Lessons learned from the application process

Prep School Admissions
1

I wonder if people would like to share what they have learned from their BS application experience.

I’ll start it off myself by noting that campus tours may or may not give an accurate picture of the school, its student body, and its culture. I wish there were a better way to get to know the campus and observe classes and student life than the current system. Your randomly assigned student guide may or may not be representative of all students. She may not be familiar with or knowledgeable about aspects of the school that are important to you, and may not be able to answer questions or showcase what really matters to you. While an adult may understand these limitations and reason around them, it’s harder to do so for an applicant in their early teens.

For example, our campus tour of Exeter was so poor that my daughter lost any interest in the school, although I still believe it would have been a good fit for her. (It was her top choice prior to touring, so much so that she submitted her application before even visiting.) Our Exeter campus tour was shared with a family of a day student (bad idea right there) and was led by the most inarticulate tour guide I ever met. To give you an idea of how inadequate the tour was, let me just say that we didn’t get to go inside the famous Kahn library; we didn’t tour the Phelps Science Center (although GoatKid is a STEM student); and we didn’t see the athletic facilities (although GoatKid is an athletic recruit). But we heard a lot about people stealing each other’s bikes! GoatKid’s impression of the school was of an obsolete place with pre-WWII dorms and antiquated classrooms with only a chalk and chalkboard. It didn’t matter that I tried to dispel her misconceptions. She was done, and her disinterest came across very clearly during her interview.

On the other end of the spectrum, our Andover tour guides (yes, we had two, a girl and a boy!) were by far the most well-spoken and articulate teens I’ve ever talked to! Oh, GoatMama was in love with those kids!! Were they representative of the entire student body? Maybe not, but they certainly left such an impression on us that we remembered their full names and still talk about them! In contrast, our interviewing AO at Andover was an epitome of disinterest and coldness. I noticed that another CC member has mentioned her name as an example of someone who just goes through the motions without making any effort to get to know you. GoatKid said it was the only interview where she answered questions without any opportunity to talk about herself.

Our best touring/interviewing experience by far was at Middlesex. I don’t know if it was a coincidence, or everyone at that school - from staff and faculty to students - is either hand-picked or receive extensive training in communications, but every single individual we came in contact with was personable and charismatic beyond belief. In my heart, MX will always be the “what if” school. Luckily, GoatKid is far more decisive than her mother and doesn’t like to look behind.

I’m pretty sure that the same can be said about revisits. I wouldn’t base a decision on just a short contact with one student/staff/faculty who may be an outlier for all we know. I’d look for additional, and preferably more reliable, inputs.

1 Like
2

I agree. Those two hour visits have such disproportionately large impact on the impression of the school.
Keep in mind that you will never see the AO and the tour guides (if seniors) again once you start the school.

I am sorry that you did not get to see the Kahn library and the whale bone hanging from ceiling in the science center.
My DS2 who visited Exeter with DS1 in 6th grade still remembers them, and I said then, I want a do-over! :))

3

@GoatMama , we’re at the other end of the process now – choosing a college – but our experience was :

School one REALLY tried to personalize the tour. She offered as we walked by the building with the music rooms in it, “Since you play the xyz, we should definitely step in here and take a look at the practice rooms, where you’d keep your xyz, etc.”, and then again, she pointed out the fields where his team would play, talked about how his sport was the one that the school came out to watch, etc. We came away thinking, “Wow, they briefed her on DS before the tour. If they pay this much personal attention to applicants, imagine what it’d be like to be a student here!” Likewise, this school encouraged us to talk with students and was very transparent. While there’s serendipity involved in whose path you cross, we got the feeling that they were hiding nothing and that they had a lot of confidence in their students.

At another school, everything was scripted, and it felt like administrators were hovering and supervising even those interactions. It made us wonder why those kids needed so much oversight! They worked hard to woo him, but something just didn’t sit quite right with us.

At yet another, we were shuffled through efficiently and politely. We noticed that there were other applicants who were being chatted up by coaches, etc. We felt like we’d bought a ticket rather than been invited.

And in retrospect, what we got at all was pretty spot on. We chose the first, where in fact DS was treated very much like an individual and the other students were friendly and thoughtful. The second had a mass expulsion for drugs (as well as some bullying issues) 2 years later. And the third rejected him. So yes, it can be random and you might get it wrong, but if your antennae are up, you might actually be reading all the signs just right.

4

I felt the same in our recent college tour. I think Spring break college tour should be avoided if possible. We were shuffled with 20-50 people per a guide. And having a mismatched tourguide can really ruin the image of an otherwise excellent fit college.

5

Another lesson: interviews. I know that some prepare extensively, and I understand how that can be useful. My kid is not that type, however, and by now I’ve learned to choose my battles. After 13 interviews (at one local and 12 NE BS), I can say that you can have successful admission results without special preparation. If your child hates interview prepping and drills, I wouldn’t despair. In our experience, being yourself is a good enough preparation. Additionally, there was no correlation between admission results and who she interviewed with (AO, staff, faculty,) how the interview was conducted (in person vs. Skype), or when it was conducted (very early vs. last-minute).

6

College tours are much more impersonal. The 20-50 people per guide is not unusual at all times, especially if one is visiting a larger university or a more selective college. The personalized attention received at BS admissions is extremely rare at the college level.

7

Totally agree @doschicos, my comments above were for BS.

We only saw that high level of personalization at the college level after admission, and then, primarily when invited back for an overnight visit. In those cases, it seemed that if the school had decided to buy the plane ticket, they wanted to do what they could to make the destination one you’d like.

8

Lesson #1- the application process is like adding another class or part time job especially if BS are not close and you are applying to more than a handful of schools
Lesson #2- family members will react differently @ process. DD and I have different personalities. I’m a type A planner, she’s more laid back. Husband didn’t get involved until visits and parent essays. Stress can make different people react differently. Learned a lot about our DD and our family dynamic
Lesson #3- couldnt agree more with Goatmama! Tours are great and can really help with general ‘vibes’ but tour guides ( who are teenagers!) can vary. Some were fantastic and really made a great impression, others left us feeling ho-hum about the school. We visited one school on a Sat and there was a big football game that afternoon. Guide could not move us fast enough. It was like if we blinked we would miss it… Guide had more important things planned. My Kid had a bad taste for the school afterward- grandmother and Mom understood.
Lesson#4- AO’s are paid to get kids to apply. They will most likely say wonderful things to both you and your child. She got accepted to schools with ok interviews and waitlisted by schools with fantastic interviews. Interviews are important but other things come in to play. We found for the most part that additional contact from schools- AO, coaches, heads of department- were good signs. Good sign, NOT sure thing.
Lesson#5- SSAT are not everything. DD did not want to prepare. She scored really well overall but got 84% on analogies. Good score but the rest were 98/99- parents worried (maybe too much cc) DD thought it was good enough and accurately reflected her strengths/weaknesses. Did not retake. In the end made no difference. Good/great scores get you to the table but don’t stress over every percentage
Lesson#6- teacher and personal recommendations - ug- for any control freak these will be tough. They will not always be done quickly. One of our personal rec’s waited to start on the day it was due! We learned to nudge softly, DD made it easier by giving them ample time and a resume, and parents gave bottle of very nice wine ( xmas gift regifted) to help speed up the last rec. People procrastinate. Recommendations are an important part. Kids be nice to those teachers!
Lesson#7- if you come from an area that typically has never heard of BS- read the threads on bad reactions to kid going to BS. Found it really helpful. DD kept it quiet except for teachers where she needed rec’s and best friend. Didn’t need the extra stress of negative comments
Lesson#8- call about application fee wavers. Didn’t do this and with 8 it adds up- thought we wouldn’t qualify- I was wrong ( AO told us after fact)
Lesson#9- parents the day before 3/10 is tough. LOVE idea of doing something as a family. We went bowling. Ate junk food, took aggression out on pins… Told DD how proud we were of her- fun night and much needed.
… The idea of doing this again gives me hives but happy child in the end is worth it

9

^ this could have been written by me - sans the wine and bowling :stuck_out_tongue:

Lesson: Casting a wide net
Looking back, it was unnecessary to apply to 12 schools. In fact, it was a sheer waste of money, time, and energy and added too much stress to the process. I would even say that the quantity of applications came somewhat at the expense of their quality. While I understand and agree with the concept of casting a wide net, I believe that it should be applied with discrimination and on a case-by-case basis. You can easily get carried away in the process. Ultimately, GoatKid got waitlisted at most schools that we added as a safety, “just in case.” It seems that AOs are very savvy at detecting that, or she just didn’t care to hide it.

10

We learned a tremendous amount about each other going through the process. For example, my DS wrote about his grandfather for one of his essays. When it was done, he called me up to read it. I was moved to tears. The essay was an incredible gift, one that I treasure and shared with his grandmother. It didn’t affect his admission (a WL) as far as we can tell. Likewise for the interviews, his responses to the campus visits, and subsequent discussions about our differing reactions. We discovered aspects of him that we’d never before seen: maturity, poise, an ability to cope with disappointment, and a surprising capacity to articulate his feelings. So regardless of the admission outcome, there were positive moments along the way.

11

I completely agree with @Gnomen16. I learned so much about my own child! I realized that she is far more mature and perceptive than I thought. I therefore didn’t object when she decided to get on the slippery slope of racism in one of her essays. It didn’t get her into that school, but it allowed her to tell her story. (And made her mom cry and hug her, and wish that we adults could see the world through a child’s eyes.)

Below, with omissions to maintain privacy. I’ve also changed the name of the boy.

Being from [a city in the South], I once thought I “for sure” knew everything there is to know about race and racism. After all, I’ve probably been taken to [name of site] more times than kids elsewhere go to the zoo. […] So I’ve been binge-taught Civil Rights history, Civil Rights politics, Civil Rights poetry, Civil Rights literature… […] That’s why I knew “for sure” that everything about Blacks and Whites is… well, very black-and-white.

Now, I am no longer certain that everything is so one-dimensional. I still believe that racism, bigotry, bias, and discrimination are wrong, but they seem more complex than I once thought.

Parks is our class clown. He always has the best jokes and the right punch lines. His sense of humor drives crazy some of the grumpier teachers, but he doesn’t care. That’s who he is. He also is very bright, and a great writer.
A few weeks ago, we’re in the lunch line waiting to get lunch. I am right behind Parks, and a black lady with an enormously large hair bun is right in front of him. She must be a parent. Our school is K-8, and the younger kids’ parents sometimes drop by to have lunch with them.

The lady’s bun is to Parks what a squirrel is to a dog. It gets him all excited, and he starts monkeying around, pretending that he is about to poke it. While Parks is wrapped up in his juvenile creativity, the lady suddenly moves backward and he inadvertently pokes her hair bun – for real!

What happens next unfolds so fast that I am still trying to understand why we all stood there frozen, unable to say or do anything. The lady jumps, turns around, and starts yelling, “He assaulted me! This boy assaulted me! You cannot touch a woman like that! You think because I’m Black you can assault me like that? You don’t know who I am!” She drags fun-size Parks by the sleeve out of the lunch line and into the headmaster’s office, which is just around the corner. We can hear her yell. She can tell a racially motivated assault because she is the Dean for Diversity of Such-and-Such College. She has degrees from Harvard and Cambridge and she has been to every country in the world. The white boy needs to be suspended or she will press charges.

The rest of the day is one big anxious blur. We talked to each other. We talked to a few teachers. We didn’t know what to do. A group of us went to the headmaster to try to explain. None of this mattered. No one would listen to us! The lady was big and powerful, we were small and powerless, and that was that. Parks was suspended, and the suspension went on his record. One teacher explained that this was the best thing to do to keep the incident out of the courts.

It’s been a few weeks now, and everyone has done a lot of soul-searching, but I am still angry. I know that Parks picked the wrong person to be silly with. I know that his behavior was immature and disrespectful and that he should have been disciplined. But I don’t understand how such a goofy gesture of a teenage boy in a lunch line could be perceived as so threatening by an adult woman. I feel disillusioned because Parks was accused based on the lady’s own racial prejudices. I feel that biases, no matter in which direction they go, fuel suspicion and intolerance and hurt everyone. Ironically, it was Parks’s oblivion to racial tensions that had him step on a landmine. I am sure that from now on he – actually we all – will be much more guarded around people, because you just cannot be naive and assume the best about everyone. People seem like huge icebergs, you just don’t know what’s hiding under their hair buns.

That’s why I don’t think anymore racism is so simple. I was wrong to assume that it was a thing of the past or a property of just one group or race. It seems that bigotry is universal, and it is also color-blind. It doesn’t take a skin of certain color to thrive.

12

I think it’s challenging to post “lessons” based on one or two kids’ anecdotal results, so instead here are few things that we’d do the same, or do differently, if we had to do it over again.

Would do again:

  1. Visit every school twice (this was possible based on where we lived) prior to February. Once, for the "official" visit, with the tour and interview. These were, in the words of @SevenDad, cattle calls. Frankly they were somewhat off-putting and scary in terms of the number of other applicants, the subtle assessments in the waiting room (hmm...they seem to know everyone...wow, that interviewer seemed to really like that kid). I always felt like an outsider relative to what I perceived the comfort level of other parents in the room. On the other hand, when we went back--to meet with a coach, take a second tour but without the stress of an interview, whatever--we got a different and often broader, less stressful picture of the school. Students were more honest, and we had better questions the second time through. We saw things we didn't see on the "official" tour. And of course this "demonstrated interest." This can be difficult for parents who live farther away, but we think it was the #1 thing we did that was within our control. And it also really made the revisit decisions easier because we'd already had a second bite of the apple.
  2. Ignore the haters and keep our plans 100% to ourselves until results were back and decisions were all-but made. This whole process is very stressful. As plenty of very smart posters have said up here on CC, there are haters. There are haters for sending your kid to prep school, haters who have opinions about different prep schools, and haters who are jealous if the outcomes are better/unfair to your kid. Ultimately this is a very personal decision. Pick your friends/confidants very wisely. Stay off, and tell your kid to stay off, social media (good advice in general, I guess).
  3. Stress over and over again--which we did---that regardless of the outcome, we are proud of our kid. As Billie Jean King said, "pressure is a privilege." Just getting to the stage where you think your kid has a shot to get into any of these great places is amazing. The outcome is fairly random and doesn't change that.

Would not do again:

We would not hire a 3rd party “consultant.” Basically these professionals have roughly the same information as the books, CC, and just talking to other parents. Consultants provide value in two regards: Interview prep (very hard for parents to do–and unless your kid is a born talker, very valuable for confidence as opposed to content), and staying on schedule. But not worth the money if parents are willing to make the effort and are clued in. Unfortunately, in many places, “hiring a consultant” has become part of the process like test prep and they create the perception that it’s a form of insurance…“you don’t want to miss anything, right?” We would not do that again.

13

We learned that we were naive and ignorant and that our children are talented and lucky. None of this was news to us. The wise and experienced folk on CC alleviated some of our naïveté and ignorance, but both remain bottomless pools.

14

^^^This.

15

A few lessons learned here, and a couple of things that worked out. DD took the SSAT in 7th grade just to see what scores on the real test would be. That gave us an idea of where to start and alleviated stress since something around those numbers seemed good enough. She retook it very early in 8th - taking it so early in the year was likely not ideal. She found taking the ISEE, which she did later in the school year, easier since the math came easier with the daily practice during the school year.

We were serious about not applying to or even visiting schools that we did not think aligned with what we value as a family and what DD wanted in terms of offerings in her subject area of interest. Visits were costly and burdensome for us, and I preferred to be ruthless up front. We did visit a longshot, felt the lack of match and didn’t apply. If she or I had even read the course catalogue for that school I would not have made the visit. Lesson learned. I spent a lot of time on school websites.

We asked current students about other schools (not their own) where they have friends or some personal knowledge, especially regarding social issues and treatment of girls/young women. You get some very candid responses (school X is known for eating disorders, boys at Y are jerks towards the girls etc.) Obviously take with a grain of salt, but these kids do know each other and are more willing to share the uglier side of things about a school not their own.

Admissions at one school was exceptionally cool to her. We determined it was waste of time to pursue that application.

Since DD seemed interested in BS and knows nobody who has applied/attended BS we sent her to camp at boarding schools. I don’t think this would be important at all if BS is normal where you live, but for her meeting a wider variety of kids including those from other countries and those actively pursuing something other than the local school was eye opening.

Attend to the college matriculation of the bottom half of the class; after all half of everyone ends up there.

We also kept as silent as possible about the application process. This is easy to do - just ask the questioner about their own child and the conversation never comes back to yours.

1 Like
16

We really learned a lot about our kids, ourselves and the schools that we visited. We had two kids (one at at JBS) applying to seven schools each including four overlaps. This is what we learned:

  1. Visit late morning.
  2. Find a connection to the school and exploit it.
  3. Take the SSAT in the individualized setting - both kids had their scores improve.
  4. Meet faculty and staff on campus who will become in loco if your child attends. This was a key factor for us. The school's willingness to engage at this level is a good indicator of how they respond to parents of students.
  5. Be normal - if you are not a Vineyard Vines type don't pretend to be one. Being comfortable in your own skin is key for visits.
  6. The kids have immediate reactions to the schools and if they think your top choice sucks let it go! They are the ones headed away. DD said to me "the girls here dress like me and I think this is where I would like to go." It was that simple and that school became her first choice.
  7. Connect with coaches and others responsible for your child's primary EC.
  8. Use the SSAT common app. Easiest by far and very straight forward.
  9. If your child has a first choice write a letter telling the AO that is the case. Yield is very important and can drive admissions decisions.
  10. Have fun. Your are visiting New England during the best part of the year!
17

@stanford94 – I like your points but why do you say visit late morning?

18

Two comments on @stanford94’s excellent post:

4 "in loco" was very important. If the school didn't have an obvious one, that was important

3--we had the opposite experience. I think scores (nearly always) improve regardless of setting on second testing. [Meaning first test was in a private, office setting, second test was in a large school environment, and the second results were better].

There’s also something to be said about not taking the test too early other than for real practice. Yes, there are plenty of people on CC with brilliant kids that take these tests early and do great, but taking it outside the school year (and certainly don’t waste your time with the “younger” test), your kid’s brain might not be as focused at summers’ end versus in November or December. Admissions officers never cared whether our kid had results yet when we met, as they’ll get that information in due course.

19

We visited late morning to avoid the roll-out-of bed late frenzy. Neither DD or DS are morning people. Also the rhythm of the school ramps up after a class or two.

The kids took the first test in a public setting, and each had one subsequent sitting in private. Scores increased for both.

20

@stanford94 I’m curious, how do you arrange to have the test administered privately? Not that it matters for my DC now, but I’m having fun adding to my collection of things we should’ve/could’ve done better, and maybe the info will help someone else.