<p>Sharpener, is there anyone who knows both you and your daughter who supports pulling her? Your decision sounds highly personal and gratuitous. You’re getting strong pushback from posters because the idea that you’re willing to break your daughter’s heart breaks all of ours.</p>
<p>@Sharpener: Unfortunately, like HADES vs. Hidden Gem and Pork Roll vs. Taylor Ham (a NJ joke at which I may be the only person laughing), BS for HYPSM vs. BS for BS sake is one of those issues that seems to really divide the forum.</p>
<p>My big issue with looking to BS for that outcome is that if you don’t get that outcome then BS WILL NO DOUBT seem like a $200k waste of money. And personally, there are any number of vintage cars that I’d rather spend $200k on, not to mention central air for the drafty old house we call home.</p>
<p>I don’t know if you are a HYPSM grad. But I know I’ve shared here before that I went to a non HYP Ivy (Go Quakers!) many years ago and while I had a great time and made lifelong friends, I don’t really place that high a premium on the “Ivy” experience for my own children. I know I’m not alone among the Ivy grads on CC in feeling this way. I honestly think it’s one of those things that hold a huge allure for people who have not been a part of it. Yes, my older daughter will probably apply to one, but most likely only one among a wide range of school types.</p>
<p>Wishing you and your daughter peace, regardless of what transpires.</p>
<p>@SevenDad - accentuating that you went to a “non-HYP Ivy” and asking the OP if they are a HYPSM grad continues the whole condescending flavor. The issue here was should a parent pull a kid out of a BS where they seem to be happy and engaged.</p>
<p>Put your UPENN hat aside and think about the child.</p>
<p>@howdoipayforthis: Not my intention, and will now I happily bow of this thread…goodnight all.</p>
<p>I’m really sorry for your daughter.</p>
<p>You’re getting piled on because your way of thinking is antithetical to most people here. In your original post you listed your concerns in order - not getting into HYPSM, saving money, having daughter home. It’s hard to be empathetic. We all know your daughter will get the message loud and clear that we are all reading.</p>
<p>Hey at least you’re honest. If you came on here and instead and said your financial circumstances required your pulling your kid from school, you would have received a lot of warm words and advice. The thing is, your kid knows why she’s getting pulled and what that level of resentment will be no one can know. But you seem to like to roll the dice - it didn’t work out for your Ivy bet but maybe it will with your relationship with your child.</p>
<p>As I understand it, the intent of the OP is to find other parents who have pulled their kids out of boarding school because the child wasn’t achieving the parents’ goal of HYPSM. The OP has told us that the daughter knew that that was the parents’ sole purpose in sending her away to boarding school. Also that the school is a financial sacrifice for their family (though one they’d be willing to bear if the child had a chance of getting into HYPSM). And that the parents miss their child and would like to have her home.</p>
<p>Sharpener, I think that many of us have listened carefully. Yes, people are not answering your original question–because in my four years on this board, I can’t think a of a single parent who did that. I’ve heard of the reasons why many of the students who have left Exeter in the past four years, and I’ve never heard of this as a reason why. </p>
<p>So since we don’t know of anyone who has done what you propose to do, I think people are trying to answer you helpfully by offering opinions about whether the decision you’re making will give your the results you’re seeking. You say you’ve already thought through all of these issues already, but haven’t responded in a way that shows that you have–which is why people are getting frustrated. You want just what you want, which is someone to jump in and say, “Yeah, I pulled my child out of school, and everything worked out fine!” Since none of us have done that, we tried to provide a thoughtful discussion about whether your decision will get you what you want: a loving child who will come home and perform well enough to get into a great college two years from now. </p>
<p>The questions people have asked:</p>
<p>Why was HYPSM so important to you for undergraduate education? What do you see it providing?</p>
<p>Do you have a good sense of the prestige and connections that a diploma from a top boarding school will confer? </p>
<p>Do you see how pulling your daughter out of school will send her the message that she’s not worth your financial and personal sacrifice–that the school and her performance in it were a disappointing, bad investment? Is that okay and in line with your parenting philosophy? </p>
<p>If she ends up not forgiving you or doing badly in school, will you regret your decision?
Are you convinced (you know her better than we do) that she has a compliant enough personality that she’ll come around?</p>
<p>I’m not, at this point, trying to impose my answers on you. But it’s really not fair to come on this board and ask for help without providing any kind of response to these questions; their sole purpose is to answer your original question, which, stated slightly differently is, can I pull off pulling my kid out of a school she loves without her hating me and/or underperfoming in school?</p>
<p>One more point related to the HYPSM crazed parents: I think you’re right that they get jumped on and that there are some who are reluctant to post. But it’s also true that the boarding schools themselves do NOT welcome or encourage HYPSM crazed parents. We’re just doing our best to help other parents and students go in to the boarding school application process with their eyes wide open to what these schools do and do not give their students. It would be irresponsible on our part to offer encouragement to parents whose goals are almost certainly not going to be met.</p>
<p>@classicalmama - “boarding schools themselves do NOT welcome or encourage HYPSM crazed parents”.
Doesn’t matter, they are there and they are numerous. I know this with 10000% certainty. But these people are also savvy enough to keep it in check in front of the school’s administration.</p>
<p>@howdoipay - “The HYPSM crazed don’t post here? That’s absurd.”
Then please point me to some threads within last 18 months. I am 100% serious as I want to trade experiences with peers. I have only come across one other poster.</p>
<p>@SevenDad – Don’t abandon me now! Yours are one of the few non-emotionally charged responses on this thread. And our backgrounds sound fairly similar. And I will take the bait, as it may shed some light on my situation. Both my sibling, 1-year my junior, and I are HYPSM grads (different schools). I then went on to a HYPSM professional school too. My parents are both immigrants (from Asia) and after attending local, public school both of us found college to be a transformational, life-changing experience which opened up some incredible doors for both of us later in life.</p>
<p>My sibling and I both studied hard, but frankly HYPSM wasn’t really a goal. Me, my parents and my sibling had no idea what was even required to get admitted. I believe it is MUCH harder now, but at least my kids have the benefit(?) of parents who appreciate how difficult it is and are supportive. My daughter may feel a sense of obligation/responsibility/expectation to attend HYPSM. Sure, I want her to go but of course I won’t consider her a failure by any means if she doesn’t. In fact, I have voiced my concerns that her work ethic may be endangering her health. (I position it as physical health, but secretly I worry about her mental health too.)</p>
<p>After seeing two sets of graduates from DD’s school, I have a pretty good idea of what’s required from her school to have a reasonable shot at HYPSM. My daughter’s grades would be good enough if she had a significant hook (recruited athlete, national awards, development case) but she has none of that. In fact she is an ORM, which make her grades (and scores) even more critical.</p>
<p>Of course it’s the money! If I had it to burn then I wouldn’t think twice about keeping her at school. And my financial situation while okay now, is tenuous</p>
<p>I am not concerned about questions regarding her changing schools mid-stream. We will simply explain it as a financial issue. There are no discipline and health issues that may raise eyebrows.</p>
<p>I don’t think her grades will show dramatic improvement. They have been remarkably consistent for the past 1.5 years. And I am worried they may decline as we have been told that junior year is dramatically more challenging then freshman/sophomore year.</p>
<p>As I said, my biggest concern is demoralizing her and creating eternal resentment.</p>
<p>
Just because you and your sibling had these transformational, life-changing experiences at HYPMS, that doesn’t mean that HYPMS alone can offer these experiences. In fact, do you not see BS as a transformational, life-changing experience which can open up some incredible doors for your daughter? I feel a much deeper connection to my HS friends than my college or grad school friends. While I have never made it to a single one of my college or grad school reunions, I have never missed a single one of my HS reunions.</p>
<p>
Have you thought of what will happen when you bring your daughter back to her old school in Asia? Do you expect her to just slot back in like nothing happened? Do you expect her resentment and loss of face to not affect her academic performance there?</p>
<p>@classicalmama - “As I understand it, the intent of the OP is to find other parents who have pulled their kids out of boarding school because the child wasn’t achieving the parents’ goal of HYPSM.”</p>
<p>NO! NO! NO! The reason for pulling out isn’t important.</p>
<p>My request was “Anecdotes (either direct or indirect) of anyone who pulled a reluctant child out of boarding school who was in good standing?”</p>
<p>I have seen a few posts on kids who want to return home, but parents who want to keep their kids at boarding school. This is the opposite situation. Wondering about kids (in good standing) who were pulled out for ANY REASON AT ALL.</p>
<p>@Sharpener</p>
<p>I tend to agree with most posters here that bringing her home would be a mistake, largely because having an uninterrupted 4 years with consistent friendships and relationships provides a much more valuable (or perhaps equally valuable) base for success than does the choice of college. Plus, a college may look at a child having completed 4 years at a challenging boarding school in a different light than a child who went home half way through, no matter how you try to spin it.</p>
<p>Two points, though:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>You say she has no hook for HYPSM. However, she does have a parent as an alum at at least one of them. That may not be a strong hook, but it will at least get her a second look at that one school.</p></li>
<li><p>Her grades may or may not take a hit in 11th grade. Keep in mind though, that the same pressures apply to all students, and it will be a sinking tide lowers all boats kind of thing. Relative to her classmates, there is no reason to think her performance should decline.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>It sounds as though you are fully aware of all the issues. My advice would be to keep her there if it at all feasible. Most decision trees you use would lead to keeping her there, unless you have already determined that the money issue will trump all others.</p>
<p>I know a young man whose parents pulled him out of a private day school after sophomore year because he wasn’t making all A’s. His mother’s reasoning was that he’d be a superstar at the public hs without any money being spent. Sadly, he felt he had “failed” at the day school and continued at the local public as a mediocre student. He was actually quite gifted but had some psychological issues that not only kept him from performing to his ability in the classroom, but also resulted in such profound self esteem problems that he suffered socially as well.</p>
<p>What difference (at this point) does it make, Sharpener? She’s back at school and in her mind she’s already gone. It’s done.</p>
<p>I was in good standing at my private East Coast day school when my mother, who lived 2000 miles away, in a western state, pulled me out at the end of tenth grade to begin eleventh with entirely new classmates. Since I had fallen in love that spring, I resisted the move, but of course it happened (my father being a non-factor). The reason I left the school after ten years was that my mother simply wanted me with her; not about money, college, or anything else. </p>
<p>If I resented the removal at first announcement, time helped me to get over it, both during the spring and that summer. In the fall, I was too busy with classes, making friends, playing sports, etc., to dwell on the injury, and at no time did I place a big target on my mother for making the decision. In the end, I appreciated learning about a part of the USA that I would never have known about otherwise. I think that the experience was probably better than I would have had at the prior school, mostly because it was broadening on several levels. Of course, I could not say what I would have come out of the first school as had I stayed the last two years. On the college front, I think that the move helped my admission to a good East Coast university from the geographic diversity standpoint, but who’s to say what really went into that admit, or what the process would have been like had I stayed. Strategizing for college admittance was not a priority in the mid to late 1970s. </p>
<p>I was not pulled out of school for what I thought was a “bad” reason. I got over it, and maybe this was helped because it seemed like a “good” reason, even if, as I recognized at the time, that was only from the standpoint of my mother and not myself. With time, I saw the wisdom of the move and the decision to move ceased to be a problem. I am also disposed toward forgiveness.</p>
<p>Definitely don’t want to get in a fight here, but just want to give a +1 to SevenDad. He absolutely was on point to the OP. He was trying to say that, even though he was happy at an Ivy, there is NO school out there ( Harvard, Oxford, MIT, whatever) that is the right fit for EVERYONE. Kids have to pick a school where they fit-- or they won’t take advantage of all a great college or university has to offer. So he was trying to suggest to the OP (and others) that there are lots of really great colleges out there, INCLUDING in terms of prestige, if that’s what you seek, that the OP’s daughter could attend, even if not HYPMS. That’s all. I don’t see how that’s condescending or off point.
Really though, given that the Mom DID send her daughter to BS IN ORDER TO get into HYPMS, and that now she’s decided she won’t be going there, I think people’s real concern here is partly that the daughter will be missing out on lots of things related to the boarding school experience, but also that just about every poster here is worried the daughter will feel like a failure-- THAT’S why this thread has gotten such emotional responses. So whether the mom brings her home or not (sounds like she’s going to), I think we all just hope she doesn’t believe that about her daughter and makes it really clear to her (indeed, she’s happy, doing well, active in ECs, getting very decent grades in a good BS, and is certainly on a path to a good college). As someone else said, if she’d just told her daughter she had to leave because of finances, everyone would have been very sympathetic. I just wish, given that she seems like she IS pulling her out, that she hadn’t told her the reason. That’s the making-her-feel-like-a-failure part that everyone is reacting to. But I think everyone wishes the best for her daughter.</p>
<p>If you took a poll of parents on this site who attended both boarding school and an Ivy, you would find a significant percentage (I’m guessing north of 50%) who would point out that the professional and social connections gained at boarding school outweigh those gained during their Ivy years. Boarding school is a magnet for the high performing and well-connected - chrysalides today, leaders tomorrow. </p>
<p>Sharp, I don’t know if you attended a boarding school or just an Ivy, but if you have the long game in mind for your daughter i.e. how well placed she will be professionally and socially when she’s 30, 40, 50 years old and view the HYPMS imprimatur as the best stepping stone, many would argue that a quality boarding school equals or surpasses any Ivy in its ability to provide an exceptional lifetime professional and social network. </p>
<p>Why not see your sacrifice and mission in terms of helping your daughter in any way possible to be an engaged leader and contributor at School, someone who is known and loved by other students, someone who lifts others up while doing the same for herself? Even if your first concern is prestige and future network, than an approach that supports your daughter’s overall happiness and success at boarding school would be a smart investment. It sounds like she’s already starting to impact the school and her peers positively. Support that! Whether she ends up an Ivy or not, she’ll have an outstanding web of relationships to leverage later.</p>
<p>As cold as this sounds: It’s done. OP’s daughter is already in the process of disengaging from her friends, her teachers and the school itself. She knows she’s not coming back. I think the focus should be more on her right now and how you’re going to support/help her to finish. June might be here before we know it, but it’s going to be a long (and painful) haul for this young lady.</p>
<p>I am curious how you would feel if your daughter is accepted to HYMSP as well as other schools and chooses a non-HYM school? What I am trying to say echoes many others here… I understand you had a transformative experience at college. I had a similar one at boarding school (college was fine but had nowhere near the affect on my development as a person). So – let’s say that you bring your child home and she does get accepted to an Ivy, but still chooses not to attend. Will the loss of 2 years of boarding school experience affect that or not? I am NOT trying to tell you what you should do. That is for your family to decide alone. I am simply trying to point out another (very real) scenario to put into the decision mix.</p>
<p>I miss my child every minute of every day. No doubt. Whether or not I’d like her to go to an Ivy is almost irrelevant. Ultimately, whether we like it or not, it is not really up to us. The child is the one doing the work, and the child will have to do the application, and the child will have to choose the university. I will say that staying at boarding school will enhance that independent decision approach. You can have an Ivy goal for your child, but if their goals differ from yours, it is bound to greatly affect the outcome.</p>
<p>College is one small part of life. It is for this reason, that I counsel you to (just for a minute) to remove that part of it from the decision process. Think instead about what is best for your child as a person and for you as a family. That is not an answer any of us here on CC can provide. It is just too personal a decision with too many factors of which we are unaware.</p>
<p>I truly wish you luck in your decision. You know best what works for you. I am sorry you are not getting the answers you need to hear, but I also think maybe you know in your own heart what is the best choice for you all. All the best!</p>
<p>Maybe our experience is not relevant to this situation…When our kids started K we thought hard about whether we wanted to put them in our local day school. We questioned whether we could afford 60k+/year tuition for 13+ years, with all the uncertainty of employment and with unexpected expenses. H and I made the hard decision of putting tuition payments as our #1 priority no matter what happened with our financial situation. </p>
<p>That being said, life is unpredictable. When D2 was a sophomore I had an opportunity with an overseas job. We gave D2 the option of finishing high school at her current school or move with us to an international school. Our situation is different because it was D2’s decision to make. She chose to move with us. It was very hard on her the first 2 months. She cried almost everyday because she missed her friends. Fast forward, she graduated as the Sal at her new school and became very active with various organizations within her school. She was a top 5% student at her old school with very few hooks. Most students at her old private schools were athletes, legacies to top schools, and D2 didn’t have any of those hooks. At her new school, she was told that she probably could get into any top colleges she wanted because they had the history of sending 1-2 students to HYPSM every year. D2 chose a lower Ivy to ED because she couldn’t see herself at any other school. She is thriving there with no regrets of not going to HYPS.</p>
<p>D2 remained good friends with her old high school friends, as well as new friends at her international school. She has reconnected with her old high school friends at her college, as well as friends going to schools in NYC (our home town now). </p>
<p>I think what’s important is how OP manages the message to her D about moving back. I also would allow my kid to stay at the BS if it is not a huge financial hardship. I totally agree with many posters here that going to a BS or a private school is not the ticket to get into HYPS. If it is the main reason then you’ll be very disappointed. I think OP’s D can thrive and be happy if she should return home. With Skype and many electronic devices we have, she can maintain her friendship. </p>
<p>Good luck to OP.</p>
<p>Sharpener, I have something for you to consider that I don’t think has been mentioned. As background, I will tell you that we live in an area where our public schools are more than 50% Asian. </p>
<p>Here’s my question: How will the kids at the school your daughter returns to treat her? Will they call her a B-sian to her face, because she wasn’t good enough to stay in a US boarding school? I’ve seen how cruel Asian kids can be to each other about grades. The competition is incredibly fierce. Is she strong enough to hold her head high, knowing her own strengths? Not caring what other kids say? </p>
<p>My child is at BS in large part because I wanted to get him out of this community. I wanted him to go where the kids work collaboratively, rather than constantly trying to out-do each other. It’s exhausting and demoralizing. He is so much happier now. And, yes, I will admit that I had dreams of the Ivy League for this kid, but I let that go on March 10 of last year. :)</p>
<p>I come to this forum because I feel it’s the only place where I can listen in (and occasionally throw in my proverbial two cents) to other parents who are like-minded. Honestly, it’s a little bit of a group think mentality, “we all did what was best for our amazing kids, even though it’s incredibly difficult both emotionally and financially!” It’s a support group, and you are doing something this group finds outrageous. But only you know what you and your daughter can handle together. </p>
<p>Good luck. I hope that you and your daughter will get through this difficult time peacefully.</p>