<p>I love Hotchkiss’s size! It’s the perfect place between small and big.</p>
<p>Kafka, if you are willing to answer a few more questions, I’d love your input on our situation. I have two kids applying for admission for next fall as a lower and upper mid. They also submitted app’s to 6 other good schools, SPS, DA, PA, Groton, Choate, & Loomis. Our tour at Hotchkiss was not the best - tour guide was kind of tepid and just uninspired. The facilities looked great of course - one child is a musician/swimmer/science student and the other is ice hockey/MUN/debate/linguist (French, Latin and Japanese currently) - so Hotchkiss was good for all that. We just weren’t wowed as we were at PA, DA & SPS, even Groton - the dorms were small and dark and ppl weren’t fabulous EXCEPT AO who interviewed younger kid. I won’t name her but she was the bomb. Absolutely Outstanding and her follow up has been thorough and encouraging. SO, here are my Q’s…is it possible we just saw the school in a bad light or missed the greatness on our tour? or do you think we should go with our gut and say maybe it’s not the right “fit”. The reason I’m thinking about this so much is bc I think we have a good chance of admissions there based on how much follow up there has been. The AO has continued to mail supplementary materials in child’s areas of interest, also sending bumper stickers, letters from faculty and coaches, etc. So I guess that’s my next Q: do you think the intensive communication is an indication that the school is def interested in at least one of my children? Anyone else w any ideas pls feel free to weigh in…Thanks in advance!</p>
<p>@ honeybee63
Concerning your first question, I have no idea. But as an applicant, I can tell you that I also received supplementary materials and a bumper sticker from Hotchkiss, so chances are, this is quite normal.</p>
<p>@ honeybee63:</p>
<p>First off, good luck with admissions! I would say that you must have had an off day at Hotchkiss. My D attends Hotchkiss and the school is warm, supportive and nurturing. She is happy, challenged, engaged and still finds some time to enjoy the terrific social opportunities such as frequent dances, movie nights, concerts, etc. The teachers are amazingly involved. Her coach follows how she is doing in her classes and is always looking out for her. She has never been so happy. To be fair, she is also working harder than she has worked in her entire life. Earlier this year, she told me that while the work is hard, she had rediscovered her love of learning. Amazing! The academic environment creates and develops thinkers, which always leads to a passion for learning. The kids I have met are driven, intelligent, exceptional, funny, warm, supportive people and I have to say that I am far more impressed now than I was after our tour (which by the way, was so good that we chose to skip revisit day entirely).</p>
<p>Some of the dorms are nicer than others, but my D is in one of the oldest dorms on campus, and it is still bright and her room is fairly big. One of the newest dorms on campus is nicknamed “the hotel” for its well designed style. </p>
<p>So much is reliant on the tour guide, though isn’t it? It is so much easier to feel a connection with a school when that conversation flows easily, however, that being said, the tour guide is just one person, and while the AO tries to pair people of similar interests, it does not always work.</p>
<p>Any way, this is my recommendation: Wait until admissions day. See where your kids are admitted. If they are admitted to several schools and can go to the revisit days, I recommend going. I personally would not write off Hotchkiss because of the tour guide, but go back and really get a better sense of the school. That is what revisit days are for.</p>
<p>hb63, sorry to hear that you and your children had a weak tour and tour guide while at Hotchkiss. Still, you beat me and my son. When we visited THS for the first time, we arrived during long winter weekend when there are no tours and hardly any kids on campus. We toured the school on our own at our own pace. Other than Andover, no BS we toured (including DA, L’ville, PEA, Choate, SPS, etc.) had more impressive facilities. But people make a school, not bricks and mortar.</p>
<p>To appreciate the people who attend a prep school, my son and I didn’t weigh greatly a few hours spent with some kids on a campus. Instead, we took the long view and looked at that school’s graduates and compared them to those of other schools. Here, we found the grads of Hotchkiss shining more brightly than those of the other top prep schools. In some instances, there was no contest. (Here is a very brief list of renown THS grads: Potter Stewart, Archibald MacLeish, Lewis Lapham, Henry Luce, Paul Nitze, Whitney Griswold (Yale President), Robert Bork, William Scranton, etc.)</p>
<p>As for my son, he is now a senior at Hotchkiss. In the end, he chose Hotchkiss because my wife, who never wanted him to leave home and go to prep school, went to Revisit Day, toured the school, met the Hotchkiss kids and teachers and then said that her only complaint about the school was…why couldn’t she go there too!</p>
<p>Good luck to you and your children.</p>
<p>@hockeymom18 What a wonderful review! I get a real sense of the school from your description and a vicarious feeling of comfort and security about Hotchkiss - if my girls were to end up there. One of mine is a hockey player too, btw! Of course now that I realize we’ve been misreading the post interview communications, I’m no longer confident about their acceptance. Until now we’ve thought Hotchkiss was a done deal and believed we had at least one school to count on so it’s a bummer to accept that we may be facing 7 rejections next weekend! Just trying to stay calm and not overthink the odds or the portents in the meantime. Trying.</p>
<p>@toombs61, Thank you for your feedback about Hotchkiss, it holds weight, esp coming from a parent who’s had a child there for (almost) 4 years. Again, I utterly agree re: bricks and mortar, and even the AO who interviewed one of my kids (actually the head of admissions, an amazing powerhouse of a woman - if she had been my only exposure to Hotchkiss, it would be my #1 choice) - it was really just the girl who toured us - I think just a poor fit, and she didn’t give us any sense of the soul of or life at the school. At some other schools, e.g. Choate, we had 3 separate tours which helped to give a broader perspective. But actually the wonderful AD at Hotchkiss shared a great attitude with me, which was that my kids would do well and thrive at any of the schools we chose - her words were, “with this list of schools you can’t go wrong”. She was immensely reassuring about the quality of the adults who choose to teach at BS and how devoted they are to adolescents - not just to their education but to their growth overall. So, I’m trying to let go of the idea that there’s a “right” school for my girls and that they need to get into that school or I need to figure out what that school is! If we are fortunate enough to have any options after M10, I’m sure we’ll make the right decision based on as much input as we can accumulate. So again thank you for your glowing review of Hotchkiss, and I hope you have a young Potter Stewart on your hands - he is one of my heros.</p>
<p>@honeybee Good luck on the 10th and feel free to PM me if you have any other questions about Hotchkiss.</p>