Last year, we were amongst the increasing number of overseas and domestic applicants to day schools who apply over a broad region (for us, our native New England) and then move to wherever their child ends up attending school. This amounts to sort of a boarding school on wheels, or reverse boarding school experience — with the parent being, well, the house parent. I ended up being that parent, with my spouse still in Europe.
I haven’t seen much on this phenomenon being discussed on cc, so figured I would, as an erstwhile lurker, start a thread. Our son was entering 7th grade, but I am sure that many families are doing this for 9th and earlier grades as well. Here are some observations, based on my own experience focused on the New England (not the NYC) region:
- The “7th grade” issue. In our case, our son was having a bad experience with the rote pedagogy — and lack of differentiation — at a public school in western Europe. Absent any international or private school alternatives where we lived, we couldn’t wait 2 more years for boarding school; this was the obvious solution. (We felt our son was not ready to board at a jbs.)
For others living abroad whose children do attend an international school, or those living elsewhere in the U.S. with the ability to move to the elite day school-laden northeast, the motivations may be somewhat different, but still compelling. One likely overriding consideration: many of these schools start in 7th grade and go through 12th. The high school issue is thereby “solved” in one fell swoop — and one family move.
- The “college outcomes” issue. Many of these day schools’ college matriculation lists compare favorably to top boarding schools, and many (though not all) are likely easier to get into than similar quality boarding schools. This applies not only for 7th grade entry to 7-12 schools, and pre-9th grade entry to K-12 schools at established entry points; it applies in many cases for 9th grade entry as well.
Some New England examples (defined as excluding Fairfield county) where this admissions leveraging, vis a vis similar quality boarding schools, is likely the case for at least some grades: Nobles, Hopkins in New Haven, Belmont Hill, Winsor, Milton, BB&N, Bancroft in Worcester, Moses Brown and Wheeler in Providence, and Waynflete in Portland. (Roxbury Latin is an exception: the non-legacy, non-Boston resident admissions rate is probably under 5%.)
My point is that these day schools are, at the very least, a viable boarding school alternative from the standpoint of college outcomes, and the financial aid offered by most (though by no means all) of these schools is equally as generous.
- The “fit” issue. In my experience, the “right fit for this school” rhetoric — at least for 7th grade admissions — was a red herring. (I mean this from the school admissions perspective, not from the parental one.)
Let me explain. Several schools spent the bulk of my son’s interview time quizzing him on academics — math questions, vocabulary, writing, even spelling in one case. One school asked these types of academic achievement questions during a substantial portion of the interview and, because that was apparently not enough, administered an IQ test thereafter. Unfortunately, there was a direct correlation here: those schools most espousing the importance of character and “fit” in their admissions materials spent, by a wide margin, the most time issuing yet another round of academic testing to our son — and the least amount of time figuring out who the interviewee, as an individual, was. That is not to say that these are not great character-building schools once students get there; but to say that this is an important criterion for admissions is laughable, the proof being in the interview pudding.
The two K-12 schools my son applied to were different on this front: their philosophy was for the student to spend the day there as a student. Interview questions for both my son and myself at these schools were friendly and laid back. No additional round of academic testing was proffered. Indeed, one interview with my son was very short because the admissions officer could tell he was having so much fun at a chess activity and didn’t want to pull him from that (I saw this as a major plus for the school).
- The “Latin” issue. This is not something that applicants to boarding schools come across much nowadays, but many prominent day schools are still stuck in their middle school Latin ways. For someone like my son, fluent in English (we are American) and near fluent or fluent in two European languages, including a Latin-based romance language, this turned out to be a big issue. Namely, what a school chooses to do or not do with Latin in the 7th grade determines its modern foreign language offerings. In general, my son would not have been able to take his modern language at schools with an inflexible Latin requirement. Since we were worried about his losing near-fluency in one of his languages, this was dispositive — an ironic outcome, in that he is a polyglot, humanities-type kid in the same, larger classical tradition which the Latin requirement is ostensibly there to preserve.
I would be interested in others’ experience with or reaction to what I term the “move where my child gets in” phenomenon, whether for the 7th or earlier grades, or for the high school years. It has worked out for us in that it is nice being back in our native New England, my son attends a great school, and my spouse and I really did have to get our son out of that European public school. Family circumstances have changed, though, and my son might have to go the boarding school route in 9th grade after all — in which case I will be in need of your advice later this summer!