Hello. I hope you are all staying safe.
My son is beginning to look at boarding schools. He is doing remote learning now, but he will be entering the seventh grade next year.
He is very academic and dislikes sport. He has told me he is interested in a boarding school, but is worried about bullying. He wants to attend a school that has strong placement in the top universities.
We intend to visit these four schools when it is possible. Please let me know any pertinent information.
Hi!
Those four are definitely great schools, but as you probably already know, quite hard to get into. I would consider expanding your list to add some less selective, but still great schools.
Bullying shouldn’t be much of a problem, and I don’t see why it would be worse in boarding schools vs public/day school.
Also, you said your kid is entering 7th next year, right? Are you applying for 9th in 8th grade? Groton has an 8th grade class which you can try to apply for next year, although, again, it’s extremely selective.
I would recommend some schools, although I would need to know more about your kid- What EC’s are important to him? Which subjects does he like most at school? Would he prefer larger or smaller schools?
sorry my post’s kinda a mess, although I hope you found that helpful 
Thank you for the reply.
He is certainly better at the humanities than maths/science, although he is quite competent in the latter as well.
He is entering the seventh grade, but we thought we would get a head start on at least considering some schools when (or if) quarantine ends.
Most boarding schools will have a sports requirement, but if he really dislikes sports, you might want to dig deeper into the school’s culture and into the flexibility of the requirements.
You’ve mentioned four very well known schools, but there are dozens more that are worth researching and learning about. All will have stellar teachers, small class sizes, and lots of opportunity.
Think about whether a large school that feels like a small college and offers lots of autonomy will serve him best… or whether a smaller school might be a better fit. There is a dedicated thread somewhere about the pros and cons of each.
Some additional New England schools to consider: Tabor Academy, St. Mark’s School, Berkshire, Millbrook, Darrow, Northfield Mount Hermon…
A mid-Atlantic school with a particularly kind and inclusive culture: St. Andrew’s School in Delaware. George School is also worth considering.
And if your kid wants a break from the winter cold, there’s always Cate, Thacher, and Midland.
Poke around the websites from the schools above and see what you think.
Will you need financial aid to be able to attend?
Time is on your side here, so take advantage of that! With nearly two years before you would need to make a final decision about where to attend, and more than 1.5 years before you need to make a decision about where to apply, I might consider having a much larger list to consider loosely now. By that I mean, sign up for catalogues, check websites, and do some poking around here. Also, I will add that I think the next six months are going to be an odd time, so I’m not sure it’s going to be prime info-gathering space for a family who has the luxury of waiting a bit. You likely won’t be able to do the early “pre-visits” that we saw some schools offer 7th graders, for example. With all the craziness going on with Covid, I think admissions might be pretty busy pivoting their processes to manage next year’s cycle, so they may not be as available to dive deep into the following year’s cycle as early as we might hope.
In any case, I might suggest that it is way early to be honing your list down to four schools. (Four great schools, but also: four VERY different ones!).
Also, as mentioned, these are four very competitive schools in terms of admissions.
Perhaps consider taking a step back and looking at a wider selection of schools? Take a peek at some of the results threads or M10 freakout threads here to get a sense for the realities of the application cycle, and how many great kids get shut out after only applying to a few schools.
This isn’t to scare you at all! There are SO many amazing schools out there! If you really do the research and do the application process right, you will have options if you want them. And I personally do not believe that you have to be the stellar SSAT whiz to get into top schools. (more on that another day, if you care to ask…)
So, if I were to suggest a timeline to a friend applying to boarding school, it might be something like this:
Now: consider 10-30 schools, depending on your interest in doing this kind of research, and your desire to be sure to have options come 9th grade. (If local public school is awesome and you consider that a great option, then you can be more “go big or go home” in your application strategy.)
Late Summer 2021 (summer before interviews): Narrow down to an interview schedule/visits of say 8-15 schools, expecting that you will find maybe 20% of those not to be good fits, so you will drop them from the application process after interviewing.
Fall/Winter: Apply to the schools you felt are good fits – so maybe 6-12 of those schools, depending on how wide a net you cast (read: are you including less competitive options), and how important it is to go to boarding school. (Because there are plenty of great kids who apply to six schools and get into zero. Again, not to scare you; just to be clear now, and not in January of 2022 when you are stressed that you have applications at only these four schools and realize that your DS might end up nowhere.)
Anyway, I hope that is helpful. If it is not, then disregard what doesn’t feel right for you and your family.
Bullying: I would worry less about bullying in BS than in LDS or LPS. Do you know what might be behind his concerns? I ask because if it’s because he has always been the “smart” kid or the “nerdy” kid, and that’s not super celebrated in his public school system, I think he might be pleasantly surprised by how much that is celebrated in many BS settings. You mentioned not being sporty, but I’d love to hear more about your son so we could make some suggestions for your preliminary list.
College matriculation – you’ll hear different versions of this throughout the board here, but basically the advice can be boiled down into: all of these schools will prepare your son well, and comparing matriculation lists is hard to do because of the impact of legacies and sports recruits. Bottom line: don’t go to BS because you want to improve chances of getting into a top college. (I’m paraphrasing and shortcutting, but didn’t want not to address your question.)
All great schools. All very different. I’d agree with the above to expand your list. Every kid applying to these top schools is academic. It’s likely he’ll prefer one over the other.