They did for exactly that reason and he withdrew his apps at some other schools that he knew he wouldnât attend vs. Oxford. But he wasnât 100% sure at that point versus Yale, Princeton, Brown so thatâs why he left his RD apps open. Not the same situation as your child who was all-in on Harvard once the good news came, hence the different approach.
That above screen shot was meant for @417WHB and my other friends on here discussing GPA as a factor, as well as grade inflation. If you are concerned about your GPA Junior year, think about this on Revisit Day. 
Does Deerfield do worse than its peer schools with college admissions?? Of course it does not. Therefore you can stop worrying about the grade distribution that Deerfield has!
Once more: schools have heard of Deerfield. They know exactly what Deerfield is. They know Deerfieldâs grade distribution. They take this into account in making admissions decisions.
I am just trying to give you one less thing to worry about as you enter the college process. Because â you really donât have to worry about this! But go ahead if you want to 
One has to remember that the schoolâs interest and a studentâs interest arenât necessarily aligned, especially after the student has received an early acceptance. The misalignment of interest doesnât necessarily mean the school would actively discourage an application to a highly popular and selective college. It could mean less than full support for the application. The less popular.and less selective.colleges should be much less affected.
The parents know the school policy going into this but, yes, the students are the ones who formally close out their remaining apps. If any failed to do so in a timely manner (because they are lazy ⊠ahem, ChoatieKid), the GC notified her contacts at those remaining colleges that our son had accepted another college and would be closing out his application with their school.
Itâs amazing that over 50% of the class has an average within 4 points (89-93). From a collegeâs perspective, and statistically, those GPAs are essentially the same. Iâm not sure I understand Deerfieldâs logic in guiding kids (through class selection) so that there is no stratification.
My kids in other prep schools have definitely not experienced this.
^Not our experience either, @HMom16 . Although the prior 5 years of naviance revealed NO 4.0 GPA.
Yes - very stressful!!!
Thatâs like NYU law was in the 90âs. They didnât publish anything, but if you werenât in the top or bottom few percent, you had mostly Bâs with a decent number of B+. They intentionally set it up so the middle 80% or so of the class was indistinguishable.
It depends on how you applied. Most private schools require ED application in the early round so you are committing to going if admitted and are expected to pull any other outstanding applications if you get admitted. With schools with REA (Harvard, Yale and Stanford are it assuming Princeton continues to stay away from the early game) you can wait till May and apply to other schools regular decision but schools likely will strongly discourage it. You should not apply REA if not top choice to begin with, and there is no value in racking up other acceptances if you already have acceptance to your top choice, other than bragging rights, and it hurts the odds for everyone else. Early action is a different story, nothing binding there and students often apply to target schools not on top of their list that way so there is no expectation to drop other applications if accepted. But there are certainly kids whose EA school is their top choice and they stop there too.
This whole thread has me speechless. The assumptions and generalizations based on anecdotal experiences (not all of which are even current) should not influence an application decision. I hope any parent or student going through the process takes this discussion with a grain of salt.
We have two current high school students; one is a senior at Choate and one is at a very competitive public school.
I will give you my own anecdotal information; do with it as you please. We have access to Naviance data for both schools and I can tell you that the data sets show very different admissions outcome for similar stats.
I can also tell you that in 2021 at Choate the college counseling office is for counseling and not for placement. No one is going to tell your student how many other students are applying to any school. In general, students are discouraged from asking peers about where they are applying. The CC office is wonderful and supportive and the process is student directed. At no point was our student told where to apply or to remove a school from the list that they wanted.
As for comments about grade inflation at Choate - this is nonsense. We have witnessed four years of unwavering hard work with no re-dos on assignments, no late work accepted, and no extra credit. Plenty of teachers are tough in their grading; expectations here are high. I canât say the same of the public school.
Sorry if I didnât make myself clear. Open applications are supposed to be closed once a student has committed to another school, not just received acceptances. A student can only attend one college, so once a student has accepted an offer, they are done, no reason to leave any other offers or pending apps open.
Iâm not denying that people in any and every school work hard. And I suspect that the overall quality of education at the best prep schools far outstrips that available, overall, at most public schools, even the good suburban districts. But when 15 % of the class have an A+ GPA unweighted, and 50% have a weighted A+ GPA, and the lowest GPA in the class is a solid B, that is grade inflation. They might as well just say right out loud that their grading scale runs from A+ to B, and that most of the student body achieves an A+ weighted average.
Look at it this way. If you had an inner city high school, where half of the kids achieved an A+ weighted GPA, and the last kid in the grade had a B GPA, what would you think?
Assuming the inner city school had a 15% acceptance rate and that those 15% were chosen out of a group of kids that were mostly top 10% in overachieving suburban school districts, I would assume that even the kid with the B has mastered the material and is equal to or above his typical suburban school counterpart with a B, even though that school gives a wider range of grades.
If it is an inner city school that is failing state tests and has a 70% graduation rate (which is what I think you are implying), I would think something else. Thatâs a dumb example that you know bears no resemblance to what we are talking about.
ETA I donât have a dog in this fight, 3 kids in LPS, and #4, if she gets in on March 10, is not applying to Choate level schools.
Curious- how many schools are bs students typically applying to?
I recall hearing 8 is generally recommended at kiddoâs school. Is that typical? With a good distribution of safeties, matches and reaches, that would include maybe 3-4 T20 schools? That right there would diversify the applications among the students.
Fit is emphasized so much these days, I would guess that CCs would not encourage blanketing the Ivies with applications anyway.
Completely agree with everything @matching21and25 wrote.
As for number of applications, Son #1 applied to six schools, son #2 to ten (b/c we werenât sure how schools would view his ADHD) and Son #3 to one.
I donât think many BS kids blanket colleges with 20+ applications, that is just not common.
6-10 used to be typicalâŠbut this year is far from typical. My kid applied to 21, my nephew to 20, same for most of their friends. In addition to test optional, job/income losses due to the pandemic has led to more kids looking for merit/financial aid. My son has a friend that was accepted EA to MIT and Notre Dame but still went on to apply RD to 10 other schools, in hopes of getting a better financial package.
FIT is still very important but for many families the finances are a strong driver of the ultimate decision. In addition, application numbers are so wacky that no one can reliably predict safeties or matches.
(and these are boarding school kids)
Well, now letâs say that the SAT/ACT scores of said public school cohort were roughly the same as the private or boarding school cohort, yet the private school/boarding schoolâs cohortâs grades were much, much higher. Is it time to admit grade inflation?
Grades are supposed to differentiate amongst the cohort. The âgentlemanâs Câ was because C was the average grade. A B was a bit better. An A was a lot better. An A+ was stratospheric. When the average grade is an A, and 50% of the class achieves a grade higher than A, the grading system doesnât mean much, because it does not differentiate among the students on the basis of achievement.
@Parentologist - I can assure you that there is NO grade inflation at DA. The opposite. I am now very much regretting sending my kiddo to that school. We should have sent kiddo to Choate. It is almost impossible to get above a 91 in a Humanities class. The higher quartile students are in tech & math classes where grades are higher. If you have a kid who loves English or Social Studies - good luck. My kiddo has had teachers tell their classes that they are pressured to keep the mean at 89. If you want your kid to work their butt off for 4 years to be somewhere between an 89-91 - then be told that your GPA is not good enough for a top 50 school, please send in your check. This is only serving to reduce motivation among students. To answer the parent in an earlier post, âyesâ this has hurt matriculation stats from Deerfield. There is something going on. One day when the yield goes down, they may catch on.