<p>@parlabane: I don’t define “frontrunners”, narrowly or widely, but you can pretty much get which one(s) are by checking which ones are getting the most “pumping” and “thumping” at the same time here. I don’t define “top tier” by HADES or non-HADES. As I said in post#20, “Maybe we should just take HADES as a sample of the schools sharing those traits”. There’s not even a US News for prep schools, so do feel free to include as many or as few (as few as 0) in the tier 1. </p>
<p>Couterintuitively, I’m not a big fan of US News college ranking, because too many people are reading the ranking too “literally”, which IMO is the “the wrong way” of using it. The US News ranking does have the following fineprints people often ignore:
</p>
<p>That’s how I would use the existing rankings or tiers, but I understand for someone like you who’s very experienced and knowledgeable of many boarding schools out there, they may be more distracting than useful.</p>
<p>@Tolkien, Parlabane, DAndrew: I stand by my assertion that many of the students and families who are less familiar with the range of BS out there/newer to the BS concept do tend to stick to familiar/famous names. This is, I think, totally natural/normal.</p>
<p>To use another potentially misguided simile: It’s like tourists going to New York (or any major tourist destination) and choosing a restaurant. Faced with a multitude of choices, they will probably be drawn in by a big name, a star chef, seen it on the Food Network, etc. And that restaurant/chef has a great reputation for a reason…they make great food and generally have done so for a few years. But they are not the only place that has great food in the city. I am simply trying to tell people that there are other places to eat/worth looking at the menu.</p>
<p>Here’s another reason why you should consider places other than the “big names” (in NYC, Per Se, Gramercy Tavern, Le Bernadin, etc.)…it is near impossible to get a table at one of these places, especially on the more popular nights of the week. This is akin to the highly selective admittance rates at the HADES-type schools. But if I were to give the tourist advice to “try this place on lower Fifth that serves really great modern middle eastern food”, what would they then be able to report back to their friends about their big trip to New York?</p>
<p>Finally, I’m going once be the jerk who flips the tier thing around: If you are applying solely to BS with admit rates in the teens, are you in the top teen percent of applicants in your pool (which for some of these schools, skews pretty darn strong)? If you are, great. If you are not (which is 80% of the pool), then go well and go safely.</p>
<p>@7D: completely agree with everything you said. I am more bothered by the extreme position that (1). if you are attracted to certain schools, you must be going after “fame” and “prestige”; (2). These schools’ “fame” and “prestige” are all smoke and mirrors.</p>
<p>Sorry if you took the interpretation. Not one person, including me, has explicitly taken that extreme position, nor would I since my own decisions about high school and college were made without regard to prestige - as was my own children’s school decisions. I wonder why you would take the extreme position that every comment is a blanket indictment of every family? </p>
<p>Since it’s already a topic of discussion on campus, where’s the issue? Even on this board, we’ve seen posts from parents and students who comment they “ONLY” want the prestige schools, often for some perceived value that may or may not exist (and are often devastated when they are turned down on March 10). That shouldn’t, however, imply that all students in the application pool are that way - nor did I say that.</p>
<p>I have said - and repeat my assertion, that having graduated from SPS, Exeter, Andover, etc… many alums are opting for different schools for their children and find the academics comparable.</p>
<p>@DAndrew your tendency to render an indictment without any real demonstrated experience is tiresome as has been your prior posts disparaging parents and calling their choices “second tier”. But since you asked:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The recent staff comment - that there is little difference these days between many of the well-known schools often dismissed by you - is now shared by a number of prominent alum and funders and has been stirring quite a lot of discussions on campus (thankfully) which we hope will lead to modifications in admissions decisions. Whether someone wants a school solely for prestige is their issue. Whether we want those students in return is ours. </p>
<p>P.s. Most BS grads know that the word “member” doesn’t have an extra “e”.</p>
<p>@SevenDad - I was heartened while on campus to discover that there is strong sentiment among the staff and alum to look more readily at potential rather than resume stats. To do the latter would pull the academy closer to its original mission and would, in fact, not hurt the “prestige” as the latter kids are often proven to be equally bright and tend to be just as hungry for the enhanced opportunities and might skew more alumni donations in their favor. </p>
<p>So for that group not in the first tier of the applicant pool, there may be hope in the future that Exeter will start giving more emphasis to the whole child who can grow their potential at the school rather than skewing towards adolescents entering with many of those accomplishments already. Many of us noted to the principal the more holistic approach taken by some of their HADES competitors has had a negative impact on those schools’ overall academic performance and college matriculation stats.</p>
<p>So…I’m curious. How did all of you go about looking at schools with your kids? Were you enticed by names, or something else?</p>
<p>I’ll start. We picked one school purely because we had friends who we liked very much whose girls had attended and flourished there. In retrospect, wonderful school, but not a good fit for my son.</p>
<p>For the other three, we did a search on boarding school review, narrowing by sports offered (my kids lean toward certain kinds of sports and it’s a big priority for them) and by financial aid–not just percent of students on fa, but the average, and the range, of grants offered. Those two criteria significantly narrowed the list. </p>
<p>Selectiveness, average SSAT/SAT seemed to become more of a concern for our kid after the interview–but it didn’t really affect the choice of where to apply because we’d already narrowed the search enough by the interview. </p>
<p>In retrospect, the only school I wish we had taken time to visit and didn’t was NMH–and that was more a matter of geography and limited time than anything else. </p>
<p>I guess this is why I haven’t been able to connect much to 7dad’s premise–the “tier” of the school just wasn’t part of the discussion. </p>
<p>Exeter — Two college friends who became the godfathers of our daughters both went. So it was on my list.
Choate — My older brother had gone to a summer program there many moons ago and liked it.
Miss Porters — A less than flattering article in Vanity Fair made me look up the school, which to me had existed more as a myth (Jackie O, Agnes Gund, etc.)</p>
<p>Then I semi-randomly met someone who worked at a BS and after describing my daughter’s strengths and weaknesses, s/he provided the longer list in my “One Family’s Story” recap. St. Andrew’s, the school she currently attends, was on that list.</p>
<p>Note that of the three initially on the “explore” list, only Choate made it to the final “apply to” cut. Miss Porters and Exeter, despite their legendary status and excellent track record, did not feel right in terms of fit for our older girl.</p>
<p>D applied to six schools. All very different, all at different tiers. Tiers didn’t matter. Fit matter.</p>
<p>So for our family the bottom line became: it doesn’t matter how prestigious a school is if a student:</p>
<p>a. gets in and isn’t happy
b. doesn’t get in but bypassed schools that would have welcomed the student.</p>
<p>This was the sentiment mirrored the emerging thought among a number of alum this past month at an Exeter event:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Which we pointed out was a main driver for many alumni donations - to give opportunities to students who don’t readily appear top tier on paper, but have the drive and potential to become top students if exposed to resources. Isn’t that the real proof and power of a school - to take unrealized potential and really move it forward?</p>
<p>We had a couple of basic parameters: 1) DD was only interested in schools in the northeast (even though we live in CA); 2) it had to be someplace really special to go to boarding school rather than attend one of the many good schools where we live.</p>
<p>We started by going to a boarding school fair that’s held every year where we live. We went in fall of DD’s 7th grade year. (BTW, they have now moved this fair to the spring which makes much more sense since it’s very hard to make the boarding school application process work if you’re just going to the introductory fair in October of your 8th grade year). Through that process there were a few schools that definitely made it on the list and a few that definitely came off. We looked at catalogs and websites, and in the spring of 7th grade we met with DD’s guidance counselor for the high school process. She suggested planning a vist that would take in a variety of schools. We used boarding school review to figure out good candidates, then ruled out schools with offerings similar to others that were just too remote (we figured that we would already be doing a lot of travel and wanted relatively easy access to airports with direct flights).</p>
<p>We came up with a list of 7 schools to visit, then added George at the guidance counselor’s request since DD is currently in a Quaker school, so DD got to visit and interview at 8 schools. Of those she selected 3 - two HADES schools and another “first tier” school. The HADES/tier issue did not really play into her selections (I wasn’t on CC at the time) but the idea that the school had to provide an academic and extracurricular program that was worth going across the country for was part of our consideration. For example, one school we saw didn’t have much of a dance program but there were opportunities to do dance off campus, and we felt that this was not desirable. Also, we found that schools with a large percentage of boarders were more appealing.</p>
<p>DD was very fond of Groton for a reason that had nothing to do with tiers or anything else. She absolutely loved the 3/4-height walls in the dorms! </p>
<p>Throughout the process we worked really hard to make it clear that my alumna status at SPS should have no bearing on DD’s decision. I feel very strongly that both high school/ boarding school and college are about growth, learning, and experience, and not about a name. I do think being the daughter of an SPS alum affected DD’s outcome in the admissions process because she was WLed at the other 2 boarding schools she applied to - which might have happened anyway, but she wasn’t in a position to categorically say she would attend one of the other schools over SPS so there was probably at least some assumption that she would end up at SPS. But - who knows? In the end she was accepted at several local high schools; however, even though I’m sad that she’s going away I couldn’t be more thrilled or excited for her having this opportunity.</p>
<p>Our son came to us and asked if he could go to boarding school; so he was motivated to do the research. We connected him to Boarding School Review to look at different options; our only caveat was that we’d have to approve his list. We didn’t talk in advance about stats and scores or try to “pre-sell” him on any choices. He just read about a lot of schools and selected the ones that sounded most appealing.</p>
<p>Exie, I don’t care where you went to school, but simply put you are a mean person. And every time you suprise me by just how nasty you can be! There are too many things wrong with that one post of yours alone, and of course with you the person all along that I don’t know where to start. It’s not necessarily a bad thing though. After all, life is too short to deal with something like you. I know this post will be deleted. Let me say congratulations anyway before that happens. Just as I predicted, you won another argument!</p>
<p>DAndrew, are you an adult or kid? If an adult, you seem like you’re spoiling for a fight and misinterpreting Exie all at the same time. If you’re a kid, try to be more circumspect and aware that not everyone who disagrees with you, or puts something in a way you don’t like, is an enemy. Sheesh!!</p>
<p>As I am the mother of a D that only applied to HADES schools (which at the time we didn’t even know there was such a thing), I will tell you our process: </p>
<p>Firstly, we are not from a “boarding school” background. We don’t even know anyone who left the mid Atlantic region to attend a boarding school. We do live near a few local boarding schools that the kids attend as day students.</p>
<p>After my D returned from CTY, she strongly wanted that atmosphere for her high school environment. Soon after, she received materials and course book from Exeter because of a program in which she participated. She was hooked! That resulted in a meeting with the head of her school about how realistic Exeter was for her. The school head suggested that she apply to at least four schools and steered us to the Ten Schools Organization. This is the only list in which I researched. I will be totally honest, in the end, I added three more schools to Exeter that, according to their website, would be the most likely to provide financial aid. After all, why should my D get excited about being accepted to a school that she can’t attend because we can’t afford it. Little did I know at the time that my list was so selective. During this process I discovered CC. It was a big help, but too late to really get a feel for some of the hidden gems. Luckily, during our visits, D could see herself at three out of the four schools (but applied to the fourth at my urging - which is another story). </p>
<p>By the end of the process, we made a conscious decision to go big (and by big I mean the schools that provided the most challenge) or go home (a very reputable PS). </p>
<p>SevenDad, I do believe that fit (and not prestige) is most important, which is why I think we we chose our list. You see, my D is the kind of child that gets motivated by the kids around her. I believe that they push her to levels that she may not have pushed herself. This is why we felt the most challenging school would best fit her. She is very smart; but, unfortunately, I wish she were more self motivated. I don’t believe she will end up being a shining star at Exeter, but her educational experiences will be invaluable. I get the impression that your D is more self-motivated and will be able to shine very brightly (be the big fish) at a smaller school, even though she is qualified to be at any of the bigger HADES schools. I think most bright, self motivated kids fare well at a large list of boarding schools. In the end, my D is at Exeter because it IS the perfect fit. </p>
<p>As for your original post, since there is no PS in which to fall back, there will be a wider selection when it comes to colleges.</p>
<p>Then there are 3 schools I think are the most sparkling of Hidden Gems: these schools surprisingly have a >1/3 admit rate, and they have:
top quintile SSATs
huge endowments </p>
<ul>
<li>Episcopal High </li>
<li>Hill School</li>
<li>St. Mark’s School</li>
</ul>
<p>Keep in perspective that all of these schools are EXCELLENT, and I am splitting hairs in trying to devise an objective way to distinguish between them</p>
<p>Top priority was size: wanted big(ger) fish in relatively small(er) pond. Next priority was educational philosophy; schools that said they wanted kids incoming who were still open to trying new activities and were not so test, subject, or activity obsessed incoming that they wouldn’t be able to grow into and take advantage of the many opportunities the schools were making available. We were quite happy on March 10 after following this strategy.</p>
<p>For what its worth-
Episcopal is not a “hidden gem” - its a prominent school with top notch academics. It’s just in the South, hence less known on CC. @GMT - your reasoning - admission,scores,endowment, for rating schools (by the way, tier or no tier, we are still rating them) while makes perfect sense does not account for the actual makeup of the schools – you simply can not take a school that accepts a very large number of students with learning disabilities or behavioural problems and lump it with schools that are high pressure academic environments, thus putting them on the same level.
I also think - caveat emptor - we are trusting schools to self-report ssat and sat data. Think of Claremont McKenna for starters. Numbers are very easy to manipulate.
What does it all mean? That as parents we need to do much more research on the schools than trust the lookbooks or CC.</p>