^Hang in there! Everything works out at the end.
There have been lots of threads on this point in the past. Remember, whatever you do, please be sure that your kids only see happiness with any outcome, even if no admission at all. In the grand scheme of things, M10 is a “nothing.” How your kids perceive whether they have pleased or disappointed you, visible in your smallest expression, will be something they remember for a very long time.
It’s perfectly ok to be disappointed with a result. Disappointment is part of life. Figure out why it happened if you can, learn from it, and learn to deal with it. Do those things, and life will go easier for you.
You can be disappointed in the result without being disappointed in your kid. If you make them feel like they have disappointed you because they didn’t get into the prep school you think they belong in then you really need to brush up on your parenting skills.
We talk a lot about how the admissions process is a bit of a crapshoot. Boarding schools, like colleges, are looking to build a well-rounded class. My son’s test scores and grades are within the ranges of the schools he applied to. His interviews were fine. He is a three sport athlete and a Boy Scout.
If he doesn’t get in to any of his schools, it may be a fit issue but it is just as likely that they needed a different demographic to round out their class. I will be disappointed - but not in my son.
On the flip side, after all that anticipation and after kiddo’s second trimester at Choate when we were still gushing about how wonderful the school was, he turns around and says, “you know, it’s only high school.” I’m not sure all that much is riding on these decisions even though the outcomes feel monumental and oppressive right now. I will post again the best perspective about M10 I have ever read on these boards:
Have a glass of wine, hug your kids, and take some comfort in the fact that you are stressing about a very first-world problem.
Our family sat down one afternoon and played a prediction game, solely based on how we felt the different parts of the admission process went. It was find of fun, to see that we either agreed or disagreed on future outcomes. Then we had a serious talk about reasons wait list or rejection may happen. We talked about her grades, her scores, her essays, her recs, her volunteer portfolio, and her art portfolio, her sports - then we talked finances. I let her know that I firmly believe each school that we all had “predicted” as not a rejection we thought she would fit into, that her stats fit, her interests fit etc. And that if she did not receive offers of admission it was not because of her - but our financial situation. She is a rock star - and no rejection or wait list will change that in my eyes.
^ Great way to look at it. Fingers crossed for your family on M10.
question - why do some appear to say it is taboo to tell a school they are your first choice? In our conversations with coaches, we were told that it can actually help - they will really go to bat for you if they want you and they know you are coming if you get in. I realize this may be different for the general pool of applicants, but isn’t any student with a hook better off telling the people who have the potential to influence the admission process that their efforts wont be in vain?
@Korab1 I think the caveat to telling a school they are your first choice is being sure that the school is indeed your first choice. It would be dishonest to tell more than one school they are first, and things can happen that may affect which school is first when the rubber hits the road on M10 like FA and revisit experiences. But if you’re really, really certain, then I say go ahead. And definitely if you’re “suiciding” you want to let the school know that it’s them or bust.
@AppleNotFar I definitely agree that telling more than one they are #1 would be bad, and a teenager certainly could change his mind. We were point blank asked by one if they were our #1, and we waffled, because they weren’t. We freely told our #1 that they are our #1. FA, unfortunately, wont be a consideration.
Athletic hooks may be different than some others - Coaches can exert significant influence for a (very) few players each year. They aren’t going to blow that slot on a kid who they aren’t pretty certain is going to come.
I would have thought at this point it’s too late to tell a school they are your first choice. Any thoughts on that?
@makp715 its not too late if they ask. We let #1 know they were #1 at the time we were filing applications. Not #1 was a conversation a couple weeks after that. I agree, its a little late now.
I should add that the people we were expressing this to were coaches who were recruiting my son, not the admissions office.
@Korab1 let me preface by saying that most of what I’m offering here is speculation based on what I’ve read here and our anecdotal experience from applying last cycle. My kid was also a varsity-level applicant and I’m very thankful that we didn’t have that question asked of us. That said, I do have some additional thoughts on this.
As with other factors that go into admissions decisions, I suspect that the benefit of expressing a first choice varies by school, by sport and by coach. I also think that the athlete “recruiting” process for boarding school is quite different from the college recruiting process which, from my very limited knowledge of it, also varies quite a bit by division, conference, school and coach. I do understand that in college the coaches have a defined number of athletes they can support during the admissions process (which again can mean a lot of things), but I don’t believe that BS coaches generally have the same fixed parameters.
In our case we had one coach who told us that in each application cycle he would submit a ranked list of applicants to admissions, and that the ranking depended on how much “help” he thought each applicant needed in terms of FA, if applicable, and the relative strength of their other stats like grades and test scores. My spidey sense also leads me to strongly believe that the ranking depends a lot on the relative athletic talent/potential of each applicant as well as the need the team will have for the athletes’ specialization within the sport. After all that is accounted for, I think the question of being first choice likely matters most, if at all, when a school has similarly talented and qualified applicants in the same specialization of the same sport but cannot admit all of them.
@AppleNotFar Coaches shouldn’t have any knowledge of an applicant’s financial aid status, should they? Isn’t that protected information? What I have shared is based upon the conversations I have had with multiple coaches. There may not be a hard and fast # they can support, but the coaches definitely have a ranked wish list based on the recruit’s potential impact on the program. The number of athletes any one coach can speak for is going to be practically limited by the size of the school - there are only so many spots to go around. I’m not sure how much help a student needs to get in effects the order of the list - it probably depends a lot on the school. Leaving a kid you want hanging in the hopes he can get in without your full support at a school with a 15% acceptance rate is dangerous, as fully qualified kids fail to get in to these schools all the time. If it’s a 50% acceptance rate, then it may be another story.
My assertion is that telling the coach that School A is your #1 can help your admission chances because it will influence your position on the coach’s list, not because it will make a difference in the admissions office. I believe it is your position on the coach’s list that makes the difference. I doubt your expression of #1 status means a fig to the admissions department, as they hear it all the time. If you are being recruited by a coach and have met with him or her and they have seen you play, you develop a relationship, and I believe that relationship is far more meaningful than any relationship you have with anyone in the admissions office.
Based upon our experience at the college level, what we are talking about is similar to high academic institutions like NESCAC and IVY schools, but nothing at all like the vast majority of D1 and D2 schools.
@Korab1 Clearly we have had very different experiences. No coach asked if their school was our first choice. We were asked by some coaches if we would need FA. And every coach asked about my kid’s grades and test scores.
Completely agree that potential impact is the primary basis for how coaches will rank athletes, but I guess we will have to agree to disagree on what and how other factors may cause coaches to adjust their base ranking. I would like to think that at these schools a coach’s influence cannot get an applicant admitted whose other qualifications are not within a reasonable range of other admitted students, no matter how athletically gifted they may be nor how close of a personal relationship the applicant has managed to develop with the coach.
I do think that yield protection is a very big concern of the admissions departments of the most selective boarding schools.
@AppleNotFar maybe not so different after all. We were certainly asked about grades and test scores - in fact we led with them. My son took the SSAT’s before we contacted coaches and scored in the very high 90’s. We wanted to have the grades in hand so that the coaches at the extremely selective schools we limited ourselves to knew they weren’t wasting their time talking to a kid who couldn’t get in. The plan worked, except he had to take the test again as most schools want the test to be taken during the academic year of the application. He wasn’t very happy about that!
I honestly cant remember if they asked if we would require financial aid, but my comment about confidentiality relates to the financial aid application and their formula and the documents in support of it, which is what generates the calculated need number - I’m not sure if coaches would have access to that information.
I never meant to suggest that a coach could get a kid in who wasn’t otherwise qualified. That might occur at some schools, but not many within the top third of BS. The biggest two might be an exception to this - someone has to drag their SSAT averages down to 94, after all.
I didn’t consider yield - you have a point there!
This is an interesting discussion- I suspect everyone who has gone through it might have a slightly different viewpoint colored by their experiences at the schools they dealt with - I would love to hear from a boarding school AO as to how it really works!!!
LOL @Korab1, there’s A LOT I’d love to hear about from a boarding school AO or two! 
Best wishes to your kid!!
thanks - same to you!
@Korab1 your son is applying this year? Last year SSAT changed internal policies so they kept scores for 2 years. Some of S’s classmates who took a spring SSAT in 7th grade were able to use scores (mostly at local day schools). I though more schools would accept spring SSAT scores this year. Thanks for the update.
@MA2012 yes - he is applying this year. He took the SSAT during a month i wont mention prior to September of 2016, but had to take it again because it was not during the school year of his application. As I understand it, some schools will accept an older test, some wont.