<p>Touche london203 and soxmom!</p>
<p>You are missing the point. A boarding school is more than a collection of courses, and extracurricular opportunities â as a graduate of a bs you recognize, do you not, that at its core a bs is a <em>community</em> and each community is differentânot in the rational aspects but in terms of âfeelâ. And in the end, it is âfeelâ that most people use when determine if they believe that they have found a home. Of course, one doesnât have to have a single âhomeâ but if a bs does not have that âfitâ gestalt, regardless of the pro/con rational list a student ought not applyâand for certain should not matriculate. Maybe after a while they might âget used toâ somewhere that doesnât feel right, but more frequently in my experience as a therapist they experience a range from low grade ennui to full out oppositional behavior.</p>
<p>Communities are not fungible. And the reason why one appeals and another doesnât is difficult to state rationally.</p>
<p>^+1. Thank you, EtonDad, I was too lazy to tease out this subtlety, but youâve articulated it perfectly. I respect soxmomâs point that on some level, after high school is over, most BS kids are all part of a larger âBS club,â but to call the distinct differences between the communities of people each school constitutesâas a lineage from current students back through the alums who obsess over itâa wash is to my mind a broad oversimplification.</p>
<p>I donât think I was missing the point, I was trying to make a different point. Sure, fit is important and your kid shouldnât apply to a school that isnât a good fit for him or her. But itâs also entirely possible to overthink this. For some kids, there may be a very narrow range of what would âfitâ them well. Other kids are more adaptable, and may find a good fit with lots of different schools. I was just saying that trying to tease out the difference in feel for a lot of these schools may be a fairly useless exercise, as your kid might be equally happy at any of them. Same is true for colleges, for that matter. Princeton, Dartmouth, and Williams all have different communities, with different feels to them. I got in to all three, went to one and loved it. Would I have loved the other two? Yes, I think I would have, even though they have a different feel to them. Iâm just saying donât beat yourself up trying to find THE perfect school for your kid, because there may be a number of them. I guess itâs like the difference between people who believe that you have one true love out there somewhere in the world, and people who think that while of course you need to marry someone you love and are compatible with, thereâs more than one person in the world that could make you happy for a lifetime of marriage.</p>
<p>Touche, again, soxmom!</p>
<p>I sense that a lot of the conversation here about âfitâ centers around culture, ECâs & academic competitiveness.</p>
<p>How big of an issue do you think socio-economic fit is? I would like to hear other parents/studentsâ perspective on this.</p>
<p>I am sympathetic to soxmomâs perspective. Clearly, âfitâ was important for OPâs D. But not every kid has strong preference, nor s/he has to. Weâre talking about young teens whose minds will be further shaped by their future community. IMO, itâs more important whether you as a family can be compatible with the culture/values of certain schools your DC is considering. You probably would not want to be visited by a stranger who used to be called DC. In my case, after visiting six schools last year, we could only place one school as the least favorite and other five being still viable options. DC is fine with any of these schools, so am I.</p>
<p>Excellent point, SharingGift. Yes, the parentsâ âfeelâ and input in the choice of schools is or should be more important than that of the pliable mind of their child. This is where experience and (dare I say) age are invaluable. For much as we like to elevate youth to godlike stature, the one thing it has an abyssmal lack of is hindsight, with its attendant wisdom.</p>
<p>I couldnât disagree with you more. it is the child not the parent who will be leaving home and entering the boarding school community. It is he or she that matters. After having two kids at bs and having counseled hundreds more, parents have to understand this. And, what is more if your family cannot recognize that in many respects the child has LEFT HOME and comes back to the family to visit, then perhaps leaving for a full 7 day boarding environment isnât rightâat least at the present. </p>
<p>What is more the BS AOs can smell (like bloodhounds) when the choice is not the childâs but is the parents. And that is usually fatal for admission chances in competitive schools. They want kids that are excited to be a part of the community, not kids whose families want them to be thereâthe later are often the ones who end up in my office.</p>
<p>For us, it was about finding a compromise between the academic things, how good the school is, which my parents were more concerned with, and the right atmosphere and extra opportunities, which was down to me to decide.
It worked out fine in the end, as I got into the school that was both mine and my dadâs first choice, but there would have been disagreement if it had come down to choosing between the others. My parents were concerned with prestige and stellar academics offered at one school, but I didnât want to go to another girlsâ school or a day school.</p>
<p>Obviously, there are no shortage of opinions here. I donât think any one opinion is necessarily superior to another.</p>
<p>etondada, Iâm afraid you might have misunderstanding. I believe that the decision should be made by DC but parents should provide guidance⊠in a sense that some schools have culture or values that could not be accepted by applicantâs family. For example, my family values proper respect for a person, regardless of age or statue; flexibility in reasoning; disdain for tradition for the sake of tradition; etc. After visiting one of the schools, we all felt very much suffocated. DC included. But even if DC is accepted and wants to go there, Iâm kind of doubtful whether we would allow that to happen, because I wouldnât want DC to grow up to be one of those people with little shared values.</p>
<p>In short, I would not pick a school for DC but feel that I could and should set the boundary for which schools are allowed while ensuring DC would be given enough choices.</p>
<p>A subjective determination of fit is important, but it can also be entirely misleading. It is often based upon a short visit, and it is routinely subject to random and unrepresentative factors such as the quality of the tour guide, the clemency of the weather, or what the student ate for breakfast that morning. None of us would prudently make a life-changing decision for ourselves on such a flimsy basis. Yet, we recommend children do so. </p>
<p>Most of us understand that objective factors can differentiate schools such as the quality of teachers, academic rigor, curricular offerings, extracurricular opportunities, and facilities. However, some discount the real advantages top prep schools have in this regard as only a marketing mirage. And if a student recognizes the importance of prestige, he is sometimes hectored about fit, as if these real advantages bear no relationship to a schoolÂs prestige.</p>
<p>It does us no good to pretend that educational hierarchies do not exist in America. Not every kid will get into Andover or Exeter and then matriculate to Harvard or Yale. But there is nothing wrong with an eight grader having that dream or a senior realizing it so long as the child realizes there are many other options for them to be happy and successful.</p>
<p>At every school we visited, we asked our tour guide what make their school special and different from all others - why they chose it. We always got a version of the same answer: âTHIS school is special because here, everyone looks out for each other, itâs warm and encouraging, everyone really WANTS to be here, the teachers really care about you as people, âŠâ </p>
<p>Did we only choose nice friendly schools? No, I think itâs that, once youâve chosen someplace, you make it your community. Especially the kids who choose to be tour guides - those are probably the ones who love it and are proud of it, and want to share their love with others. Obviously there are exceptions - we all know plenty of kids who were unhappy at one school and happier when they switched. How much of that is some objective measure of the culture of one school over another, and how much is who they happened to meet and connect to? I imagine itâs some of both.</p>
<p>I love my high school passionately, think it is the best place on earth, was perfect for me, refused to consider switching whenever my parents brought it up. Would I have been as happy at any of a dozen or 100) other schools with roughly similar quality courses, variety of ECs, excellent teachers, bright motivated students? Very likely!</p>
<p>Iâve never really understood why we bother trying to define fit. Think of it like a marriage.</p>
<p>I could tell you what I want to find in a woman, you could arrange a date with all those criteria, and I could know in a few minutes, maybe seconds, that she wasnât right for me. Then, on the way home from that crummy date, I could stop somewhere for a beer and, sitting at the bar, is a girl with almost none of the criteria that I was seeking, but who, within minutes, rocks my world. </p>
<p>Sure, some arranged marriages work great, but most of us want to rely on how WE feel about the person before deciding to get serious. The best way to get the best outcome is to be true to yourself and fearless about pushing back on people who tell you how to feel and who you should marry. </p>
<p>All of us adults know plenty of men and women whose criteria are so exacting (read: ridiculous) that the chances of finding the perfect spouse is virtually nil, or you could be that woman who feels love at first sight and who knows throughout her lifetime that he, and no other, was the one for her. Or like soxmom says, you could be the type of guy who could fall in love with any number of women and probably be just as happy with the journey!</p>
<p>Fit is crucial. It is personal. It is real. It is undefinable, except in broad terms. You new Boarding School parents need to give your child the freedom to find a great fit. Give yourself enough time for the official school visit plus some unplanned experiences (maybe a game, or a dance performance - whatever). I like schools that REQUIRE a personal visit. I sure as heck donât want to marry someone based on a brochure and a skype session! Just ask Manti Teâo.</p>
<p>etondad,</p>
<p>I understand that it is the child who will be attending, not the parents. It is hoped that good parenting would bear in mind that essential fact and base its decision on the best interest of the child â a child, it was pointed out, that doesnât know its own mind yet. </p>
<p>While the decision should ultimately rest with the parents, it MUST be arrived at with the willing consent of the child â I do not propose forcing a child to attend a school which is not agreeable to the child, but, as pointed out, disagreeableness may be based on ephemeral things. The parents can help their child decide what is fleeting and what is not.</p>
<p>Furthermore, I believe a child does not have the right to choose a school if the parents have serious concerns about it.</p>
<p>We give parents the benefit of the doubt when it comes to acting in the best interest of their children. Can we also give them the benefit of wisdom?</p>
<p>Iâm sorry, Parlabane, but while what you say rings true for indivdual relationships I do not see it applying to something as complex, multi-faceted and multi-populated as a school. It is not an apt analogy.</p>
<p>(I know, I know, people are complex too)</p>
<p>Parlabane, I agree that there is something ineffable about the experience of fit â a certain indefinable connection that makes it comparable to falling in love. However, I am less than sanguine than you are about the infallibility of this emotional connection. After all, love is blind. And then thereâs the thorny problem of divorce. </p>
<p>All joking aside, I can tell you from personal experience that initial impressions of fit can be quite misleading. When one of my older children first visited her HYP school, s/he adamantly and unequivocally declared that it was not a good fit. However, s/he ended up matriculating to that school. The result was four years of a wonderful college experience.</p>
<p>Yes, I wouldnât want to rely too much on a gut reaction based on a quick impression. Schools, and people, are way too complex for that. Your first impression could be right on, but it could be very very wrong. (Malcolm Gladwell, author of âBlinkâ, might disagree with me!)</p>
<p>Case in point: when I first met my husband, I didnât like him. After the first half-hour of being in the room with him, I still didnât. Weâve been together nearly 30 years.
Another case in point: one of the schools we visited looked great on paper, but we had a bad feeling after our tour -it felt wrong to us. I asked for another tour guide who could show us a few things we had misse the first time around (related to my DCâs particular interests.) A half-hour later we had completely changed our impression and liked it a lot. But the change had nothing to do with seeing a different facility and everything to do with meeting a different person. If weâd met them in the opposite order we might have left with the opposite overall impression.</p>
<p>I agree with the person who said itâs possible to overthink these things.</p>
<p>@LeanidâŠ.I have to agree with me! 
To say that choosing a school is more complex than choosing a spouseâŠâŠwellâŠâŠmaybe in your experience, definitely not in mine.</p>
<p>@jmiltonâŠ.never suggested infallibility! Human=messy=not scientific. As to liking a school or person that you start out not likingâŠ.happens all the time!</p>
<p>@JahpâŠ.I donât think gut reactions or first impressions should be viewed as perfectly reliable indicators either!</p>
<p>I should have been clearer. FIT is only one of several criteria in choosing a boarding school. It is not scientific, it is not infallible. Itâs defined differently by different people. I was objecting to the endless back and forth about what constitutes a great fit.</p>
<p>As the OP of this thread, I must say I love how it has evolved. It is clear that the concept of how one determines fit, and even whether âfitâ is a quality that can be ascertained before actually attending a school (as I firmly believe it can) varies widely. My original intention in sharing our journey was to point out to those folks specifically who believe itâs âHADES or bust,â that some further exploration might lead to different opinions (not to mention M10 outcomes). </p>
<p>I donât know what the next few years will bring, but the first half year has confirmed my impression that the months of what sure felt like fairly exhaustive research, visiting, looking under rocks, etc. has resulted in a good fit for GG. Might I say the same thing had she chosen a different school? Possibly. But then, the schools, in many ways, chose her. As I pointed out, and itâs worth noting, the schools also have an idea of whether <strong>they</strong> are a good fit for a student, and vice versa. At least, based on GGâs acceptances, that is how it appeared to me. Also, some of the AOâs (thinking of PEA in particular) stated some variation of âweâre not just looking for a kid who will be good for us. Weâre looking for a kid weâll be good for.â </p>
<p>I think it was ExieMIT who put it so well in another thread, that the schools are not expecting students to arrive fully formed. They want nice kids they can mold, who will be good fits for their community. And I agree with all who posted that fit can be difficult to define. Yet it was precisely the exploration of the intangibles (or perhaps, âlesstangiblesâ) that led to our familyâs final application list, which included one school that for sure GG did not think would be a good fit but we thought would. As leanid points out in #75 and jmilton alludes to in #77, âdisagreeableness may be based on ephemeral things. The parents can help their child decide what is fleeting and what is not.â I also think that, despite some similarities in the process, the psychic stakes are different when youâre talking about sending a young teen off to live away vs. a college-age student who, in theory at least, is somewhat more self-aware.</p>
<p>At any rate, it has been really fascinating and thought provoking to see how this thread has evolved. It reinforces my belief in online communities :-)</p>