<p>My son is applying for the 2015-2016 school year. We would love to get started on his applications over the summer, but I am just now learning that many schools do not release their new applications until September. How different do you think those applications will be? It would be nice to get a jump on the essays, teacher recommendations, etc.</p>
<p>They’re not usually very different but I have sometimes seen year to year changes in the exact essay topics. I’d wait to ask for recommendations until next year unless your son will have the same teachers(s) next year as he has this. School tend to want recs from current teachers.</p>
<p>I would also be careful about working ahead on the essays too much. Kids this young change a lot in 6 months and their writing skills can improve quite a bit. You may also find your list changes after visiting schools in the fall. What I would do is start brainstorming answers to some of the current questions on the applications to schools to which you think he’ll be applying. Certain themes tend to show up commonly; for instance “Which of your extracurriculars is most meaningful to you and why?”, “Tell us about a challenge you’ve faced”, and “Who is your role model?” Questions like these can be tough for a kid with little life experience to answer. My experience with my kids was that although they didn’t initially have an obvious answer something eventually came to them, sometimes almost out of the blue. Their answers were stronger and more original for not having been chosen quickly and I think letting the topics have some time to percolate in their heads helped.</p>
<p>Prewriting the entire essay may bias him toward schools for which he’s nearly finished the essays and against new schools whose essays he didn’t write over the summer. We found Thanksgiving break a good time to write the bulk of the essays, but by that time my kids had put in a lot of thinking about the topics and had a couple of pages of notes from which to work. They’d also visited most of the schools so they’d been able to cull their lists and thus cut down the number of essays.</p>
<p>Good luck with the process!</p>
<p>@sue22: Thanks for your thoughts and insights. My husband and I have begun having “self-reflection” conversations with our son, using the essay questions we have seen so far as a guide. We’ve talked through things like “describe a person, experience or event that had an impact on your life” and “describe a challenge you faced and how you handled it” or “tell a story that would give us insight into the kind of person you are.” All very difficult if you haven’t thoughtfully reflected on your life and experiences - and what 13-year-old has? I feel like we have made a good start in that regard. </p>
<p>My best advice would be to wait. There are many, many things you can do to prep ahead of time. You can practice writing skills with former essay prompts to get a feel for it. Make sure to start SSAT or ISEE prep early if you plan to do so. Mock interviews are great; I would recommend trying them with someone he feels intimidated by or doesn’t know very well (a close friend’s parent, your colleague). Find the small things and practice, practice, practice! Once school starts, I would recommend handing in recommendations around Thanksgiving or early December to give teachers some time but also to make sure they know your son. Work on essays throughout the fall and get serious around Thanksgiving/December. Then, in late December or early January, you can go through and clean them up before turning them in!</p>
<p>A major part of starting early is finding the proper schools. Search CC, Boarding School Review, and other sites to limit yourself to a collection of reaches, matches, and safeties. Then search their website to narrow the list down further. If you’re starting early, you might be able to go on a long road trip this summer and visit/tour the schools. What I’d then recommend is narrow the list down to a handful: a reach or two, a few matches, and one or two safeties; make sure each of these schools is a place where he feels at home and like he would fit in. Try not to make emotional connections to the schools as you never know what the M10 results will be. Then, with your subsidized list, go on another fall trip and interview and tour while students are there. </p>
<p>IF you will be traveling a long distance to interview and tour, you may want to call the schools on your list during the summer to make an appointment for the fall. We live on the West Coast, and in July I made appointments over Thanksgiving break at both Exeter and Andover. In hindsight I actually wouldn’t recommend that, because the schools were closed, but I didn’t know that it would matter. It does. We got a tour with a student at Andover, but did not at Exeter. We also visited St. Paul’s which was a ghost town that day, and we did a tour completely on our own. </p>
<p>Over the summer I mapped all the schools we were interested in, figured out which ones I could interview at the same day. To save people time, I will point out that you can interview at Hotchkiss and Choate on the same day, and Deerfield and Loomis Chaffee on the same day. We also did Andover and Exeter on the same day. Of course, there are other combinations, but that’s what we did. We made 2 trips that fall.</p>
<p>@Leafyseadragon: Thanks for your insights. we currently live in Madagascar and can make only one visit to the east coast to see schools, next December. (I already have three interviews scheduled!) We’ve got to be very targeted about which schools to visit, because we only have about 7 days. Crazy,</p>
<p>We did two New England visits - one for Pomfret in December, and then one for Taft, Choate, and Berkshire in January. Taft and Choate we did in the same day (Friday), and Berkshire the next (Saturday).</p>
<p>This might sound crazy, but I think the closer you schedule your interview and tour to the application deadline, the better. Schedule it way in advance and plan your trip out, but January is, in my opinion, a great time to go. It’s an insanely busy time, yes, but if things go really well, the AO will remember you better than if you interviewed and toured in September.</p>
<p>That’s the theory my dad and I have. Crazy? Slightly. But it seemed to work really well at one of the places we visited in January.</p>
<p>We started our visits in early September and visited schools nearly every weekednd through October, did one each in December and January. Once winter weather hits NE, all bets are off for travel… you just never know. We missed a visit in Dec. due to weather and were unable to reschedule. The fact that most of our visits were early in the fall did not seem to have an effect on my daughter’s admission decisions. IMHO, saying that the interview date can have an effect on the admit decision is like saying you can get better results on M10 by cultivating a post interview relationship with an AO. </p>
<p>FWIW, the schools that outright rejected my son were the two he interviewed at extremely early: August for one and early September for the other. </p>
<p>Its different for every person @twinsmama. The first school I interviewed with was in September OFF CAMPUS and I got in. The last school I interviewed with was in January and I was waitlisted. I recommend interviewing in the winter because in New England, that is what the majority of the school year is like. I also recommend taking the SSAT in an off month such as September or even as early as June so you can not only get a better score, but see what you need to focus on if you want to retake. I took my first SSAT in December and sort of rushed to take the January one. I also recommend writing your essays in September, edit them through October, take a break, then take another look at them in December and change what you need to. This is what I would have done if I had planned well. Other than that, just research a bunch of schools, narrow it down to a short list of safeties, matches, and reaches, and wait for the school year to come so you can join ECs, do well in school, and get to know your teachers (especially math and English). </p>
<p>For you lurkers who are so confused about when to do what and what the magic formula is, know that many regular kids who were unencumbered by all this wonderful CC knowledge were accepted to great schools with one unprepped SSAT sitting (who didn’t know you could take the test multiple times), no on-campus interviews, no visits until re-visits, and all applications done before Christmas (because mom said so). Before anyone jumps in to say that what I describe CAN happen but is not the optimal approach, let me say that I’m posting this so you can stop stressing about you can’t do. If you read here long enough, you will read absolutely conflicting opinions about each and every step of the process. Pick up what you can from these posts, weigh them against common sense, and then plow ahead with confidence.</p>
<p>MadagascarMom: I understand the importance for your son gaining admission to SOME school next round. It seems that you have a sound approach for including a very wide range of schools. Visit those you can, Skype those you can’t, and don’t underestimate the plus of an application from Madagascar. Keep researching, but no need to start too early. Wait until the applications are available so you can see what each school requires; otherwise, you may be doing a lot of wheel spinning.</p>
<p>And, FWIW, the two schools that rejected our son were the most effusive in their praise of what a good “fit” he seemed to be and how they could definitely see him on their campus and around their tables, etc.</p>
<p>This might be worth reading (our family’s story with my older girl):
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/prep-school-parents/1174214-one-familys-bs-search-and-application-process--start-to-finish-p1.html”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/prep-school-parents/1174214-one-familys-bs-search-and-application-process--start-to-finish-p1.html</a></p>
<p>Thanks ChoatieMom. It’s very reassuring to read everyone’s experiences and have you all take the time to respond to my concerns. It is much appreciated!</p>
<p>I was waitlisted at one from the end of September and three from the end of January to mid-February. I don’t think it matters, but it couldn’t hurt. </p>
<p>@Madagascar,</p>
<p>He will need a recommendation from his Math & English teachers, so he needs to be sure to impress those 2 people in particular in the coming academic year.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t start the essay now. A better strategy would be to visit & interview at the schools first, and then write a focused essay that speaks to how he would fit in and contribute some quality to the school. If you have the choice of using a common app (i.e. TABS or SAO) or the school’s own essay (e.g, Gateway portal), then always use the school’s own application. The schools say it doesn’t matter, but they really do prefer their own form. And their own form will enable your son to submit a more tailored essay. The common app will only allow the same generic essay to be submitted to each school. For the non-rolling admissions schools, there is no advantage to sending the completed application early. For those schools the final admit decisions will be made in February. </p>
<p>Your son can also start prepping for the SSAT. No need to get expensive tutoring. Neither of my boys bothered with it. Just go to any bookstore and get yourself an SSAT study guide book. They are in the same section of the bookstore w SAT study guides. There is an Apr & Jun test date coming up (check for int’l test center availability). Wouldn’t hurt to just go ahead and take it as a diagnostic test to see what areas he needs to work on, and to benchmark what schools are a realistic match. If your son actually does happen to kick-a$$ on the test now, then check with the schools one whether they will accept the scores. Some schools require the test be taken no earlier than the Sep test date.</p>
<p>Between now and this fall, start researching schools and putting together a strategic list of schools. We started out w a list of 20 and culled it down to a final 5. You can use school stats to do an initial filtering:<br>
filter for sports & programs: <a href=“Boarding School Search Tool”>http://www.boardingschoolreview.com/searchschools.php</a>
sort by stats: <a href=“Sort Boarding Schools by Key Criteria”>http://www.boardingschoolreview.com/school_ranking.php</a></p>
<p>Since GMTson was applying to be a boarder, we eliminated schools with low %boarding students, like Milton. We also eliminated schools that offer ESL, which is an indication of a lot of int’l kids being admitted for their ability to pay rather than their readiness to play… We also eliminated schools that didn’t offer his sport. BTW, the most prestigious American schools do not offer the IB.</p>
<p>In GMTson’s final list of 5, there were:
- 3 reaches
- 1 match
- 1 safety
What constitutes a “reach”, “match”, or “safety” will differ for each applicant according to his profile, hooks, & need for FA. Madagascar residency will be a hook, but not a guarantee.</p>
<p>Once you put together the list of schools, then you can contact the schools to schedule visits. GMTson2 toured/interviewed at 7 schools. He dropped 2 from his list after the visits, including his #1 choice at the time. At best you can do 2 schools per day. To do this, you have to get the early morning slot and the late afternoon slot, to give yourself enough time to drive between and eat lunch. It is therefore imperative to get on the school’s calendar as soon as possible, to get the early & late time slots. The slots in the 3rd & 4th week of Oct fill up really fast, because that’s when the junior boarding school kids get time off from school to do their visits. </p>
<p>For the interviews, your son needs to be prepared to articulate why he is interested in that particular school and be prepared to list what qualities he would contribute to the school. Coach him to expand on his answers to the interview question. It’s not the answer that is important, but being able to explain the “WHY”… Make good eye contact & show enthusiasm. It takes practice. GMTson2 was getting pretty comfortable w it by his 3 interview. Don’t schedule your favorite school first. </p>
<p>As you have probably observed from the admissions results posted in CC this past round, the competition is intense for getting into the schools w the most prestigious names. Don’t get caught up in that nuttiness. I work w some incredibly educated and internationally cosmopolitan people, and they have not heard of any of the boarding school names, so big whoop…</p>
<p>Another tip for you as int’l family not in western Europe, convenient access to JFK is a huge plus for a school.</p>
<p>Good luck.</p>
<p>While @GMTplus7 makes very valid points, I need to refute one of them from personal experience:
</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>@skieurope, </p>
<p>Your comment provides me w no more comfort
</p>
<p>My personal bias against day students stems from GMTson1’s interview 3 years ago with the interviewer of a very popular school. The interviewer told DS right in front of me, “you need to make friends with the day students. They’re the ones with the cars” *-- wink, wink * </p>
<p>The interviewer actually did the wink, wink thing. I was appalled and mentally crossed that school off the list. Never looked at that school since.</p>
<p>As an int’l parent w my kid an ocean away, the less I have to worry about my kid in a car w teenage drivers, the better…</p>
<p>My kid is a boarder at a school with a number of day students. When I filled out the permission forms, I only gave permission for her to be a passenger in cars driven by other parents, and not students… </p>
<p>@GMTplus7 I did not mean to give the wrong impression. Most of my friends do not even have their drivers license yet, so I was not referring to joyriding in cars. What I meant was that even a 500 acre campus can feel confining after a while, and I enjoy the opportunity to be a part of my surrogate family when my own family is 4000 miles away. To your point, however, I would have also crossed off any school that did either a literal or figurative wink wink.</p>
<p>Being in a community with an effective public transportation system, the reliance on a student (or parent) with a car is non-existent. This would be different if I were at a school in the middle of nowhere, of course. As @cameo43, most schools require parents to give permission for their kids to ride in cars driven by students.</p>
<p>Having completed the boarding school application process and revisits with my child, I will state that the number of domestic applicants accepted with Skype interviews surprised me. Many BS seem to indicate that Skype interviews are allowed only for international applicants. I believe that a visit gives you a better feel for the school but given your distance and time constraints it is understandable. I was impressed by a Chinese family that we kept meeting in the interview process. They were hitting 16 schools in 14 days and one was in CA. I think all the schools would blur into a single mess with that type of schedule. I know from prior posts that boarding school is mandatory for your family. Would make sure that you include some schools with acceptance rates near 50%. If you have legacy than would include those but would also try to narrow your focus. If your child has a special interest in snow sports or is outdoor type consider schools in NH i.e. Proctor, New Hampton or Holderness. Many of these schools are rarely mentioned or discussed on this forum. </p>