<p>Applying to 3, Choate, Milton and Loomis. Maybe I am being too hopeful but I am an only child and international, if I am going to go to boarding school, it might as well be a great one or else I dont think it is worth it.</p>
<p>I'm applying to Cranbrook, Detroit Country Day, and Greenhills locally;
Hotchkiss, Andover, and Exeter as boarding options. Good luck, everyone!</p>
<p>I just applied to one. My dad wasn't very enthusiastic about me going away to school, so either I got into the one I applied and went or I stayed home and went to public school again. Luckily I got into the one I applied to and it ended up being a great fit.</p>
<p>I'm applying to Andover, Milton, and St. Paul's, but I LOVE the school I go to now.</p>
<p>D applied to Andover, Exeter, The George School, and Western Reserve Academy. She also completed applications to four local day schools. She is attending Andover. Applying to and interviewing/shadowing that many schools is stressful and time-consuming. But I'm not sure I'd change anything knowing then what I knew then. D needed a lot of FA and the more schools you apply to, the better the chances that at least one will come through with what you need. If FA had not been an issue, I would probably have had D apply to only Andover, Exeter and Western Reserve Academy and one or two day schools.</p>
<p>0 visits
5 applications</p>
<p>D2 applied to 4 (admitted to 3 and finaid waitlisted at 1 - - the sch we liked the least!) for 9th grade admission; D3 will probably apply to 4 or 5 as a jr transfer.</p>
<p>
[quote]
0 visits
5 applications
[/quote]
Are you really applying to 5 schools without visiting any of them?</p>
<p>Yes, because they were all on the east coast, I live in California, and my parents have schedules that don't give them time to take me 3000 miles away just to look at schools.
I had planned to visit the ones I was accepted by, but since they were so well known, it was easy to see that I would have no objection their campuses.
And voila, I saved the money on the tickets and am enjoying Exeter immensely.</p>
<p>Speaking to a general audience, the 0 visit path is just not the way to go. But I do believe there are people -- very few of them, but they remain people nonetheless -- who just know when they have found their match without having to go through the more deliberative process the other 99% of us richly benefit from.</p>
<p>It's sort of like those e-Harmony couples who meet on the Internet and it actually works or even "love at first sight." I don't think the success stories are always explained away as just dumb luck or statistics. I'm sure that there are others besides 7house who have been as confident and as correct as he was about their own remote searching. I even find stories like that to be captivating and maybe even uplifting or seductive in their charm. Still, that's not a message you want the masses to embrace as a viable method for selecting a boarding school.</p>
<p>Before others feel empowered to do the same, I only wish there was some sort of equivalent message to tack on his (or her) post along the lines of "Professional driver on closed course; do not attempt at home."</p>
<p>Wow, 7house, I'm amazed. I'm glad you found the right fit without a visit. As a parent, that scares me in some ways, but of course, we live within 3 hours of over 100 schools in New England and NY so....
On the other hand, there are a couple of schools that upon looking at the view book my son said "this is the place for me" so we'll see how that plays out on the visit. There were also a couple he said "no way" to that we have chosen not to visit all but one and several people have said they thought they would be great matches for him - so we'll see.</p>
<p>D looked at one sch's DVD and said, "I'm not feelin' this" - - which I have always suspected was more accurate/reliable than falling in love w/ a sch based on its promo lit.</p>
<p>I think you are probably right nyc.<br>
The one school we are visiting that he did not really fall in love with based on the book/web isn't really high on the teacher list, but it is his best friend's first choice. We needed to do a second visit in a general area and gave him 3 to chose from. So, we'll see.</p>
<p>It looks like we will be visiting 9 schools. We live in CT, so that makes it easier. Hopefully, he won't like them all and that will cut down on the appliction process. A lot of them use the common recommendation form, so that will help also.</p>
<p>It's easier to know when you don't fit with a school than to know when you're made for each other.</p>
<p>One reason for asserting that, of course, is that the ramifications of not applying to a potentially terrific school are not as monumental as the ramifications of matriculating to a potentially dysfunctional school for you or your child.</p>
<p>Another reason is that you're never proven wrong about the schools you choose to avoid, but you may have a Day of Reckoning with the one you decide is ideal for you or your child.</p>
<p>But, by and large, I think there are times when you detect a school has some weakness or mismatch for you -- something that you can't live with or abide -- and you feel confident that it will remain a mismatch no matter what else you learn about the school in other characteristics. Compare that to the decision matrix you face when you've looked at a certain pool of data and are utterly seduced by how well the school matches up. Even then you still have to ask yourself, "But what about the things I don't know about?" In the case of the school you're seriously considering, the unknowns are material to your decision. Not so for the schools you've eliminated for good reason.</p>
<p>So it's no wonder that we can be far more confident about our wisdom in eliminating schools than selecting them.</p>
<p>What you (or your child) needs to watch out for are the false impressions we all receive if those form the basis for eliminating a school. First, it may be worth second-guessing our preconceived notions of what constitutes a dealbreaker. And second, it may be worth probing deeper to ensure that we have an accurate impression of the true experience based on a viewbook, DVD or even a measly two-hour tour.</p>
<p>At one campus we visited, S and I both decided that it was full of lifeless, dreary, unhappy students. What we learned much later was that we chose an awful time for the tour (a Friday afternoon of a particularly grueling academic week that was preceding one of several Saturday class days). We were thinking, "It's sunny and Friday and people should be really letting go." It felt good to eliminate the school, but if we probed further instead of relying on our gut feeling, we might have kept that school on the list (at least for a while longer).</p>
<p>In a happier example of not letting "dealbreakers" keep us from finding the best matches, he reconsidered this when he felt he had found a good match in all other respects. In that case the "formal dress code" dealbreaker for him was tabled and, much to S's surprise, it's not just something he can tolerate, but it's something that he tends to like...and, contrary to his preconceived notion, it has no perceptible bearing on how "formal" or "staid" the campus is or how the faculty and students interact.</p>
<p>As your search evolves over time, consider revisiting your initial ideas of what you "must" have or "must" avoid. And don't abandon your obligation to conduct due diligence because you've got a gut feeling that a school's not a match. Verify negative impressions you might form to see if they are accurate and reflect the actual experience of others with more intimate knowledge than you.</p>
<p>The point here is that as confident as we may feel about eliminating schools, it can pay to not feel overconfident or smug about these decisions. Just because the decision won't come back to haunt you later doesn't mean you aren't leaving the Rosetta Stone unturned.</p>