Late Applicants for 2017-2018---realistic chances?

My child is applying late to a few BS, during their secondary round of admission consideration. She is applying as an incoming 10th grader. A few of the schools have stressed that while the likelihood of an acceptance is much slimmer now than during the normal admission cycle, the schools are still able to admit some students annually who applied late.

Can anyone weigh in on how these late applications are viewed? Are they given the same consideration for entrance as the students who applied during the regular cycle or are they perhaps held to a higher standard? Does the waiting list from the regular cycle of applicants play a factor?

It depends. How competitive are the schools that she applied to? If she’s a late applicant to Andover, Deerfield, Choate (pretty much any of the top 75 schools), it is extremely unlikely. If he applied to a “hidden gem” less competitive school, it may be much easier. When boarding schools accept students in March, they are accepting enough kids so that even if a certain amount don’t enroll, they most likely won’t go to the waitlist. What I think is that they review you child’s application sometime after March 10, then they decide whether the reject her or put her in the pool with the other candidates who were waitlisted. I guess you could say that they are given similar consideration, but the equivalent to an acceptance for your daughter is to be put on the waitlist. So in summary: if your child’s application is strong, they will be put into the waitlist pool. Sometime after April 10 they will evaluate to see if they filled up the right amount of beds for each class, and if not, they will look at the waitlist. They may not even look at the waitlist: they might just leave a bed or two open. If they do look at the waitlist, they will take however many kids they want off of it and your child may be one, although you shouldn’t count on it. Good luck!

Thank you, makes perfect sense. We went into this knowing it was a long shot, but had to try anyway. Keeping our fingers crossed!

CHances for late applications are greater at the single-sex schools… Especially if you are a full pay applicant.