How much will daughter's chances improve next M10 if she goes to a JBS this year?

Prep School Admissions Prep School Parents
1

Recently SculptorKid expresses regrets of not having done her best for the last admission cycle. She over-scheduled in Fall to compensate her previous academic record that was heavily focused on visual art only. But then was pressed by 18 college units and couldn’t prepare for her essays and interviews as well as she could with more time. We still love the one BS that accepted her. But she feels that she would regret not having done her best for such important moment of life.

At the risk of going back to homeschooling if she completely fails next M10, she is now leaning toward choosing a junior boarding school instead for this year and taking her chances again for next M10.

She is a strong artist/sculptor with record that only few in her application pool matches. She has been completely homeschooled but with enough community college credits to junior transfer to a four years university with perfect GPA. But she is also an ORM, heavy FA, no team sports or hook candidate. I don’t think she will have much better chances next M10 without some drastic improvement that may come with attending a JBS this year.

Attending the JBS this Fall can provide many admission benefits;

Proving herself in a boarding environment, with heavily focusing a team sport and/or theater, may remove a lot of uncertainty about being a good team player / community member, even though she still won’t be a recruited athlete.

She got a lot more matured over last few months and now we have better understanding on what the BS want to see in her interviews and essays, which will also benefit from guidance from admission experts in the JBS.

She will have much better LORs that actually show how she will do with age peers in a classroom setting.

She will be a 14 years old candidate for repeated 9th grade. Uncertainty for a year younger student will be gone.

She says she will apply to 2~3 top 10 schools, 2~3 top 30 schools and 2~3 hidden gems. and work hard to build up relationship and communicate with them for several months before the application season. She had only 80’s on math even though her total SSAT was high 90’s. That will be fixed too.

She is willing to take the chance of coming back home after the one year and JBS, if she doesn’t get to be admitted by any school. She will retry for 10th grade in 2018, but if it fails again, she won’t mind attending community colleges until 18, as many gifted homeschoolers do around here. She will transfer to a little farther community college with more young students and won’t be too lonely.

The plan looks good to me. But what I have really learned from last M10 is how naive I was in this game. I haven’t learned much since last M10 either. Am I being realistic or am I still delusional with a too low chance to be practical? What else can be done this year to improve her chances for next M10?

2

I think it could help a lot. A year from now she will have experience living in community and more independently in a dorm setting. She will have demonstrated success in the classroom with her peers. She will have the help of the JBS placement office.

3

@SculptorDad: I going to say something that should have been said during this application cycle, but no one did. I don’t believe the problem with your daughter’s application can be fixed by JBS or any attempts to round out her ECs or sports deficiencies. Your daughter is not a candidate for high school, BS or otherwise; she is a college student more than halfway to a degree. You are asking boarding schools to admit her (with FA) for non-academic reasons; you even said as much in your posts that you and she would be fine if she’s under-challenged academically because she’s looking more for the BS experience and social maturity opportunities than a high school education. That is not what these schools are for, and I believe her waitlists were soft rejections rather than encouragements to try again.

She sounds like a wonderful, artistically accomplished young lady, but she is not a candidate for high school. The older she gets and the more CC credits she accumulates, the less desirable she will be to the BS communities you are looking at. The mission of a prep school is to prepare students to do well in college. Your daughter has already proven herself there and is more than halfway to an undergraduate degree. Her “resume” tells these schools that she doesn’t need them; she has bypassed high school and is well on her way toward a goal that most BS students have not seriously begun (nor should they).

A couple of posters have tried to tell you gently to consider early college, like Bard at Simon’s Rock. I believe she might be an attractive candidate for one of those programs that will view her college credits as proof that she could be successful as a young college student.

If bypassing high school was not her goal by earning so much college credit, that’s unfortunate as I believe she just cannot be viewed as a student who would benefit best from what college preparatory programs are designed to offer.

If she wants to live away from home for a while, then the JBS offer she has in hand will give her that experience but I doubt it will make her more attractive to the traditional boarding schools next cycle.

I wish both you and her well in this upcoming year as you decide what to do.

4

I find myself in the highly unusual position of disagreeing with @ChoatieMom’s perspective. I think that having your daughter attend JBS for a year might well make her more attractive to boarding schools, as it would take the focus off her community college level work. Here’s what I think may have happened. I think all homeschooled candidates probably struggle with the question of how to “prove” to boarding schools that their academic background has been sufficiently rigorous such that the BS shouldn’t feel concerned about their ability to handle the course work in BS. For many homeschooled kids, the problem is that they don’t have traditional grades or teacher recommendations to submit. Your daughter was fortunate in not having exactly that problem, because she could demonstrated her ability to do the work by showing her course load and grades from CC. But then that may have made her look, as ChoatieMom says, like someone who is really a candidate for college, not a high school.

But if she goes to a JBS for a year, then her academic record will start to look more traditional to boarding schools. I would actually put a lot less focus on her prior CC coursework, and having a (partial) year of JBS grades/teacher recs would help with that. Then she starts to look more like a formerly homeschooled candidate who did some extra enrichment work outside the home, rather than a profoundly gifted kid who could graduate from college at age 15 if she wanted to. I think boarding schools are probably a lot more comfortable with and used to the former profile than the latter. Strange as it is to say, JBS might help her hide her light under a bushel basket, just a little bit, which might make her a more attractive candidate.

5

I don’t have any good advice but do wonder whether she would be bored after 4 years of high school. I would want her to get the experience of having smart peers, living in a community, and doing fun things like riding horses or trying new sports. If she could do that for a few years and then go to college it might be enough. I admit I am biased since I was not too happy in high school but loved college. I wasn’t exceptional like your daughter though!

6

If ChoatieMom is correct–and I disagree with her on much of what she said, and your daughter wants to attend a boarding school, I think you would be making a huge mistake on giving up the opportunity you got with Grier.

If going to boarding school in not the ultimate goal, but having a chance, even a tiny one, of attending St. Paul’s or Exeter is, then the JBS would be your best shot. But I don’t think it will be any sort of guarantee. ChoatieMom is right on about that.

At any school, even one as small as Grier, you will find students who do not “need” high school and are there for non-academic reasons. They will not be the majority, but they will be there for a myriad of reasons, including athletics, socialization, family traditions, bragging rights. Unfortunately for your family situation, the students who don’t “need” high school but need big-time FA are easily the rarest of the rare, PGs at bigger schools excepted. Grier took the initiative because they thought your kid would be a yuge benefit to their small school community. They’re pros, and they know their particular community best. IF boarding school is something you(r daughter) really want(s), those Grier folks were the people who saw something special.

That said, if Grier is not for right for your family, that’s that.

7

@doschicos, @ChoatieMom, @soxmom I really appreciate your advises. I should have listened to them sooner and redesigned my homeschooling transcript.

@mass2020mom You described exactly what SculptorKid wants with her life. And I think it’s a good life. I met many “exceptional” kids who has done calculus and calculus based physics at her age or much younger. She is barely doing algebra II and algebra based physics which I heard is rather common among top boarding school applicants.

Once I believed that it was my sacred duty as a homeschooling parent to academically push her to the limit. It worked and she got great education and acquired good work habit. But now I see academics only as a small part of life.

CC was the best option for her to take advanced studio art courses, and is now the best option for lab science and group discussion based humanity courses. That’s all. If the price is loss of BS opportunity, so be it. But I would love to see a get around if there is a way.

She can have a college degree early, but what for? She isn’t looking for graduate school or employment at too young age. It’s better to enjoy all the things that life offers for teenagers, and be more ready for college and eventually employment.

8

@GnarWhail, thanks for your insightful advise yet again. The truth is neither any boarding school nor chance for a top 10 school is the ultimate goal. Both she and I want her to have the happiest teen years that is also a good prep for adult life, and it’s difficult to know how to get it. The stake is so big we are keep being hesitant to commit.

9

@SculptorDad How about having an honest talk with the placement office at the JBS and getting their viewpoint on your daughter’s unique circumstances and how it might play out? One would hope they have the benefit of having some experience with placing their students and they also have the same goal as you as they benefit from placing your daughter well after the JBS.

10

@doschicos, I have felt a bit skittish about that, but perhaps I should do it.

11

@SculptorDad I sort of agree with @ChoatieMom but not wholly. I believe that she is right BUT I do think if your daughter had demonstrated more external facing activities she would have been perceived to be more well rounded and someone who could contribute to the community of the BS. The lack of team activities (note that I don’t Use the word sport) actually makes her look more lopsided. Just because she has college credits IMO would not deter a top BS from thinking she doesn’t need them. It is a community college not Harvard. I think the top schools can challenge her. However as has been discussed ad nauseum, ECs serve to demonstrate a team or community focused individual and she is lacking that. You know what I think and I think she is a star applicant in all other regards. And JBS is her chance to spread her wings and embrace a team or group activity …

12

A lot of excellent points. I want to add a couple others. I think you can reapply to Greir for 10th grade and say that your daughter wants the JBS experience.

And second, I don’t mean this to be hurtful, but I am wondering if you have analyzed your role in the application process. If I had to guess, your DD is an only child and you are hyper-focused and protective of her. If this is true, a positive report from JBS that she was independent and was able to thrive on her own then I think her M10 will go well. Again – this is not meant to be a confrontational post.

13

Understand that the home schooled is a greater risk for boarding schools to take. It’s hard enough a transition for kids from public schools who have little away from home experience. So you have the burden to convince the schools that you are ready for BS. In that sense, a year in JBS may help.

14

Please reach out to 3-4 of the AOs AFTER they have put together their classes for next year and ask for their best case for your daughter’s chances next year in general terms (not necessarily their schools) and an understanding as to why she was WL. Many of us have read about your amazing daughter and her prior educational experience and it is unusual, in a very wonderful way. Black swans, such as your daughter, are significant outliers and I surmise that there was a lot of hand-wringing over how to integrate her. Find a placeholder for her for next year and sort this out when you have more information. At minimum, I think it would be a “plus” for her to spend a year in a traditional school setting and for schools to which she is applying see that she has flourished in such an environment.

15

And, to be clear, the schools to which she was accepted are not bad placeholders.

16

@Center Thanks for the advise. SculptorKid will surely try either of them. On hind sight, we should have focused more on her rock climbing team that practices semi weekly for 2 hours each.

@laenen, not that I would mind if you were confrontational while giving me insightful advise, I don’t see any in your post. Indeed I have been involved perhaps too much, because my overscheduled daughter really had no time until Winter break.

@panpacific I agree. In fact that was one of the reason that she went for a three weeks residential camp at Interlochen last Summer. But it seems wasn’t enough.After all, it doesn’t say how well she did there.

17

@Kthor626 The JBS is the perfect placeholder since she is accepted for 9th grade which is their last grade. The entire year there will be focused on her placement to a senior boarding school. On the other hand, it will be harder to focus on moving on to another school while being a freshman at the BS, and won’t be fair to their generosity. She will ask the AO’s for the advises. It’s a good idea. Thanks.

18

@SculptorDad I know it is a cliche but these things often happen for reason. Reasons that will be clear to you and her over time. @Kthor626 states it beautifully. View JBS as a transition. A transition to what and where is not known or guaranteed, but it offers some things she needs. I think it is just a matter of time for her: a year older with some new element to her profile.

19

@Center We actually talk about that, things happen for reason - My finance recently got better so that I can, although barely, afford the JBS’s smaller FA. Haha.

20

There is a fine line between being your child’s advocate and being “that home-school dad”. Maybe it was your interview or your essays that were unsettling. I know I have had to skip pages at times at your long boastful posts. My point is I think you might want a little humility when discussing or presenting your child so that you dont appear to be that dad.

For example, to say she is dual enrolled is ok but to volunteer her GPA in CC or the number of credits I believe crosses the line in a less flatter approach.

I don’t believe you need a hook or EC or anything else other than prove that your child is within the normal range of students at these schools. JBS will probably do it.