"I don't know how 'fit' works, really"

Prep School Admissions
1

<p>As requested, I'm starting a new thread about this subject. The following is from an earlier response to the somewhat elusive question of "fit." Hope this is helpful, especially to those just starting to explore the idea of boarding school.</p>

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I don't know how 'fit' works, really. How exactly do you decide whether a school is a good 'fit' for you or not based solely on one visit?

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<p>I think it takes a lot of introspection and research. Instead of starting with the schools, I think it makes the most sense to start with your child's needs/wishes, and your family's values. Some questions to discuss with your child might include:</p>

<ul>
<li>Does your child need rigorous academics to be challenged? How are your child's grades and test scores?</li>
<li>Is there a specific academic area that your child is strong or weak in? Do you want to go "broad" or "deep" in your child's areas of strength?</li>
<li>What sports is your child currently playing, or interested in taking up? Does your child want to pursue "alternative" forms of physical activity (dance, equestrian, hiking, climbing, fitness classes, etc)</li>
<li>What activities/clubs is your child currently participating in, or is interested in pursuing in high school?</li>
<li>Does your child have an aptitude or interest in the arts (drama, music, visual arts, dance, etc)? </li>
<li>Is there a specific language your child would like to study?</li>
<li>Does your child thrive under intense competition (a "racehorse") or does he perform better in a more balanced environment?</li>
</ul>

<p>Then, ask yourself some questions about your family's values and situation:
- How important is diversity - ethnic, religious, socio-economic, geographic region, international?
- What geographic limitations do you have (day school, less than a 2 hour drive, within the region, across the country/world)?
- Is boarding school an "end in itself" (primarily pursuing boarding school because of the intrinsic value of that type of education), or is it a "stepping stone" (focus on matriculation to selective colleges)?
- what type of culture would be the most comfortable fit for your child (focus on academic accomplishment, focus on sports accomplishment, focus on arts accomplishment, a culture with a balance)?
- How much can you afford to contribute toward your child's education?</p>

<p>These are just some sample questions - I think you get the idea of where I'm going with this. There are many more factors you could include: single-sex versus co-ed school; school size: small (less than 250) - medium (250-700), large (700 and up); rural or urban setting; etc.</p>

<p>Once you have an idea of the needs of your child and your family, then you can start to research schools, and see which ones meet your requirements.</p>

<p>Many, many hours of looking at school websites (and reading forums like this one) can help you come up with schools to visit that (on paper, at least!) seem to provide a good fit. The visit sometimes confirms the fit, but often times, your child just doesn't "feel" right at that school. </p>

<p>Yes - it's a lot of work. But I believe it pays off with a list of schools to consider that has been shaped by "real" criteria, instead of just relying on common perceptions of "prestige" or "name-recognition."</p>

2

<p>Great post, mountainhiker. In addition to all of the above: </p>

<p>Don’t allow one aspect of a school drive your decision to apply or attend. Sports is one example. Athletes should ask themselves: If I decide to stop playing a sport or if I get injured and can no longer participate- will I still be happy and successful here? Even if a student is being recruited for a certain sport, it’s still a very important question to ask.</p>

3

<p>Visiting the school is a critically important part of determining fit. Websites can give you a feel for the school, but actually visiting will help answer the questions – “How would I fit in here? Would I feel comfortable?” My daughter started with 8 schools - and ranked them based on websites alone at first. After the visits she ranked them again – and 2 or 3 that were at or near the top initially dropped into the “don’t bother to apply” category – and several that were near the bottom jumped up to numbers 1 and 2 – totally based on the visit. I didn’t really understand “fit” until we were finished with the visits.</p>

4

<p>Rearranging your priority list of schools after visits is not a stretch, but to say the visit trumps all, to me, means that you didn’t do your homework. I’m curious what the factors were that caused a total rearranging of the list to the point of even dropping some. </p>

<p>My advice to others beginning to apply is that if you do enough research you should be able to weed out “Don’t bother to apply” schools before wasting precious time and money visiting. However, if visits are easy, it’s a great way to start sorting out your child’s priorities. My D needed to see schools in person to get onboard with the whole BS idea, and simultaneously it helped us see some nonacademic things that mattered a lot to her. We had family in the area so combined some preliminary visits with a family visit.</p>

<p>FIT:
Will you “feel comfortable” at a particular school? Is that something you can really judge in a short visit, perhaps with scores of students visiting at that time? Your tour guide and admissions officer are the luck of the draw. A smaller school might invite you to have lunch in the dining hall, but maybe a bigger school just can’t do that, or can’t make you feel comfortable amongst hordes of students on your initial visit. You will probably never deal with the Admissions Office again after acceptance, so don’t let them color your whole impression of the school.</p>

<p>Certainly my D “felt at home” more at some schools than others but it was fairly predictable based on our preparation. The personalities of the tour guides and AOs made big differences in “feeling at home” but I think it would have been wrong to let that override all other considerations. So while visiting WEBSITES, pay attention to what really matters to you, even if it’s not academically related.</p>

<p>Here are some more non-academic considerations, that I think affect the “feel” of a school:</p>

<p>Campus architecture and layout–modern? “Ivy League” style? huge and spread out? Compact? In town? Open and sunny? In the woods?</p>

<p>Sports–what’s offered, what’s required, how often, will it conflict with other things like academics, music, art?</p>

<p>Dorms–how modern/ancient are the rooms, how big are the dorms, how close are the dorms to classes or sports, can you go to the dorms between classes?</p>

<p>Dress code–this is how you’re going to have to dress every day–are you comfortable with the requirements? Do they really enforce it? Will it be OK with you if they suddenly start enforcing it the day you arrive?</p>

<p>“Work jobs”–most schools have them. The student handbook will probably give you all the details.</p>

<p>Dining hall–can you eat on your own schedule? Are tablemates assigned? How many formal seated dinners? Can you sleep in on weekends and still get food? Do the dorms have kitchens? Are there enough meat/vegetarian/vegan/whatever options? You can usually view actual current menus online.</p>

<p>Religious services/student assemblies–how often? required?</p>

<p>Any area of special interest to you should be exhaustively studied, and PhotographerMom’s advice is very good–suppose something happens and you have to give up/change your favorite activity–is there still plenty of stuff for you at a school?</p>

<p>Unless you have the luxury of repeated visits to schools, you have to do it through the web. I believe you can get a very good feel for a school online. Download the student handbook and read it. Download the class offerings. Watch videos. Don’t just go to their facebook page. One school had a video on YouTube that was a huge factor for us and it really epitomized that particular school.</p>

5

<p>Curious whether, when referring to “visits”, posters mean the admissions tour and interview or revisit day. We were most impressed by thoughtful preparation for tours and interviews by some schools, and dissapointed by indifference at others. Tour guide at one acclaimed institution was a non-athlete, non-artist day student with absolutely nothing in common with applicant. Showed us a dorm of the opposite gender. Subsequent interview confirmed noone had read applicant’s profile. 0 for 2 in the connection category, missed opportunity. Applicant rearranged priority list before we got to the parking lot. I have to think this was not representative of the institution and am encouraging applicant to keep all options open should the opportunities unfold.</p>

6

<p>Pick a school you/your child is unlikely to grow out of. Are there enough courses in the area of interest to fill 4 good years? Enough size/sports/arts/music? Students grow very quickly in boarding school, and consider it like a pair of jeans…they can be rolled up and belted at first, but is there enough length, staying power and give? That could be why a semester abroad is so popular, the school environment can seem very confining after a few years. I think the larger schools have the advantage here.</p>

7

<p>@walnuthill</p>

<p>Some schools try to match tour guides to students, but not many. 3 thousand or more families eagerly tromping through campus at the big schools eats up a lot of tour guide time, and the admissions office is lucky to have tour guides volunteering at all, since they are busy students - really just kids. Only one school out of the 14 we went to had a really stellar tour guide well matched to our family. </p>

<p>A funny tour moment, we asked one guide why she came to school (NE prep school)…answer “to get as far away from my parents as possible, they live in California.” This was actually a true conversation. Wow, I guess they don’t “prep” the tour guides. </p>

<p>Revisit days were little better, my daughters student guide for the day did not show up. Another was recruited quickly. It all works out, though.</p>

8

<p>@2prep: fit over time, commonly known as FOT, or FITOT, is a pretty interesting and complicated issue. Your idea is go large, so as not to outgrow the BS, and “make it smaller”, so to speak, through new student’s own choices in ninth or tenth grades. My takeaway with university was similar; it’s easier to make a large university feel smaller than to make a small college feel large.<br>
However, many posters on CC have written that 14 year-olds, and especially the boys among them, are rarely ready for the college-like environment of the large BS and the independence required to meet so many responsibilities. Any specifics on how to “roll up the jeans and belt” it? What choices does one make, or what is helpful institutionally, that you might have applicants look for?</p>

9

<p>In our case visits were preliminary, exploratory visits in the spring of 7th grade followed by official visits/tours/interviews in the fall of 8th grade. We have never had the luxury of attending revisit day (another child was also a BS student quite a few years back). For both children there was only one school that both admitted them and came through with sufficient FA, but in any case we would not have made another trip for revisit day.</p>

10

<p>After a grand total of two school brochures, my kids refused to look at them. “Mom, everyone looks happy at every school.” That goes double for websites. There are companies which specialize in producing marketing materials for colleges and boarding schools.</p>

<p>There’s the programmatic fit, which should be decided before visiting schools. Are you interested in the school’s languages? Not, “I’m in the third year of Latin, will they have Latin 7?” Would you be interested in learning whichever languages the school offers? As far as I can tell, colleges want students to take languages up to at least the third year level. There aren’t any bonus points for reaching extra-high levels in languages when applying to colleges. If you can begin a language freshman year, and reach the AP level (or a level of language instruction which gives students a shot at the AP by senior year) the language offerings are deep enough.</p>

<p>Athletic fit. Are you aiming to be a recruited athlete when applying to colleges? Then the school should offer your sport. If you want to swim, and there’s no swim team, move on. There are sports which students grow into. Crew and basketball, for example, depend upon height, which is not easily predicted in 14 year olds. If you have tall, large parents, and like sports, don’t rule out the possibility that you’ll wish you could row or dribble.</p>

<p>Musical fit. Listen to the school’s musical groups. Pay attention to the school’s performing groups. Does the school have practice rooms? Are they available at times you’ll need to practice? Is there a choir/a cappella group/chamber ensemble/jazz band/orchestra/etc.? </p>

<p>My children preferred the small schools. Had we known, we would have visited only small schools. As the good boarding schools spend more than tuition on educating their students, we haven’t noticed students “growing out” of small schools. High school students should grow out of high school–it’s called being ready for college.</p>

<p>Some students prefer small schools, and some prefer large schools. Do you want to know everyone on campus, including dogs, small children, and the dining hall personnel? Or do you want to know your dorm or circle of friends well, but prefer to not know everyone in your community by name? </p>

<p>If at all possible, I recommend attending revisit days. For my kids, the chemistry between students radically rearranged their impressions. You should use your head and your heart when choosing schools. </p>

<p>Nevertheless, it’s very possible to not feel a strong preference for a school. Sometimes people have posted worries that they don’t “feel a click.” It’s not a magical guarantee or anything. If you feel you strongly dislike a school, though, don’t assume you’ll grow out of it. Think carefully before committing yourself to a community which you will live in 24/7 for months at a time.</p>

11

<p>Fit and parenting style have an interesting relationship, highlighted by Charger’s Fit Over Time notion, the idea that what might be an uncomfortable school at the start becomes a great fit later. But on closer inspection, a Fit Over Time choice seems entirely parent driven, essentially the Parents knowing what’s best for their child, arranging the marriage.</p>

<p>My unscientific take these last few years on CC is that most parents seem to fall into three categories: </p>

<ol>
<li><p>PARENTS WHO KNOW BEST. These parents call the shots with strongly held beliefs about what is “the best” for their child and what schools will even be considered. Often these parents will say “if you get into [Exeter], you’ll go there.” The child is more an influencer in the process and less a decision-maker, except in the narrowest sense, say the right to choose between Andover and Exeter. By my estimation, maybe 30% of the parents fall into this category. Fit Over Time lives with Parents Who Know Best, where it’s the parent’s opinion that while School A might not be the child’s first choice, the child will begin to see it that way over time.</p></li>
<li><p>VOTES COUNT EQUALLY. These parents give the child an actual vote, essentially taking the position that they, along with their child, will assemble a list of target schools and that either of the parents or child will have the right to black ball a school for any reason. This group seems the most sensitive to fit, where families operate as a team and everyone is equally influential in determining what’s important. I estimate maybe 50% of families on CC fall into this category.</p></li>
<li><p>HANDS OFF. These parents are hands-off because there’s not necessarily a lot of parental enthusiasm for or knowledge about boarding schools. Often, the kids in this category drive the entire process, including the education of their own parents about the boarding option. Every year, we read posts from kids about how to convince parents that Boarding School is a good option, or whether parents (one or both) have to attend the school visit out of fear that they’re not really gung-ho on the idea in the first place and might say something to scuttle the application.</p></li>
</ol>

<p>Of course, money can, and often does, make the final school decision, regardless of which category best describes a family. </p>

<p>While there is no unanimous agreement on the definition or importance of Fit, it is interesting to think about how our different parenting styles affect our estimation of the importance of Fit.</p>

12

<p>For us, it was completely 3, at least in calling the shots. My dad helped me research quite a lot, but my mum was so against the process she didn’t really want to know anything about it at all. She’s letting me go because she think I’m old enough to make this decision for myself.
She did help me choose my first choice though, mostly through discussion about what we thought about the school. She checked that I was choosing for the right reasons, but it was my choice completely in the end.
I think it is important that the applicant has the final say, particularly for a boarding school. They will be spending so much time there, it is important that it is where THEY want to be. Of course there are limits to this, and the parent may well know what is best.</p>

13

<p>@Charger 78<br>
Fit over time probably involves looking at the junior and senior students and imagining how one’s child would fit into the possibilities you see. The dorm arrangement can also differ between schools; I liked that the older students in my child’s dorm “adopted” the new 9th grade boarders, and that many traditions in the dorm revolve around the older kids guiding the younger, in genuinely caring and helpful ways. The older kids feel good about helping and the younger kids have someone to look up to.</p>

<p>The first term of boarding school challenge should not be underestimated - the huge transition from home, no longer being the smartest, the effort and time required, and the fear that one won’t fit in, made the wrong choice, and will have to go home in disgrace. Cramming the new kids into one building can really magnify those fears and lead to some very irresponsible behavior. Kids glom on to each other and it is scary. Lots of in-dorm advising, older students, encouragement, modeling and structure helps. I would argue that if you don’t want your 14 year old to live with older students at the school, why are you sending them to that school?</p>

14

<p>Revisit days were very helpful to us. We were able to compare the two schools at the top of our heap in a much more relaxed, leisurely fashion. Everyone is a lot friendlier once you’re accepted, and now there is time to talk to coaches, language instructors, the chairs of departments. Your child spending a whole day with a current student, sitting in on the classes instead of glancing through the window, seeing a real dorm room, eating in the cafeteria, helps the prospective student feel more comfortable once they actually do attend, and also helps parents to imagine more clearly the actual life of the students. </p>

<p>We were pretty rushed when initially looking at schools, sometimes interviewing and touring at 2 in 1 day. We seriously considered and visited 12 schools. Many schools blurred into each other (except the ones we ran away from at top speed, those we will never forget). Also, my child was so worried about the interview I don’t think much about the school actually sank in. All we got from her after interview/tour was “OK, nice” After revisit days her preference for one school over the other could not have been clearer (and thankfully we all agreed on the best fit).</p>

15

<p>Maybe just because it is a slow work today on Christmas Eve, I think that it may be worth throwing a little sand into this thread and question whether or not “fit” is always fitting.</p>

<p>I am a Southerner. My ancestors lived in my home State many decades before statehood. I was raised on a farm, which I now own and which has been in my family for over 200 years. My great greatfather rode with Gen. N.B. Forrest in the War Between the States. My father was a Marine in WWII and was captured and tortured by the Japanese, but he escaped from a POW camp, had more wartime service than any other Marine in WWII and retired a General. For high school, I went to an all boys military boarding school in the South that opened every day with a prayer. To this day, I consider my years there the happiest of my life, believe it or not.</p>

<p>So where did I go to college? Harvard, of course, …in the late '60’s! Why? Because it didn’t fit! </p>

<p>Harvard was pretty much everything my family, my tradtions, my customs, etc. were not. At Harvard, I put to the test and the wringer everyday everything I was and I knew, often loving it and just as often hating it. After four years in Cambridge, I returned home to the South and have stayed home ever since. I was a terrible fit at Harvard; however, I wouldn’t have changed a thing those four years.</p>

<p>Forget “fit”. Demand struggle. In the words of the great Miguel de Unamuno: “May God deny you peace but give you glory!”</p>

16

<p>Great post, toombs61, and good food for thought. But I think there is a big difference between being the “odd man out” at 18-19 versus at 14-15. I expect that when you decided to go to Harvard, you were already fairly comfortable in your own skin, and ready and willing to have your core beliefs and values challenged. I’m not sure many 14 year olds would be able to do the same thing.</p>

17

<p>@toombs, I loved your post! But to add a little more grist to the mill, I would posit that you and Harvard were a perfect “fit” in that you knew you needed/wanted something radically different and… well, you got it—and made it through four years, to boot! :wink: </p>

<p>Sometimes “fit” IS “struggle” - especially for kids who have not been challenged academically in their local school environment. </p>

<p>toombs brings up a great point, though, in that some discomfort is a good thing. I think that discomfort is inevitable, when young teens leave home for what will be, for many, a very different experience. Sure, those coming to the question of “fit” who are not thinking deeply might say fit is about the school that will be “a good environment” for their child or the place where they will be “happy” – but I think the OP and most of the posters on this particular thread, anyway, are looking beyond the surface. For our family, the broadening aspect of BS, which would/should naturally include some discomfort or struggle, was a big part of our decision to pursue BS for high school.</p>

18

<p>M’hiker and gg’mom, thanks for thoughts. Yes, I suppose “not-fit” could be seen as “fit”. I would say, however, that having many opportunities to struggle, excel or fail is the prime “fit” parents should seek from a boarding school. In the end, parents can’t protect their children from life; we need to prepare them for it. The best preparation is often giving them many chances to struggle and fall. Nietzsche (who is not my favorite thinker) was right here: that, which doesn’t kill us, makes us stronger. </p>

<p>The world is a tough place. Always has been. Right now, the economy is battering our kids. I read recently that 53% of all Americans with bachelor’s degrees under the age of 25 are either unemployed or underemployed. We need to help our babies stand up to this battering.</p>

<p>So whether a child is 12 or 20, we need to help them while we can by making them, IMHO, struggle and fail now so that they won’t have to struggle and fall later.</p>

19

<p>Interesting turn of this thread. I think the key may be in finding a place where the kid can grow and be challenged, but not to the point of overwhelm. </p>

<p>It is ok to fail at some points along the way, those are learning experiences. Ok to struggle at times. But the overall takeaway hopefully is a positive experience…the kid did stick, did graduate, was happy to have attended.</p>

<p>Our DC found a great fit not because it is easy-peasy, but rather it seems like a good balance…enough positive so that DC is happy to be there, enough challenge that there is ‘the maximum growth possible’ during these years. </p>

<p>That balance is a tricky thing to find for a teen, who is maturing rapidly. This is what makes the whole ‘best’ boarding school decision for any particular kid so difficult. And then, of course, there is the whole learning curve of trying to get to know what it might actually be like at each of these schools, and measuring that against all of what is known about the particular child.</p>