Will the second child of a prep school student have the same legacy benefit as the first?
Is the first child at the legacy school?
Yes, he is! @GMC2918
I don’t think anyone can answer that question. There are certainly legacy families with multiple children enrolled at the same school.
However,
Please! do not speculate with your child about legacy advantages or disadvantages. Why? Well, schools do not take all legacy applicants. Sometimes, the schools don’t admit younger siblings. It’s not predictable. I really think prep school admissions people have the welfare of the children at heart, but they also have to enroll a class. I think a waitlist or rejection hurts much more if a child thinks it’s “in the bag.”
Agree with @Periwinkle in that OP should be cautious in making substantial predictions on their individual case based on the nuts and bolts of admission policies. While it’s true that legacy and siblings both may receive certain degrees of preferential treatment, it does more harm than good to make assumptions about your own admission chances at this point of time.
I do believe that if the student is a “stand-out” either positively or negatively that it would be a big impact. Consider, the worst student in a class, I doubt they are going to let a sibling in. Now the converse of that, if the student is the #1 student, a leader, and generally a great person, I would have to believe that you would have a huge leg up on admissions.
I also think that the family matters a little bit (are the supportive or a PITA?), and in the case of siblings, the family is therefore a known quantity.
^^Agree. Although Choate sent out letters to families who had children already there with a sibling applying in the current round. (This was 4 years ago). The letter said that 80% of legacy including those with sibs are turned down routinely and not to take it to heart. But in our case, the sib did get admitted, and I do think being a sib gave her a slight advantage. But I don’t really know.
^^80%? That cannot be right can it? What was Choate’s general admit rate 4 years ago? That makes it sound like barely if any legacy advantage at all!
yes, that’s what I recall, though it was some time ago.
There is barely any legacy advantage ANYwhere.
I find the contention that there is barely any legacy advantage anywhere laughable on its face. However, if we confine ourselves to boarding school legacies, then the first thing you have to understand is that this legacy issue, like many things in the tiny boarding/prep school pocket universe, applies to the full-pay applicant/family cohort. Then, consider whether the legacy question in question refers to a legacy at one of the the very few most-selective schools or all the boarding schools in general. Everyone’s fav list of 6 or 7 or 8 schools certainly do have the ultimate luxury of plenty of highly-qualified full-pay families applying each year, many times more than they could take. But at the same time, legacies are vitally important to these schools and always will be, with these schools having the additional luxury of deciding which legacies are worth preserving–and make no mistake, not all legacy families are created equal in the eyes of these famous schools. Less-selective, less famous schools have a very different view of legacy admissions because they do not have that richness of thousands of full-pay applicants lining up for their upcoming school year. Those schools are much more likely to do everything they can to continue a valuable full-pay legacy. Beyond the ultimate top-tier schools, many issues regarding day-to-day as well as yearly-and-beyond operations become much more pressing and applicants who can and WILL pay are always precious, making legacy families more important than at those few hyper-selective schools most applicants will never get into anyway.
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Let me put it this way. By number, legacy admit rates are significantly higher than the general pool in most elite schools. Whether you call that an advantage or correlation is a topic for another day. However 80% rejection rate nonetheless indicates a very different legacy policy in Choate. Is it true?
Is there any parent on this board that switched their older sibling out if the younger one didn’t get in? When my children were in private school as a second grader and one of the them couldn’t get in, we had to move to Plan B to a different school for both of them. I just couldn’t do a double drop-off. That said, I am not sure I would do the same at HS.
I am just wondering if there are any data points or anecdotal cases of this scenario’s?
That would be hard to do as reenrollment contracts are usually due before admission decisions are in.
@GoatMama – how much is due for re-enrollment? In dual BS, a common location is irrelevant but in 2 different day schools that can become quite the logistical challenge.
That would depend on the school. In our private day school, reenrollment contracts are locked in sometime in February. The registration fee and the tuition insurance are about $375 each, and the tuition insurance covers only 50% of the full tuition price. One year, we tried to get out of this legally binding reenrollment contract in April so we can move one child to another school, but it didn’t work out - we couldn’t afford to pay 50% tuition to the old school while also paying the new school, so we stayed put.
I suspect it would be very hard on the enrolled child to pull him/her out if he/she didn’t want to leave. It is boarding school and the adjustment isn’t easy. Once one is comfortable and has established friendships, mentors, etc… it could be a shock to the system to need to begin again. Additionally, how would one apply in time to an alternate school? Do you mean to return the sibling to home institution?
In the couple of BS’s I am familiar, if one opts out before July 1st, they lose only the deposit of $3-5K and none of the tuition. Some families are willing to lose 3-5K depending on the circumstances.
I think @laenen was asking about day schools, not BS.