’re starting to see this for college (my son’s girlfriend is talking up colleges close by for him), but, so far at least, he’s SAYING he wouldn’t make a college chice just based on girlfriend or other friends. It may get more problematic when the time really comes, of course. Anyway, good luck.
Re-visit days definitely help – both with choosing a school and with making going away to school seem more real and more fun. It has been a long time since last Fall, and going back to a school you have been admitted to is very different to touring with an aim to apply. The schools generally do a great job with the re-visit and, in our case, with making friends in the incoming class - before you even get there!
We had a similar situation in that local, private day schools admission decisions came out well in advance of M10. My kid had many friends attending one school (where she was also admitted). It was hard for her to see all of her friends “set” with where they would go for high school while she was still undecided. One day at a Re-visit event and she told us to “write the check, this is where I am going!” - LOL
Be patient. See what her options end up being. Go to all schools she is admitted to, and just enjoy the programs on offer. THEN discuss a decision. Good luck.
Oops-- meant son’s girlfriend. Just correcting this in case he ever see this 
lol…just when I was thinking the world has come a long way in terms of natural inclusiveness and acceptance! it just sounded so natural and comfortable!
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
Edited @Daykidmom post #3 to reflect correct gender. Not that it matters, of course.
I know, I know! It’s all good
The chances are very good that the relationship will not last long enough to cause a problem. If they’re still an item on March 10th, you can point out that it is less distracting for both parties to have a boyfriend/girlfriend at another school.
I wouldn’t be in favor of a senior in high school changing her college plans due to her boyfriend’s plans.
This is a great thread… and all kids (and parents) may be considering the fear of big change by heading to boarding school, and what they are leaving behind. My kid felt some real pressure about not going to school with friends at the local option. That was her first taste of real independence, making that choice to leave. It’s been amazing for her to branch out and realize that she didn’t lose anyone. Life isn’t restricted by snail mail and landlines( like us parents had it…) you can stay very close with people from remote. Social media, skype, text messages > This anonymous forum being a great example… 
Yes, we paid over $5K in 9 months to Ma Bell companies due to long distance relationship. It seems the cell phone data plans are bargain now.
Hah! My husband and I spent 2 years apart (before we were married) going to different grad schools in different time zones. Expen$ive!
Does anyone watch Gilmore Girls? In the pilot episode, we meet Rory, a high school sophomore who has just been accepted to Chilton, a prestigious prep school. Private school has been her dream for a long time, and she is ecstatic when she gets in. But on her last day at Stars Hollow High, she meets Dean. Suddenly, she doesn’t want to go to Chilton.
If you find yourself in this situation, the entire series is on Netflix. It’s a fantastic show, and there’s a lesson in that first episode.
I would like to think that I would say that given the commitment she made to go after this opportunity and subsequent acceptances to these great schools that she needs to find the one that suits her best and give it ONE year. If, after the year, she still wants to be local, than she can make that decision to come home.
@RedSoxFan18, we all empathize but perhaps you should wait to see if your daughter actually gets into one of these schools before you worry too much about the possible consequences.
Thanks all, some great suggestions. We did revisit days with my son when he went through the process and they were very helpful. I wish my personality would let me chill and just wait for the decisions to roll in but I’m the planning type who feels compelled to anticipate possible outcomes and plan for each. Sometimes that is a stregnth, sometimes a weakness, and sometimes just plain annoying.
I am so with you. I read some of these posts and I think what is wrong with all of these people living vicariously through their teenagers lives?? Yet here I am…counting the minutes until M10. Also vis a vis the girlfriend I would be terrified if I were you, but I agree that revisit days will help. There are an awful lot of interesting fish in the sea…probably more than at home.
Here is what we ended up doing, at the suggestion of my type-A brother…
GMCkid couldn’t decide between 3 schools, which couldn’t have been more different from each other (one of the “choices” was to remain where she was). So my brother had her make a list of 20 school attributes that were important to her, such as language options, food, dorm rooms, writing courses, happiness of kids etc etc etc… He then told her to choose 5 of those and rank them a top priority. Then, assign a score from 1-10 to each, for each school (10 being highest). Then add up the scores (and DOUBLE the top-5 attributes scores so they’re weighted more heavily) and see what happens.
It was interesting to see, first of all, which 20 attributes she came up with, and also which 5 she chose to be the most important to her. Then, the scoring.
All of this was done after the revisits, when she was incredibly stressed about not being able to choose. In her case, she was choosing between 3 very different lifestyles (NYC day school, CA boarding and NE boarding) so it was not easy. The scoring exercise really did help her sort through her feelings a bit.
OTOH, I know of more than one kid who flipped a coin
Hi. We did something similar to @gmc2918. Our spreadsheet was as follows:
I chose the 4 main categories: Academics, Athletics, Facilities and Other. Within each of these 4 categories my son was able to pick his own ratings: rigor, breadth of courses, Saturday classes, college placement, prestige, grading system, strength of athletic team, dorms, etc. Since I was paying full fare without FA, in the other category I added a rating for cost and distance to home. My son argued that he wanted to add a factor for “gut feel” so I relented. In total we had a total of 14 factors across 4 broad categories:
Academics
Academic rigor
Breadth of coursework
College placement
Prestige Factor
Grading system
Athletics
Access to sports facilities
Depth of team
Will allow off-season training
Facilities
Access to lessons/trainers
Campus pleasantness
Quality of dorms
Other
Cost rating
Gut feeling
Distance to home
My Son applied to 9 schools (6 boarding, 3 day) and then our local public school for a total of 10. Son then went thru and rated each of the schools 1-10 in rank order for each item. In case of a tie, we gave the same score to both schools.
Then it was a simple matter to sum the scores. I made him fill out the spreadsheet BEFORE the M10 decisions came out. Believe me, this was incredibly helpful for my son to help balance the strengths/weaknesses of each of the schools. Made making a decision on A10 that much easier.