The BS Class of 2016 Thread

Prep School Admissions Prep School Parents
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@gardenstategal “ending” I think perhaps more for us parents than for the kids. Figuring that for boarding school kids, the restrictions, rules and scheduling feel a lot like “lane closures”**, if you know what I mean, that are magically lifted at the end of a ceremony. Cigars and “the rest of life” immediately to follow. Whereas I am genuinely going to miss the boarding community rituals that have ordered our family calendar these past four years, the moreso for having been able to drive an hour to join in on campus. Charger’16 no doubt looks forward to three days of celebration with classmates before coming home, while we fret whether our messages about his new freedoms and responsibilities will be absorbed. Am generally confident that he is not going to go berserk, and that “mistakes” will be low impact, but I definitely feel like we’re in uncharted waters, while boarding school was, even literally, a placid, well-traversed pond. All the best to us! ~O)

** formerly had good times as a resident of both Madison and Hightstown, but my current bridge woes are over the Delaware at 95

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@Charger78 , definitely the ending is being celebrated by the kids! And yes, definitely a little trepidation around the accompanying celebrations! Good kids, hopefully good decisions, but open seas for sure!

I think too, that at my age, I look at the community and friendships they have (and that we get to participate in, here and there for an hour or so), the lovely physical plant, etc. and I know that while they recognize how great it all is, it’ll only be years from now when they realize what a true gift it was to be part of such a community. I sort of feel like I understand what they’re leaving in a way that they cannot. Does that make sense? College will offer another version of this for DS (with more freedoms), but not for the parents.

Scudders Fall Bridge? Woes, indeed!

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Paisans! (I live near the Scudders Falls bridge and cross twice a day. Not looking forward to construction and tolls.)

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Revisit day was a success! No buyer’s remorse on locking in via ED!

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Congratulations @friendlymom !

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Wondering how many of you on here did or have decided to send your kids to a college outside of Northeast. It seems to me in recent years a lot more BS students choose to attend colleges in west coast and Midwest but not nearly as many would go to the south. In your experience, do college counseling in your kid’s school encourage students to be more adventurous in exploring schools in geographic areas other than their home area?

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It has become increasingly common to look at schools outside the Northeast as selectivity increases. The south was actually pretty popular when one of my kids graduated 2 years ago. I have one outside the Northeast but not in the south.

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@panpacific Chimneykid is heading south along with at least 2-3 of her classmates.

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@chemmchimney Any particular reason chimneykid chose a southern school?

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The second or third-most favored region for St. Andrew’s kids is the south, but pretty often to the same places (all lists in numeric order for last four years): Duke, Davidson, Wake Forest, UNC, UVa, Sewanee, and Richmond. Very few to the other “names” further south. Big drop off to the midwestern schools: Northwestern, Chicago, and Kenyon slightly more favored than a host of others with only one current matriculant. Out west: Colorado College, USC, Stanford, and single matriculants to Berkeley, Santa Barbara; but at least two this fall will go to Pomona.

The northeast and mid-Atlantic together grab the largest number by far. Proximity to home is a huge factor in the national statistics, and I think similar dynamics affect the boarding population, maybe especially at SAS. There might be more money for travel expenses in this pool of applicants, but home region and density of highly selective schools drive the admissions process. Well more than two-thirds of the SAS graduates go to highly selective schools, and this is achieved through apply-to lists that balance top-40 universities with top-40 LACs. There does not seem to be a big push to go “out of region” though a minority consistently do.

Our two kids: older also had Pomona on apply to list but found a good fit at northeast ED school. We live in NJ and drove many miles to see places for two kids. The thought of continuing on past Virginia or Pennsylvania to see Davidson, Duke or Oberlin seemed to sap everybody’s energy and we opted for a balanced list of about nine.

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@Charger78 I assume CCs don’t have strong enough reason to encourage students to go for schools in Deep South (except Duke, UNC and UVA etc which are more of east coast I guess?). There are so many great choices in NE and mid Atlantic region. Some west coast colleges have been appealing in their own ways apparently. As for mid west schools, I’ve seen Chicago and northwest etc gaining popularity quickly as the admission process of Ivies becomes more and more competitive. Due to the geographic diversity colleges are trying to build, for east coast HS students all top colleges are not created equal. It’d be less competitive to get in a top college outside northeast.

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Just looked over the NMH college list (2 or more students in last 3 years - avail on their website) and saw some “big” southern names are indeed missing including UVA, Vanderbilt, Rice, UNC, Duke etc. although there is a student going to Duke this year. Southern schools that made the list are Tulane, Emory, WashU/St. Louis along with USC, Sewanee, and Davidson. California schools - Stanford, Berkeley, UCLA, USC are also popular both with students whose home base is closer to the West Coast and with Asian students who find the west coast to be an easier commute. All the Boston schools are wildly popular (Tufts, Harvard, BU, Northeastern, BC).

The biggest percentage of students by far do tend to flock to the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic (16 of the top 20 most enrolled schools for NMH on Naviance) with some of the top 20 schools being Tufts, Wesleyan, Northeastern, Boston University, NYU, Brown, Cornell, and Skidmore. The geographic outliers in the top 20 are: Northwestern, University of Michigan, Emory and USC.

@panpacific Chimneykid looked at a mix of Northern, Midwestern and Southern schools. She did not want to go as far away as Colorado or California, and NYC was deemed too close to home. She was interested in leaving what she fondly calls “the thumb” if possible to have a new experience and she wanted a diverse political and cultural mix ( she leans left like much of NMH but was hoping to find more of a balance in college). She also wanted small class sizes in or near an urban area, and she ruled out many NE LACs because they were too similar in size and feel to bs.

In the end she chose the southern university because it had a diverse mix of students who were focused on academics, the classes were uniquely well-suited to her strengths and interests, and the students were not too “rah-rah”(ie Greek life, sports and parties were not a primary focus). We live 20 minutes from Newark airport so flying home is easier in many cases than driving or taking the train would have been. Her university is also in a major hub so flights are plentiful and fairly cheap. She was hoping to continue to play ice hockey in college, and her new university does not have a team, but it turns out there is a women’s rec league not too far away, so she ended up getting everything on her wish list - just in a slightly different package than what she originally envisioned.

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This is an interesting thread. As a parent of an incoming 9th grader to a NE BS and from the south, we talked a lot about how BS might affect the college selection. I’m not from the south but ended up going to a major southern flagship- weather did it for me!!! Now further south in Atlanta- most students in our area dream of Ga Tech over MIT. Around here it’s hard to give up the free or almost free rides of GAtech or Georgia ( Miller and Hope are given to strong Ga students to try & keep them at a Georgia college) Not to mention the generations of DAWGs pushing their kids to the University of Georgia.
It’s been eye opening how virtually no one in our community has heard of SPS, Exeter or Deerfield. Very different environment. You would also be surprised how many don’t care about HYP. DD was recently wearing a Princeton sweatshirt. Kids at her school had no idea what it was- although Yale is now on the map bc of basketball?! As BS become more geographically diverse, so will their college placements.
As an northern expat - chimney kid will love the weather. On the flip side- just bought DD llbean boots and she is horrified. Kid only wears sandals and is headed off to NH! She thinks she likes the cold & snow :))

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Suppose I am a “costal animal”. What I’ve heard so far about south just doesn’t sound like “my cup of tea”! Luckily I am old enough not to “have to” deal with the cultural shock moving to the south. :slight_smile:

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@cooperboom Is your daughter headed to Exeter or SPS?

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Well the tea is sweet… it’s not the “culture shock” that you have to deal with. It’s the bugs! Seriously big!

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@copperboom good call on the Bean boots! My Californian swore she would never wear them…then guess what she wanted when her first Christmas as a BS student rolled around? Also, side note, with that username are you a Gilmore Girls fan?

As for schools in the South, there are a fairly large number of them with SPS graduates from 2012-2015 matriculating. Rice, Georgia Tech, Texas A&M, as well as the others mentioned here, but only 1 or 2 matriculating at each. Friendlydaughter wasn’t interested in being the south although that’s not based on anything concrete. Her college advisor suggested she look at Emory because it “checked all the boxes”, but no dice.

I think some of the southern schools (Vanderbilt comes to mind) have recently elevated in status from being popular options regionally to really being on the national scene.

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Had ChoatieCadet not chosen a service academy, he’d be at Georgia Tech right now (sigh) which he preferred for engineering over any of the usual suspects, and we’re not from the south. CC said she only wished she could pry the NE blinders from students’/parents’ eyes as they’d end up with more and possibly better choices than some of them end up with. She actually congratulated us on our son’s research into engineering programs after he told her he didn’t understand why any student interested in MIT didn’t have GT on their list. She told him she didn’t get it either, but because he recognized what many others could not, he could probably count on an acceptance as he had the field pretty much to himself. So, consider some of the southern schools the equivalent of BS hidden gems…sssshhhh! :wink:

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@friendlymom Is your daughter going to attend a college in the Northeast?

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I guess it’s a regional thing… DD math/science kid so I’ll take the hidden gem!
@friendlymom- yep. Family obsessed with Gilmore Girls- even our younger son. (From Rory’s first day at Yale- an inside joke with my kid to see if she’s on cc)