<p>Now that all is said and done for this years BS admission process, I would like to put forth some observations. It is my hope that this serves as a springboard for discussion regarding some of the issues. If some of the observations are deemed offensive by some, I apologize in advance, as that was never my intention.</p>
<p>First, to introduce myself, I am a parent of one child going into her fourth year at a HADES school, and another going to another boarding school next year. Prior to my daughters application to BS, they were not on my radar. I am a child of lower to middle-middle class parents who attended public schools up to and including secondary school in an inner city. Following that I went to a state school where room, board and tuition were under $2000 a year (and no, it was not in the Stone Age, but was around 30 years ago). I attended professional school and later went back to school for a PhD. Our family values learning, but due to social and monetary factors, boarding school was never felt to be something we could aspire to when I was a child. When my daughter decided to apply to boarding school from our rural private grade school (K 8), I was not certain how I felt, nor was she. She visited several HADES schools, liked some, disliked others and felt that one was the mother ship. She was a late applicant, but had a very good application and was accepted to her first choice. She loves it at the school. My son, with different drives and strengths, went to another BS, not HADES, but academically rigorous and one which will likely be a good fit for him.
The following are my points:</p>
<p>Boarding schools are not for everyone. Not every child has the level of maturity, or the emotional tolerance for separation from their parents at the age of 13 or 14. Not every parent can tolerate letting a child go at that age. While many regard boarding schools as a better alternative to public high schools, they are not always vastly superior to the public option. The costs are prohibitive for many, and not many families can afford to spend upwards of $40,000 a year on boarding school tuition. Financial aid may be available, but only a few schools are need blind, and application for financial aid may reduce the availability of an already scarce number of slots.<br>
There are several million children each year going into 9th grade. There are insufficient admissions slots for everyone, or even the relatively small percentage who aspire to boarding school. At the more selective schools (HADES or GLADCHEMMS, to use the acronyms), the admissions process is fiercely competitive, with the selection process appearing to have become more difficult over the past few years. A given child may look at the city on the hill with longing, but not be able to compete successfully for a slot at that school. A child may be highly intelligent, and have high SSAT (or even SAT) scores, have outstanding extracurricular activities and write a great essay. However, for reasons completely out of their control (the school already has two soccer playing tuba players who work with autistic children), they are not accepted. In recent years, children with siblings at the school, and parents working part time with admissions committees have not proven to be immune from rejection. The demand for places at these schools is so great now that the schools can be very selective, and truly need you far less than you need them.
This goes to a point with is corollary to the last one. The admissions process may not seem fair because with so many highly qualified applicants, there must be some arbitrariness. The applicants grades were excellent, but the SSATs were not stellar. The grades and SSATs were stellar, but the extracurriculars were lacking or absent. All of the above were there, but the child was anxious on the interview, and appeared sullen. All of the above were good, but there was another applicant with a relative, able and willing to donate substantial sums to the institution to insure their childs admission. I know of nothing in life in which everything is fair, and what is fair to one appears unfair to another. I should be astounded to learn that high prestige and high priced academic institutions are the one instance in which all things are fair.
Boarding schools are frequently much more academically rigorous than public high schools. While some boarding schools operate at a more leisurely pace, the most rigorous ones require a significant time commitment for learning. They also frequently necessitate a degree of academic aptitude to be able to complete work in a reasonable amount of time. I have known children at public schools doing A work, who while attending such boarding schools to struggle, work until midnight just to eke out B work. If a child is in such a position, they have, in effect, been taken from an environment in which they excelled, and placed into an environment in which they are no longer the big fish. Some children may tolerate this transition and re-positioning within the academic continuum, and some may not. It is no shame, to perform at a B average at Andover. The problem, if there is one, is that one is now judged by a different metric, and the child may have difficulty accepting that they are no longer the smartest child in the group.
In tandem with the above point is the issue of class ranking and the process of college admissions. I have noted some concern among parents regarding their childrens grades, with much of the concern centering upon class rankings and how this will affect college admissions. It does seem clear that there is a different metric applied by colleges to applicants from the most highly ranked boarding schools. There have also been suggestions that some of these boarding schools have direct lines to elite university admissions offices (see Seamus Khan, Privilege, an interesting book on elite boarding schools, written by a sociology professor at Columbia University who taught for a year at St. Pauls School). Having gone over Naviance admissions data at some length in association with my daughters recent college applications, one can see some patterns emerge. First is that, grade point averages appear to be the parameter with the highest degree of correlation with admissions to universities and colleges. In the scattergrams, there are clearly delineated boxes in which the combination of grade averages and SAT scores are associated with few if any admissions to a given college. The admissions which are seen in these boxes are frequently known to the student body as athletes with special gifts (in crew, for example); these athletes have often received likely letters from universities indicating their interest in the student a year before the applications to colleges are due. One notes again and again, that the higher the grade point average, the higher the likelihood is of admission. This does not mean that the student with a B average cannot gain admission to a good college or university. It simply means that without a significant hook (i.e., very strong athletics, significant family legacy, extraordinary financial donation, or remarkable extracurricular activity), the likelihood for admission to a Harvard-Yale-Princeton (HYP) or their ilk is remote. This is not to say that a child still cannot gain admission to a very good school, such as a top 50 or even a top 20. The competition for admission to the top Ivies and their like is so intense at this point in time, that (just as it is with the top boarding schools), that it is frequently the stellar applicants who succeed.
This further begs the question as to whether it is necessary for a child to go the HYP schools. Some clearly feel that it is. They have stated over and over, that the connections their children make at the HYP schools and their ilk are very helpful (implying at times that they are essential), to enter the halls of financial power (or whatever other elite club they are referring to). As has been pointed out by others, there are such connections which can and are made at the elite boarding school level. Anecdotally, I have heard of individuals, one in particular, who went the Andover-Princeton route and is now, at the age of 23, on her way to the world of investment banking. If this is your goal, there is little that can be said about what is necessary. Your child might indeed benefit from any leg up they can get. However, for the rest, the elite boarding schools, and in fact many if not most boarding schools, can teach other valuable lessons. They teach how to apportion time. They teach how to get along with others. They teach valuing others who may be different from oneself. They frequently teach at an accelerated level, and thus push children to be all they can be. And perhaps, they teach how to behave in a world of elites. This last is the most indefinable, and may be one of the most uncomfortable for some to contemplate. Yet I personally think it is not to be underestimated. As a child of the lower of middle-middle class, I believe I can see both sides of the coin. There is a spectrum of social interaction unique to the political and social elite which is learned at home by some, and in school by others. One cannot generally learn it at the local public school, and it is indeed helpful if one wishes to swim in that pond. </p>
<p>And, if you wish to enter a profession such as medicine (as many apparently do), I believe the boarding school is still valuable for some of the reasons stated above. Additionally, in a situation such as entrance to a professional school, the B average in boarding school should not be an issue after presumably doing well in a top fifty university or college.
I hope the above serves as a starting point for some discussion. The process of application to and seeing a child through boarding school has been an educational experience for my family. It has been difficult, but personally, I could not imagine my children having made better choices. They have done better than I could have hoped. Whatever sacrifices we have made as a family seem to have been worth it, and on whole I have come to like and respect what the schools do, warts and all.</p>