<p>Can I make a suggestion? I have followed this board diligently for the past 3 years, and I have noticed there is a tendency for discussion to evolve around the major Ivy league feeder prep schools. There are so MANY other students who cannot gravitate to the standards those schools require, but would be very well matched with a Prep School. Why not include "all" students from all walks of life and not those with just the 90 ++++++ SSAT scores. </p>
<p>Goalie dad, any thoughts?</p>
<p>Wait.. I'm confused. You're saying that we exclude people that have below 90 SSAT scores? Or that they don't come to this board?</p>
<p>Plenty of people here apply to schools that aren't feeders to Ivy. prettyckitty applied to Concord and St. Mark's along with AESD. Blair applied to Tabor. Someone else got into St. Mark's and is going there. Njdana received funds from ABC to go to prep school and is attending Peddie next year, which isn't mentioned here a lot but is still a great school. She had a 90 SSAT, I believe. Tennisgirl had a 69 SSAT and is going to St. Paul's... I remember another girl got into St. Mark's and is going there next year. Tokyorevelation went to Mercersburg, another underrepresented school on this board.</p>
<p>All of these students came from different walks of life and are going to add a lot or DID add a lot to their former/future/current school. </p>
<p>Plenty of parents have children in schools that aren't as popular.</p>
<p>What's your point? (this isn't meant to be rude; I couldn't think of another whay to phrase it).</p>
<p>I have thought about this quite a bit. Besides the high volume of AESDCH (et al) traffic that seems to dominate the discussion, there is certainly quite a bit of OT stuff in the threads.</p>
<p>I can attribute this to 2 factors. First the Prep School forum is just 1 forum - not subdivided like the college forums with individual school sub-forums, FA sub-forums, chances sub-forums. The other factor is that the younger kids are not as keen on keeping discussion on-topic, so after a while a thread becomes impractical to follow.</p>
<p>I'm not sure how much the moderators like sub-dividing forums, but if anyone is friends with the mods (not that I am an enemy), they might want to start asking about this.</p>
<p>If I were subdividing the forums, I might start with a structure like this (feel free to comment):</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Chances</p></li>
<li><p>General Boarding school issues (not school specific)</p></li>
<li><p>School Threads
--- Highly Competitive Schools (<30% Acceptance)
----- Comparisons
----- Andover
----- Exeter
----- ...
--- Competitive Schools (30 - 50% Acceptance)
----- Comparisons
----- New England
------- NMH
------- St. George
------- ...
--- MAPL
----- ...
--- Other Parts of US and Canada
----- ...
--- Specialty Schools
----- Concord
----- Interlochen
----- NSA</p></li>
<li><p>Admissions Tests (SSAT et al)</p></li>
<li><p>Financial Aid</p></li>
<li><p>Applicant's Cafe (for all those OT topics)</p></li>
<li><p>Parent's Cafe (for discussion life on the home front with kids at or going soon to BS)</p></li>
</ul>
<p>I think organizing the discussions like this might make it easier for those who are not in the 90++++++ SSAT scores to meet and discuss with a better feeling of belonging.</p>
<p>One other thought and it may be a bit controversial, but as many college forums have admissions reps from the various schools (I guess they volunteer to answer questions), I think having a sticky topic for each school that provides an admissions officer could be beneficial. I'm not aware if or how much admissions officers from prep schools would want to be here or if the students really want their presence (annonymity is a good things sometimes), but such a presence could put this forum much more on the map (for better or worse).</p>
<p>Goalie Dad. I knew that you would have the right ideas. That sounds like it would work really good. Olivia sorry to upset you. I dont know how long you have been reading these boards, but I have heard many mention that there is a feeling of "exclusion". Some people might feel isolated, and the idea is that everyone should have a voice. Hope that this does not offend you.</p>
<p>CA Sunshine and Goalie Dad - good ideas from both of you! </p>
<p>One only needs to read comments like blair's on the Harkness table thread to get an idea of why some may feel excluded.</p>
<p>Interesting ideas, goaliedad. Why, though, have a separate category for "Other Parts of US"? (I can see having one for Canada.) Perhaps another category could be "Day Schools Only"--or would highly competitive day schools, for example, be grouped with highly competitive boarding (or boarding and day) schools?</p>
<p>Planner,</p>
<p>I separate "Other parts of the USA" because there seems to be a different type of student (ones from non-boarding backgrounds) who tend to congregate at these schools dispersed across the country. From Hockaday, to Sewanee to Culver, Gilmour, Shattuck, Colorado Rocky Mountain, etc, they seem to be very different in tradition and student population than the New England Schools and the MAPL schools. And even between the NE and MAPL schools there is very little cross-application with the exception of L'ville, Hill, and maybe 1 or 2 others with NE schools as they draw primarily from their region.</p>
<p>Day schools should be yet another category (same level as NE, MAPL, and Other US) I didn't include which have an entirely different thought. These people don't want to board.</p>
<p>Olivia,</p>
<p>Yes, the people you posted did apply to those non-AESD schools (as safety schools), but I think what CA Sunshine (and me for that matter) sense is that the people who apply to St Marks as a slight reach and have other schools yet as a safety, say Tilton (I haven't checked my facts here - I'm just using a school not referenced here) as a safety probably wouldn't feel as comfortable when the topics in the forum they participat in are dominated by the 90+ crowd (which by definition only makes up 10% of the population).</p>
<p>There are a lot of kids who go to very nice boarding schools who have SSATs between the 30th and 70th percentile, my daughter included. AESDCH were never in her sights, even as a scholarship athlete. She wouldn't be comfortable. I spent most of last year mostly lurking, as I didn't find many participants looking at the level of schools my D was looking at. I think if you give these folks a place to discuss the schools of that level (competitive but not highly competitive), more of them may come out and post.</p>
<p>Don't forget goaliedad, that's 10% of a small sub-set too. Most of the lower percentiles would still be in the 90's nationally. And I agree with everything you've said. I'm very excited that my son got in to his first choice (NMH) and we would choose it over AESD, having already looked at those schools for my older son. I was thrilled to find this board, but felt it did "specialize" in those schools. I would love some subdivisions so more people can feel comfortable offering opinions of some of the other great schools out there. Me, I'll talk anyway.</p>
<p>Goalie Dad thanks for putting the time and effort into this. I think that this would be a great turning point for this board to be inclusive of all students, and catergorize it as you suggested. The college forums covers a multitude of issues, and I believe it would be great for all prep school hopefuls to have a more diverse board. Let's all try and help everyone, not just a few. Thanks again Goalie Dad.</p>
<p>That is a good idea. However, I wonder if the people who own College Confidential would want to allocate so much space to a prep school forum unless they can make money from it. Their advertising and other revenues come from college searches and issues. Perhaps boardingschoolreview should add a forum. I think they lost an opportunity by not doing one. With all the reporting of inappropriate posts (such as posts with op names), sometimes I wonder if CC regrets adding this forum because it requires extra maintenance but no immediate revenue. However, it certainly does attract posters and lurkers who will be very interested in college in a few years. </p>
<p>Anyway, just some rambling thoughts. I think there is some money to be made by expanding prep school info, but they need a new set of advertisers. If anyone wants to propose a more granular board, then you might want to suggest potential revenue opportunities that are different from the current set. That might get some attention.</p>
<p>Burb Parent,</p>
<p>You think much like I do - always looking for the business case. </p>
<p>Interestingly enough, there are very similar services offered to the BS crowd (school search, testing and application help) by vendors out there, so I think there is some potential there. The size of the market is not large (like the college market), but these are the high-end shoppers and not the bargain-basement crowd, necessarily.</p>
<p>And the crowd that uses the BS services advertised here is probably more likely to use the College services advertised here.</p>
<p>However, I do not pretend to understand the inner-workings of their business model, so I could be way off base.</p>
<p>Thanks, goaliedad. I agree that there's a market for the group using this forum, and I think these members are more likely than nonmembers to participate in the college forums later on and use the advertised college services.</p>
<p>I do think there should be a separate forum for day schools (and perhaps even preschools, at this rate!). Many day schools are highly competitive, with admission rates ranging from 20%-30%, and although the issues applicants to these schools face are similar, if not identical, to those faced by boarding school applicants, this forum is dominated by the latter.</p>
<p>I don't think that we should go as far as preschools. That adds a degree of competitiveness that we don't need. Just read The Overachievers and look at the top schools in NYC to see evidence of this.</p>
<p>I was just kidding about preschools (didn't know how to make the winking smiley face)!</p>
<p>Haha. That was a good joke, actually. ;)</p>
<p>For the wink, do a semicolon and then a left-facing parantheses.</p>
<p>Thanks! ;)</p>
<p>CA Sunshine, thanks for the great post!</p>
<p>RE: AdComs visiting here.</p>
<p>I think it would be better if, instead of having them visit here, there was a filter that blocked them from viewing this site. I'm just counting on a busy schedule and a quest for sanity as the filters that keep them away. But I'd be reticent about affirmatively inviting them here...not with the way so many young applicants come here with their guards down, privacy levels set on "full exposure," a general lack of discretion (at least at times), and spell-check set to "off." Yeah, yeah, I know that calling people out for bad spelling on the Internet is like giving out speeding tickets on the Autobahn. But compared to applicants who don't visit CC -- and haven't demonstrated a propensity for bad spelling, hot buttons, arrogance, disturbing naivete...or any of a dozen other land mines that the kids here step on as regular as a Chili Eating Champion on Maalox...I don't think it will help matters to have AdComs reading up on us and seeing (just for example) a post about the 9 am phone interview at that AdCom's school where the kid rambles on, noting that "we talked about Mahler's 9th Symphony and OMG the interviewer was such a big loser! But I hope I get in anyway!"</p>
<p>I can't begin to count the number of times that I've logged in here to see that sort of dead giveaway as to a poster's identity closely coupled with an extraordinarily unfortunate statement by that poster. For my money...inviting AdComs here = Bad idea </p>
<p>Even if it would be nice to have some real-world and highly authoritative input, I believe the costs would outweigh that benefit.</p>
<p>Yeah, I said it would be controversial to have adcoms here. I do respect that opinion D'yer.</p>
<p>Perhaps our younger member do lack the saavy to realize that nothing is anonymous on the internet. But I think you put too much into thinking that adcoms will actually research and follow users and threads. They have better things to do with their time, quite frankly. I haven't seen a college rep on CC that is looking for gotchas. Most of them realize that kids can be quite indescreet.</p>
<p>I would think perhaps the biggest downside would be some applicants paranoia about such stuff that might inhibit their posting.</p>
<p>If anyone's interested...I first heard about this site from an admissions officer (friend) at one of the schools LOL. AND...it was at one of the schools from which a student poster with many posts is baffled about why they were denied admission. Students do need to be VERY careful what they post on a public internet chat page. I felt the most sorry for the girl from a girls' school who wanted to transfer to an AE kind of school wrote about herself- wonder what happened there?</p>