<p>Neato I completely agree with you on that.
It’s something a lot of people obsess over and would like to discuss about. Including me.</p>
<p>Thank YOU for the forum. Problem is…I found it too late. I have a student at a school that I would not have selected if there were a sub school forum.Many of the prep schools don’t have parent groups, including the one my child attends. The purpose of that, we believe, is to prevent communication among parents. That is truly detrimental, because we can help the school, our students and each other. Anyway. kudos for your leadership, and I find myself checking this forum daily for news about our school, as that is the one way I can find out what’s going on.</p>
<p>It would be helpful to have specific sub forums, as someone mentioned earlier, dedicated to each school. It’s somewhat jumbled up together and requires a lot of searching to find info I’m looking for. Thanks!</p>
<p>I think that it is good to have one ‘schools’ forum so that folks can see discussion on all schools. Folks can tag specific school names so that they can be more easily searched. I think Financial Aid (FA) is probably very important as a sep. forum, with info about who gives what amount, what a school’s philosophy is about it (there are big diffs btw schools) and % of kids on it and how much the avg. award is… Chances, IMHO, isn’t as important as Touring/Interviewing - w/be cool to hear about folks’ experience doing tours/interview, both in terms of what was asked and what was observed.</p>
<p>I would like to see a forum or site for prep/boarding schools much like the format of student review.com
It would be easier to research a school rather than just read about bragging rights.</p>
<p>Can you rearrange the individual “official” (some seem moreso than others) school threads into geo regions to make it easier to search?</p>
<p>Also, what about a “Middle School Enrichment” subforum under “pre-college issues”…there are tons that 7th and 8th grade families should know about summer programs, talent searches, testing, etc…would be nice to have it here, so there’s a continuum of education…middle, prep/boarding HS, college…</p>
<p>One thing which would be useful is make the prep schools like colleges are on this forum. Each of the HADES and other top tier schools have their own sub forum and also a page with applicant stats. That would be really useful. Thanks!</p>
<p>^ that would be amazing…but I don’t think it would work well. There just aren’t enough people to make that kind of thing successful. For example, the CC Top College section has probably over 10,000 visitors…(that might be a strech though), while the Prep-School section probably only has 500, out of which only 50 are members who go on regularly. I think the only way a CC Top Prep School section would be successful would only be if the Prep-School section had more visitors/members… Also, if you do create something like that, it would be a little…unfair. Some schools will most definitely not get their own section, and if they do they’ll probably get no visitors whatsoever (NMH, for example, is a great school but I bet only 5 people would visit its sub section, same would go for schools like…Kent, St. Georges, St. Marks, Cate, Thacher, Loomis Chaffee - schools that are in the top 30 but aren’t mentioned enough). The only schools that would actually get some sort of attention would be Hotchkiss, Andover, Exeter, Deerfield, Choate, Groton, Milton, and Middlesex, since these are the only schools people on CC seem to be interested in. </p>
<p>Hope that made sense :)</p>
<p>I oppose separate sub sections because it would make it more difficult for kids to be exposed to what I consider the national top 10 schools that are located in California (Thacher and Cate). There are way fewer boarding schools of merit than colleges so it is especially important that this site be organized in a way that encourages awareness of non-HADES schools, a behavior of looking around and seeing what’s out there. Sub sections will make people more insular, as if they’re not insular enough.</p>
<p>@JoshByron,
You’re probably right. The Prep School section doesn’t get as many visitors as the college section does. And also only a few schools would get any attention. Schools like St. George’s and Thatcher would get like no attention. But maybe just a page for Exeter or Andover…?</p>
<p>^^ I agree with ThacherParent.</p>
<p>@ifax, I don’t think that would be a good idea. Reread ThacherParent’s post - by making pages just for Exeter and Andover you are drifting applicants away from all the other schools and into thinking that Exeter and Andover are the only boarding schools worth applying to. Just like ThacherParent said, by making a section on just Exeter and Andover you’d be making people more insular.</p>
<p>Having Geo Regions on the first page would make groups of schools easier to find. For example, we are looking nearly exclusively at at New England Schools, and having a “New England BS” where all the sub threads of individual schools that met the geographic criteria would make life easier.</p>
<p>The Thacher/Cate crowd would be likewise accommodated because they would fall into the “Pacific BS” region (or whatever)…which I think would be better for them than having to do battle with the zillion other threads in the general section below.</p>
<p>Additionally, there was poster recently who was looking for schools within a certain geo radius…and while she might have to toggle between two geo subsections, it would be helpful.</p>
<p>Just my 2¢ as a prospective BS parent.</p>
<p>As East Coasters, I never considered Thacher seriously. Why would I, since so many great institutions were “local”? But my son kept seeing the occasional stray comment about Thacher during his review of the New England schools, which prompted a closer look online, followed by begging and pleading to go visit, followed by a complete reversal of my own East Coast prejudice, followed by application/admission to Thacher, followed by the best four years ever. I wonder whether Thacher would have caught his attention if the Schools had been divided geographically and I had said “look at East Coast schools only.” With only a small number of meritorious boarding schools in the U.S., there’s something to be said for leaving them unorganized on the site so that random kids can have random “aha” moments when something catches their attention. </p>
<p>All of this being said, if there were any sectioning at all, geography would be the best approach.</p>
<p>Although what ThacherParent says is true, I do disagree that sections on geagraphic regions would work the best - there would probably only be two sections, the Pacific BS, like SevenDad stated, and then New England. Those are the only areas mentioned on this forum, and even hearing someone talk about boarding schools on the West Coast (Cate, Thacher, Stevenson, and Webb are really the only ones, whereas New England has around 30+ that are constantly mentioned) is incredibly rare. If we were to section it using geographic regions, I think by state would work the best…</p>
<p>**Mass: **Andover, Milton, Middlesex, Groton, St. Mark’s, NMH, Tabor, Deerfield, Berkshire, Dana Hall, Concord
**Connecticut: **Hotchkiss, Kent, Choate, Loomis Chaffee, Miss Porter’s
**Rhode Island: **St. George’s<br>
**New Jersey: **L’ville, Peddie, Blair
**New Hampshire: **St. Paul’s, Exeter
**NY: **Masters
**California: **Thacher, Cate, Stevenson, Webb
**Delaware: **St. Andrew’s
Pennsylvania: Mercersburg, the Hill, George
Vermont: Putney</p>
<p>Although, on second though, maybe sub-sections would be a bad idea…but, by continuing the way we are, applicants will still only be exposed to HADES and schools of the same caliber instead of trying to find schools that match what they are looking for.</p>
<p>@ThacherParent: True. As an East Coaster, I had never heard of either Thacher or Cate until seeing them mentioned in some random thread along the way. I did check them out, but feel that 6 hour plane ride (vs. 6 hour car ride) is a bridge too far for us.</p>
<p>@JoshByron: You are forgetting a bunch of other Middle Atlantic schools that would be interesting to some folks lurking around here. Not to mention the schools of the South and Texas.</p>
<p>^Yes, which proves my point - New England is mainly the only area mentioned on this forum, so by creating sub-sections we’d just continue the trend of only mentioning New England boarding schools.</p>
<p>I think we should leave it like it is now, but create a main thread for each school, like the andover, exeter, sps, and deerfield ones that usually dominate the first page. </p>
<p>There should be a thread for most schools: School X (Town, State). Then all of the information about a school will be located mostly in this main thread and can be easily searched for if it falls several pages behind. It will also give us the “randomness” that we all seem to like, when someone adds more information to the thread it will bring the school to everyone’s attention.</p>