<p>I am curious how long it will take my daughter to figure out that I will say yes to anything, ANYTHING she wants to do with me between now and September. Drive you to your friend's house? Sure. Help you clean your room? Absolutely. Watch Gilmore Girls for the 8th time? Fire it up.</p>
<p>lol, I wish my mom would do stuff like that.</p>
<p>To parents of bs kids:</p>
<p>I've been trying to convince my mom to let me apply to boarding school for ages. Her reply varies, but it's always a firm No. Usually, she talks about the limited time I have to spend with my nuclear family, or how I need to establish relationships with my siblings or I'll never create them. My family is close, but not obscenely so. We are all sarcastic, and enjoy spending time together. Unfortunately, because of the myriad activities my sibs, parents, and I partake in, we aren't around each other as much as we'd like. We have sit-down dinners almost nightly, and movie nights,and shopping sprees, and vacations. And I would miss that, maybe more than my mom. But I have a sneaking suspicion that her fear of family ties stems from her disenfranchised family of eight, her status as the youngest, and growing up in a NYC suburb that rivals the Upper East Side in pretense. She associates boarding school with distant families, misbehaving kids, way-to-rich-for-their-own-good legacies, and lost childhood. How can I convince her that BS, especially A/E and my state's FREE science and math school, are none of those things? Or, and this is probably the biggest problem, how do I make her WANT to listen?</p>
<p>Here's the basics:
I'm in ninth grade, which means I'd need to apply for 11th. I know schools practice attrition (at least behind closed doors), and that the transition's rough, but honestly? It'd suck more to stay where I am now.</p>
<p>I'm in a public school with an IB program. While the academics are "rigorous," they're not focused. My classes have 35-40 kids in them on average, and the teachers really don't care. Unfortunately, at the local private day school, teachers care, but the academics aren't rigorous. I want 1) diversity (offered by current public) 2) resources, aka non-crumbling facilities and "connections" (offered to some extent by local private) and 3) tough academics.</p>
<p>I'm in North Carolina. Hours away (by plane) from Exeter, which would be my ideal. Makes the whole, "No, Mom, we'll totally be BFF's still!" kinda hard to pull off.</p>
<p>I'm on the debate team, and would want those opportunities available.</p>
<p>I love Latin, Greek, French, and Arabic, and have only had time to learn "un peau de francais," and not terribly extensively (I want to be at least bilingual during my lifetime).</p>
<p>I love writing, and art, but I don't need an arts school, just the resources of devoted faculty and a few paintbrushes.</p>
<p>I am a nerd at heart, but here, I don't want to scare people away with it. I want an environment where extracurriculars, classes, and friendship are not compartmentalized. With the abundance of busy work this year (as compared to my tiny but incredibly rigorous middle school), I've grown detached from school and don't really enjoy it. I'm always the "has-the-answer" go-to girl, and I feel like a fish out of water--I need motivated peers to really make me learn, not lazy teachers and sleeping classmates. I've tried to dive into debate and reading and socializing, but it's so hard to do everything I love because my school is so large that my diverse range of activities all involve completely different sets of people. My out of school activities make my mom drive all over the place, and at the most obscure hours, and I really don't feel like I can be everything I want to be with my current setup.</p>
<p>Does anyone have advice for how to approach my mom? Maybe a parent who felt the same things? And sorry for the Sad Saga, if it came off whiny!</p>
<p>glassesarechic - You sound like the perfect candidate for BS and extremely articulate to boot! I suggest you show your mother this CC site and also share your post above with her. Have her visit the TABs website: TABS:</a> The Association of Boarding Schools and look at "Dispelling Myths About Boarding Schools". See if you can get her to visit a school with you.</p>
<p>Maybe your list will include schools that are closer to home than Exeter. How about Asheville for example? I think many people on this thread would agree that a top education can be had at many BSs and the BS experience itself is valuable.</p>
<p>laxtaxi - congrats on your daughter deciding to attend NMH. I believe there are 5 of us now from the CC... Does your daughter play lacrosse?</p>
<p>laxtaxi - congrats on your daughter deciding to attend NMH. I believe there are 5 of us now from the CC... Does your daughter play lacrosse?</p>
<p>thanks, and yes. hence the name! lots of driving to and from lax practice and games. we're really happy for her as we think she and NMH are a very good fit.</p>
<p>Creative and Grejuni, thank you for your advice. Asheville is an excellent school as well, but I think what would make the biggest difference for my mother, if she allowed me to go, would be if all that money and missed parenting would be channeled into superior opportunities. Not just the opportunity to live with peers, but to meet international students and, for example, attend a Columbia seminar with members of Exeter's student paper (I need to get off their website, haha). </p>
<p>I think what will open the gates will be a family sit-down and lots of BS literature (like this site!).</p>
<p>Had a little conversation with my S during the drive from school, HE WAS NOT SURE ABOUT GOING TO BS !</p>
<p>-- Mom, xx High is a great school, I can learn a lot here"
-- There is a new auditorium coming this spring, we will have a concert there, it is really great facility ..."
-- xx (the BS) is about the same level (SAT average) like xx High, why we spend that money for BS ?
-- I'm doing fine here, coach likes me.</p>
<p>I was kind of shocked! After all the hard work, sent deposit already, now he is hesitate! Is this normal because he will leave all his friends and going to a new place? What should I do?</p>
<p>I think it is normal for kids to have second thoughts...especially if they are getting pressure from friends not to leave. Change is scary.</p>
<p>I definitely got a lot of those comments, arling. D gets a lot of pressure from her current group of friends to stay and there are lots of good reasons. I think it's better to agree about all the good things about his current school has and leave the BS thing alone. I think he is not just getting cold feet, but validating his current experience. I know my D hates it if she overhears me telling someone "we're thinking of BS because X is wrong with her current school." She is very defensive about her current school, which in fact shows a good spirit.</p>
<p>My son doesn't want me to tell anyone yet, though he is excited and I think nervous at the same time. There are a few kids from his small private school going to BS, so he's not the only one. But I don't want to let on to him how hard it will be for me to see him leave, so I'm trying to be very upbeat -- had a cake with the school's name on it the night that we sent in the contract, etc. The thing is, we just sent letter to the local high schools that he had been accepted at, giving away our spots.....so no turning back now!</p>
<p>Speaking of why are we doing this, now that S is on waitlist for best DS in thsi city, I am also having second thoughts. I was a DS student also, but that was yrs ago. Today with a great pubic suburban high school with 20+ AP courses, no gangs, no trouble, only 4 miles form home, why am I willing to fork over almost 20k/year (of mostly borrowed money) and have to drive him 20 miles each way daily for the priv. of sending him to x DS? I'm not saying it wouldn't be worth it for the friendships and connections in the city, but is the benefit in education going to justify the problems of the change if he gets off waitlist? I'm not saying I wouldn't prefer to do it if I could write checks, but it makes me wonder why I am working so hard for it...I know plenty of people who are most successful and they went to state universities, private universities with great scholarships, etc. Anyone have any compelling arguments or opinions for or against? He is a top student, 99% on the SSAT and 97% on the PSAT.....</p>
<p>Hopeful Dad - we have been reviewing the same thoughts - we decided to make a simple pros and cons list and it quickly became clear to us to continue with BS. That your child is going to ds is a bit different but there must have been some reason in the beginning for you to pursue the DS option. We went back to our original reason, being with other intelligent, engaged kids on a regular basis--this what our s wants most so that among other things weighed most heavily. good luck.</p>
<p>It seems many of us are on the same page.
I just read a post from an Exeter student that they average 5 - 6 hours of sleep a night. Another post stated students under huge pressure to get into Ivy league (from school which is rated by #, by peers for bragging rights, and by parents for "I spent...."). WHAT ARE WE DOING?
Even a post above comparing an excellent school (Asheville) to "superior opportunities".<br>
At first, I wanted my daughter to go to Andover, Exeter, SPS and now am happy that she is on the waiting list at those and accepted to one where they don't have as high an Ivy league, but the Navy feels is the best spot to send their postgrads as well as one Ivy league football program - they send their kids to the "best school to fit the kid" including the many small top liberal arts school.</p>
<p>In the past, the grads from Exeter, Andover, etc became the leaders of the country. But who were these people? They were the Bushes, Kennedys, etc. Now that the schools are taking others than the scions of America, will they be any different from the few excellent public schools in this aspect? I don't think so.</p>
<p>Local boy says it right. to be with other intelligent engaged kids on a regular basis. That is what we should be wanting. Not for our kids to be pressured to go to Harvard, or get 5 - 6 hours of sleep per night.</p>
<p>ps glass.</p>
<p>You should rethink your "wants". Asheville has one of the best reputations in the country. If it were in the NE, it would probably be in the top tier. If it was further from home, my daughter would have gone there (whe wants more than an hour away). And it does have a good international flavor. The NC S and M school IS one of the best schools in the country. In fact, it is probably far superior than any of the "the ten". If it is an education you want, you probably cannot do better than the above two.</p>
<p>^^^ Ditto on the two excellent posts above. Gone are the days where three schools were the ones attended by the "social elite" which made those three schools the "only game in town". </p>
<p>I, too, think Asheville is right up there. Also, Webb in Tennessee. I think these schools will follow Vanderbilt's emergence as not-just-for-the-south.</p>
<p>HopefulDad, this is a great dilemma you have shared. It hits home with me. This is why I started this thread in the first place! I could not agree more that a great many successful people in my life went to colleges and grad schools that would be shunned on CC. And, I know many who are highly credentialed but insecure or otherwise incomplete people. I try to keep this in the forefront of my brain as I go through this process with S and D.</p>
<p>As to BS v DS v PS, I understand completely. We were told from S's early age that we would HAVE to send him to BS in order to keep him challenged. It turns out not to be the case, as S was able to challenge himself within the PS framework. He did exchange programs in north Africa and will be spending his senior year as an exchange student in Turkey. Rather than considering PS as the engine that would educate him, we partnered with the PS to make it the base from which his education would leap. The school offers no AP classes, so he studied the AP prep books on his own and scored 5s (a 4 on environmental science as a freshman). The result is that we were able to keep him at home (other than his xchange programs, obviously), not BS, and he is a superb candidate for college while having spent his high school years developing himself as a person. </p>
<p>OTOH, D needs to be away from her PS. In contrast to her brother, she will rise to the level of those around her. Staying at her PS, she would be a fine student, get good grades, get good recommendations, and get into a fine college. If the only goal was to get her into a good college, she could stay put and we'd save 3 years of tuition. We want her to push herself and develop, so that when she goes to college she is better prepared and broader in experience and focus. </p>
<p>So that's why your post rang true for me. We consciously chose not to send our son to BS even when we were urged to do so. It was the right choice. We consciously chose to send our D to BS even when others suggest there is no need because she's doing "fine." We hope this will turn out to be the right choice.</p>
<p>wow laxtaxi,
You must have my kids.
My oldest is self-motivated and does wonderful in the PS (even though they had no textbooks for honors bio for the first 2 weeks while football team had new jerseys) - my second needs the push of others and bows to social pressure (lets play, not study).</p>
<p>Then I look at another post on another thread this morning in what to look at in boarding schools: "Here are some things to look for in a school
- Average SAT score
- % of faculties with advanced degrees
- big number of EC's
- endowment (If you need FA, it's critical)
- matriculation, or however you spell it(it's 8 in the morning)
- # of AP courses (some schools might not have it as AP)"</p>
<p>and it really makes me wonder what we are doing.</p>
<p>One of the reasons why my cousin(4 years ago) and I applied to BS was because of the social pressure that Princess'Dad talks of. Wow I never thought that my "here are some things to look for in a school" post would end up here. By the way those are just my view for a good BS. yours can be very different.</p>