Hi,
Our family probably makes enough money to be unqualified for FA. But it will be a stretch for us to pay the $60k+ expenses for DD. I saw merit based scholarships mentioned in some posts. Could you please name some schools that offer such scholarships? I have not seen one in my research.
Thank you in advance.
You really have to look and ask at the schools you plan to apply to. There can also be specific scholarships available which the school might tell you about should you/your child be in consideration or meet the qualifications. Best to maybe ask the admissions office.
If this is your current situation, scholarships outside of school will be your best friend. Lots of big corporations have them and there’s also a lot of essay-first ones available. It’s slightly late to start looking in to them, but there’s still plenty of cash to be had
Several years ago, DS got some merit $ from George School (in PA.) And as everyone here knows, we were so happy with the place, we’ve probably given in back in donations over the years multiples of what we got.
Definitely worth looking into!
You can do a search on boarding school review dot com and click on “merit scholarships” to get a solid first list.
Are you planning to apply for fall 2021? Or fall 2022? Deadlines are around the corner so just wanted to give you the heads up.
Also check out some school calculators on their FA pages. You may qualify for FA — boarding schools are pretty generous with the income requirements.
Someone mentioned outside sources and businesses but not sure if that really applies to boarding schools or if that’s just a college thing? In any case, I have not heard of those options as being big sources of BS tuition.
Thanks everyone for your thoughts. Very helpful.
I have to say the dual income families like ours are probably in the worst situation in terms of financials. We are both in an industry that is experiencing a lot of reductions. Although we make decent money now but the huge uncertainty is always there…
DD is applying for fall 21. Didn’t plan to apply mostly due to the concerns about financials. But I also feel sorry for DD knowing that she may miss some great opportunities due to our concerns. Anyways, We let her give it a try. We will see what happens on M10. Worst case it’s a learning opportunity for her to see different things outside of the public schools and know that there are many many excellent kids out there.
She started about a month ago. Hopefully we can get first draft done by end of year. SSAT early January.
Don’t forget some of the items that are required might be outside of your control. For example, transcripts from school and teacher recommendations.
You can absolutely cram the essays and parent statements (although may not be recommended) but some schools/teachers may not enjoy writing the recommendations under a short deadline pressure.
Our short list of schools has the first deadlines of Jan 15th and I’m tracking the recommendation forms online. Some haven’t been done yet despite being requested before Thanksgiving.
Good luck.
Wyoming Seminary in Kingston PA (near Scranton/Wilkes-Barre) offers merit scholarships. But you’ve missed the deadline for 21-22. Maybe give them a call and see if there’s any wiggle room:
@G07b10 I will partially disagree with you about dual income families being the worst off. BS FA is very generous, and most schools automatically calculate a second income into single-income family EFC anyway.
I know I said it before but I would really recommend looking at the calculators online. I think you will be surprised.
You definitely can get things going for 2021, but you will need to work with purpose here as time is short, and you will need recommendations, etc…
Regarding SSATs – if your child is a great test taker and can do it without prep, then great plan. But if the prep time means taking away time from essays and interviews, then personally, I would think about skipping the SSATs as they are not required this year. Just my opinion as I have a really good grasp of the work that the application cycle requires, having done it it last year with one daughter and this year with another.
First step though: get a list of schools and get those interviews scheduled.
Also, I might suggest prioritizing schools that use SAO.
I don’t know what kind of school you are looking for, but if you want to share more, I know that many folks would be happy to chime in to help you create a first list quickly.
Here are some of those financial aid calculators mentioned. I’ve noticed that BS’s give financial aid even to families making 300k (As shown in this table from Brooks School: https://www.brooksschool.org/uploaded/Admission/Family_Contribution_by_Income_Bands_19-20.pdf?1570028227771), so hopefully you’ll find that you’ll be able to afford a boarding school even without external scholarships!
Hotchkiss: http://hotchkissmedia.org/financialaid/estimator.php
Exeter: https://www.exeter.edu/admissions-and-financial-aid/tuition-financial-aid/am-i-eligible-financial-aid
Choate: https://www.choate.edu/admission/tuition-and-financial-aid/financial-aid-profiler
Thanks all!
The reason for taking the SSAT is that she will apply to Nobles. It’s a day school less than 10 minutes from home.
We have a pretty good public school so she is only aiming at some very good schools- PA, PEA, DA, and Choate. BS is a good to have but not a must have. I have read many posts on CC and understand that most people will cast a much wider net. But in our situation our idea is if you go, make it count. Worst case she can’t go but learns a lot from the application process.
@G07b10 Totally reasonable strategy!
We felt the same way last year for DD2 when she applied: if she is going to leave our dining room table, then it better be for a truly special experience; in your words, it needed “to count.”
What I will share next, feel free to ignore if it doesn’t feel right for your situation –
The one thing I would say now to the me of a year ago: that truly special experience can be had at a LOT more than just the “tippy top” schools. My DD2 last year applied to mostly that bunch, since that’s what we visited last year on our big trip to New England (and she ended up at one of those schools this year as a 9th grader). But my DD3 who is applying now, is applying to exactly zero of those schools, including the school where she would be a sibling legacy now. She is absolutely “smart enough” to go, but we are wiser now and realize that there are SO many amazing schools and we are really zero-ing in on what is the right fit for her.
PA, PEA, DA, and Choate are amazing schools in their own right for sure. But what they have in common more than anything else is really: prestige. And 2020 me now would tell 2019 me: prestige has very little to do with fit and very little to do with boarding school being an experience “that counts” and very little to do with academic worthiness.
Again, just one mom’s experience, so take what is helpful and leave the rest. And your approach is less likely to end in the heartache of an empty spot at the dinner table, so I wouldn’t blame anyone for going that route either. (Says the woman now facing potentially 2 empty spots next fall…)
Really appreciate your thoughts. those are the things we struggle with. I hate to see her go. The whole family will be. My son will miss his big sister. The empty seat at the dinner table, can’t imagine that scene. She went to CTY for 3 weeks but we knew she’d be back in 3 weeks. If she leaves this time, I will never see her other than holidays. Not sure if I m ready.
The other thing is the pressure on academics. She’s good, but certainly not the 99th percentile kids. I have experienced some of the toughest competitions in high school and I know what it’s like. I hope she will be in an environment that everyone cares about academics. We agree that coming out on top is not the goal. The goal is to become a better person. It seems those schools will likely have what it takes.
We didn’t go by rankings. Those are the schools that we know for a long time, and some of her friends go there. She is looking to continue with clarinet, swimming and volleyball. It looks like those schools have good teams. Unfortunately we didn’t get a chance to visit the schools to see live action but we did check out the campuses.
If she doesn’t get in any, I will be happy at the dinner table. I just hope she is okay then. Maybe she realizes that she needs to be better. That will be my goal achieved.
@Calliemomofgirls May I ask why you recommend SAO over Gateway?
If you have an application already started in an application in SAO, would recommendation letters and transcripts automatically transfer to the newly added school? We just decided to add a school, Blair, that uses both Gateway and SAO. In both portals, everything is already in except the essays. I am trying to figure out which one would be easier to use.
@G07b10
Sounds like you have a good strategy. And even if you can’t visit this fall, having friends who attend those schools will be really helpful! We knew absolutely no one in the boarding school world so we were pretty surprised by the level of pressure that my daughter faced as a new freshman this year. You hear that those schools are 4 hours of homework a night but I guess we didn’t fully believe it. We were naive in that regard. Smartest kid at our public middle school is a whole different thing from what she experienced this year.
@chemsider SAO and Gateway have pros and cons. SAO was my suggestion in this case because time is so short and it is a truly standard application, whereas gateway has some common components but is not a common app. Most notably, the essays are school-specific in gateway.
As for the recommendations — in gateway, the teacher can select whether their recommendation can be auto-submitted to any school or not. Last year we added a school on gateway and had one teacher who had not checked that box so we had to reach out and have her approve a new school. It wasn’t a big deal but it was just a tiny hassle to have to reach out and explain that she wanted to add a new school. On SAO, the entire application goes out immediately the minute you pay a school’s fee to any new school. That said, the recommendations in SAO are, from what I hear, less robust. (Note I have also written more extensively about gateway vs SAO last year with a bunch of differences and then wrote this year about a frustration with the “extra” recommendations added this year to SAO that didn’t exist last year.)
All that said, the schools discussed by the OP are in gateway only so SAO schools would only come into play if adding additional schools. For you adding Blair, unless the gateway essays match up to another school’s essays, then SAO would be easier/faster.
Also — leave yourself plenty of time for the cut and paste exercise into the portal as the character counts can be fussy in gateway. (At least they were last year. This year, we are doing only SAO for DD3.)
@Calliemomofgirls
Just curious, I feel that you are not very satisfied with the school your daughter is in now mostly because of the pressure on academics. Could you please share your thoughts on the things that you don’t like?
The friends she talked to and the parents we talked to all had only good things to say. I wonder if they are biased, or maybe their experience is truly wonderful but not all people’s are.
I have warned my daughter about the homework. The worst thing is not the time and effort she puts in, it’s that after all the time and effort, she is still not where she wants to be. Everyone comes in the best in their schools, and not everyone can be best in the new school. But as long as people are nice and supportive, it won’t be too bad.
@G07b10 I don’t get the impression @Calliemomofgirls is not satisfied. I think all of us that come from a non-BS background are surprised at the caliber and rigor of academics at BS versus LPS. I know we were. DS was. Prior to leaving, he was top in his class without ever doing homework or studying for tests. EVER. That is NOT the case at most of the BS’s, if any. There is a dramatic difference in the rigor, even at the lesser known BS’s who aren’t considered “rigorous”. (Note-- this may not be true for those of you in Massachussetts, where the Public school system is top-notch, but it is for many of us coming from different parts of the country)
Totally understood and agreed. I looked at my daughter’s homework and tests, and I can assure you that schools in MA are not much better. Things may change in high school though. Some states have G&T programs that may be better than schools in MA. We don’t have those here.
@G07b10
I think @buuzn03 is getting it right: we were just surprised. Like many families pre-admission we sort of glossed over the 4-hours of homework and just assumed if she could get in then it must mean it would all be really doable. And my daughter absolutely stepped up to the plate and got fantastic grades this past trimester. And I was blown away by how well she organized herself and developed tremendous discipline, which I saw in action myself when school went remote in November. But I’ll admit — it was a lot.
And while DD2 is super high energy with a lot of stamina, my DD3 is less so and would not enjoy doing 4 hours of home work a night for 4 years. She wants to be an engineer and wants to explore things like robotics club and coding club, which she will never have the energy for after 4-5 hours of homework. (It’s fair to say that if it takes my DD2 four hours a night, it would probably take my DD3 more like 4.5 hours.). We decided to seek schools with 3 hours or less homework a night and I had zero qualms about asking about workload this year in the application process. (Last year I would have been too worried to bring this up but I found that many AOs are very happy to talk about expected workload and were very up front and honest.)
I mention it because you said something about not wanting crazy academic pressure. The focus on CC can be so much on just getting past those crazy admissions numbers without giving enough thought to the workload.
Some caveats —
I will say that my kids may well be less prepared than others going to BS. Top kids but public schools in a good district. No crazy-advanced geniuses here taking calculus in 8th grade. Just regular old middle school with an hour or (rarely) two of homework a night. (That said, both my husband and I have MBAs from top universities so we are no strangers to the inside of a classroom. Which is why it surprised us all the more I suppose.).
I’ll also add that perhaps the workload would have felt more pleasant had this not been a COVID year where many of the upsides of boarding school weren’t at play.
And, it turns out, a lot of kids seem to love that kind of workload and thrive in that daily grind. So it may be a total dream come true for some kids finally to have the workload to energize their brains. (Thinking of the middle school calculus kiddos — this rigor would be a relief I would think.)
And finally — I’ll call out again that it was doable. My daughter’s grades are very good. But the workload/homework time to get there - I fully underestimated and that I don’t think gets enough air time in the admissions process.
FWIW — I do think that daughters school is truly top notch and academics are world class.
Got it. It’s really the fit that matters. I totally agree. My son on the other hand is not ready for such competitive and challenging environment. He probably will stay in public schools. I think my daughter wants the challenge so I will let her give it a try.
I guess I can wait till M10 to worry about these things. Maybe I don’t need to think about this by then and am happy to have her with me at the dinner table for 4 more years.
One quick question - for the personal or parent essays, do we need to write as much as the maximum letters allowed? Will shorter ones be seen as lack of effort?