Your post is exactly what we are concerned with in our DC26’s decision.
Pros: excellent preparation for college; benefit from all that the BS experience has to
offer (especially broadening horizons from the somewhat insular, homogenous environment DC26 has experienced at private day school in an upscale suburban environment)
Cons: potentially risking lower GPA and not making required AI for target colleges; having less flexibility in training and competition required to excel in sport being recruited for
There are also other things we are now considering and weighing wrt ECs, clubs and religious groups, with some schools being stronger and having more support than others.
I would really not worry much about the GPA, the concern about less flexibility in training and competition to get recruited is definitely valid. Top boarding school is likely to make your child a better student, but it could well be at the expense of their athletic growth. And coaches pick their players based on athletic ability first and foremost.
The logistics of going off campus for club practices, tournaments etc. are also quite difficult. At most schools boarding students are not allowed to have cars on campus, nor are they allowed to be driven by day students. This year due to covid our school banned Ubers and other for hire transportation that a lot of boarding school kids relied upon to get places off campus. They are also not allowed to use public transportation. So their only option is for parents to come and drive them places or parents of their day student friends to drive them assuming their kids are on the same club team etc. But by junior year most of the day students drive themselves so this is a big ask to make especially as a regular thing.
You seem to have gotten a lot of good advice already. In our experience, the “as close to 4.0 GPA and 1400 SAT as possible” was definitely a general guideline given by coaches at selective colleges. But as noted by others, there is flex…depends on how badly the kid is wanted by a coach and how much juice that coach has.
My college athlete attended a “second tier” BS (two actually…I’m sure I’ve written about why elsewhere) and was recruited by three D1 programs, including a non-HYP Ivy. IMO, her going to BS was not really a factor in her recruitment. And in her sport (fencing), you won’t see many BS grads on the rosters of top teams. Especially not for the HADES-type schools. Because the sport is mostly club-based. And requires a lot of travel at the higher levels. In season, she was gone for a long weekend at least once a month…sometimes twice.
Her older sister attended St. Andrew’s in Delaware, which our family LOVES and considers a “top tier” (if not one of the best overall BS experiences available anywhere), but an early conversation with the admissions folks there indicated that it would not be a great fit due to her travel/training schedule. My point being that I feel that the “second tier” schools were better for her in terms of flexibility of scheduling/proximity of clubs/coaches while giving her enough of a rigorous ed to prep her well for even the most selective colleges.
FWIW, I don’t regret sending either of my kids to BS, and I think the time management skills and general independent living/life skills that both of my kids received at their respective BSs have served them well in college and beyond. If I was in your family’s shoes, I’d definitely put Stevenson on the short list.
Down in the swamp, I believe our public high school does a better job preparing for SAT & AP tests than our BS up in NE. At the local Jesuit school down here, the students are offered a FREE SAT prep course each morning during one term and get a class credit for taking it. As we say in the swamp, “Ain’t that so”….or as they say in Brooklyn “Go figure”.
For schoolwork specifically, my student has reported to me that the rigorous math courses at BS amount to solid preparation for the SAT. The content of the English courses was not as relevant to the SAT. It has been our student’s experience (ours also) that the focus on standardized testing overall is greater at the local public high school than at boarding school.
All Hill sophomores had a meeting today, mostly about PSAT/SAT. I was told that testing is among one of the least important pieces in crafting an application. I think a lot BS’s have that mentality.
I got a fairly good score on my first SAT practice test going in blind and didn’t need to prep much for my actual exam. At least at Lawrenceville, the curriculum covers everything that you need to know for the math sections, and they teach us grammar in English class with (among other reasons) the explicit intention being “you will need to know this for your standardized tests.” Reading comprehension is mainly based on practice, which you definitely get a lot of through Harkness English class.
I think how one does on the SAT mainly depends on how good of a test taker someone is. I don’t think you need boarding school rigor or curriculum to do well, and I also think studying and prep can only get you so far. It probably helps those most who are nervous test takers. My kiddo at public school took the SAT and ACT after just a few sections of kahn academy self study, and having taken the psat and pre-act. She could have been one and done and has scores that are at or higher than Ivy averages but wants to take them again. Then I also know private school kids who don’t do nearly as well and have spent thousands on fancy prep classes.
My son is not a great test taker - this is mostly coming to light now. He is very successful in school (not spending more time because he does outside sports) but just doesn’t show well on standardized tests.
Good friend of mine has a D1 recruited athlete who goes to Choate. Currently committed to an excellent D1 team. Was told point blank by an Ivy coach they do not care what school you came from, they just want your GPA and your test scores. AFAIK that coach is not new so that cannot be passed off as an inexperienced coach. This player was highly recruited by other/better Ivy’s as well, it was not a case of coaches not wanting kid enough. Think long and hard, it is just not always the case that college will understand that your school was harder than other schools.
Coaches have a certain number of recruitment spots, and a lot of coaches just want to win, so if a recruited kid is academically eligible and the Academic Index is in balance for the team - well, that’s all that matters.
