SAO vs. Gateway

Prep School Admissions
1

Some schools accept SAO; some accept Gateway; many school accepts both. Can anyone share experiences using either/both application systems? What are the differences? Any advantage using one over the other?

3

Generally, the schools that used SAO required less customized content than the Gateway only schools. When given a choice by a school to use SAO or Gateway, we used SAO. Unfortunately, we had to use both.

4

If you are applying to many schools with different requirements regarding SAO/Gateway, I would suggest using Gateway as most schools use it and it is more customizable.

5

I would definetwly reccomend the SAO. Firstly, it is so much simpler and you can attach everything there and then. All the parts of the application are neatly sorted which makes it super easy to use. And again, you only have to write like 5 essays that will go to all of the schools, whereas with gateway, you have to write 2-3 for every school. But lots of schools use gateway rather thN the SAO but most schools that use the SAO also use gateway (schools lke the phillips academies and deerfield use gateway).

6

I asked this question last year as well.

I thought it seemed easier for the applicant to use SAO for as many schools as possible, as this generally means fewer essays. This was my original plan: use SAO for all the schools that accepted it and then Gateway for any schools that did not.

Child ended up using Gateway for every school and didn’t use SAO at all for a few reasons:

  1. Several schools that accepted both said they preferred Gateway, but would accept SAO. (I assume this is because they wanted their particular essay questions answered, but maybe it was for other reasons as well.)
  2. Child’s current school (an independent school) said that they prefer their students to use Gateway over SAO to apply because current school can include more info about the child than with SAO. I don’t know more specifics than that, but school recommended using Gateway if it was an option.
  3. I could not figure out how to send a personal or special interest rec through SAO, and I don’t think you can. I think you can probably have the recommenders send the rec directly to the school, but it seemed easier to just use Gateway.