I think there is a real possibility that fall classes could start online. Let’s hope not.
Really, who knows? I would hope that every school and college is planning for that, just in case. The execution should be excellent with the learning that is happening now. I would worry about any school that isn’t developing this contingency plan - that just sounds really head in the sand to me.
You guys, is this the “Official M10 Freak Out” thread, or do we need to start the “Official September 2020 Freakout Thread”? I am already freaking out by this freak out!
That would surely be a good idea! Especially with move-in day (if there is one) and other fall events approaching.
@ens2006 re: languages, I sent you a PM with more details re: my take on pros/cons of your language choices. But for everyone:
Germany has good universities that are basically free, even for foreigners (Americans).
I agree with one1ofeach that classics are not very useful
Spanish is very great for premed & other fields with high levels of interaction with public. Spanish is easier to spell than French, and easier to pronounce.
French is great for literature, art, philosophy. For science, much research is done in French. French is very difficult to spell (lots of left-off letters) and a bit hard to pronounce for Americans.
For college acceptances, the main thing is not what language you choose, but that you go as FAR as possible. What you choose is what you should take all 4 years.
I’ll make the case for French:
- A lot of English vocabulary comes from French, especially the "fancy" words. With the high level of cognates, vocabulary is easier to learn.
- The grammar is much simpler than Spanish, German, and classics; there is no case system, and there are far less tenses that you need to learn conjugations for.
- While spelling may seem daunting at first, it is actually quite logical once you learn the rules (arguably more logical than English... there's no exceptions).
- Since less people take French overall, you'll end up with smaller class sizes.
- It just sounds really good (personal opinion).
And don’t forget the case for Chinese: you will actually use it (internationally; I guess domestically Spanish may be more practical). With China’s increasing global economic significance, speaking Chinese may be an asset that companies look for.
Thank you to everyone that responded to my question about languages!
I think I’m still rather conflicted, but I’ll figure it out.
I have question for everyone who have already signed their contracts. Once you signed your contract did it disappear from your portal that you can no longer access it or your congratulatory letter? How does your portal look now? Is it plain, like it initially was when you were an applicant or is their more detail to your portal?
Dear @"NYCMOML&L -
Yes, that happened to us a couple of years ago! Don’t freak out!
We were given a new portal as an accepted student which was used for submitting forms and getting Freshman information. THEN, closer to when school began - Kiddo and us parents - were given a new Portal. Kiddo was also given a school email at that time.
ooh this is so exciting everyone’s signing their contracts. i was so impatient during the summer because they sent us a list of around when we would be getting our materials and i was like ITS MID JULY WHY AM I NOT GETTING MY CLASSES but advice for the summer is to be patient and if you forget about boarding school every once in a while the days until you get materials and info really go by quickly. that’s just if you know you’re gonna be impatient like me 
Did anyone else receive an email that Exeter is fully enrolled?
@Snappy123 Yes… We did.
why do you guys think boarding schools are worth it? what motivated you to apply?
for me it was the teachers, community, and the wide range of opportunities, but these days im starting to doubt the latter two
Well, @mondaydevil all three things you have identified vary from school to school, but I think the beauty of a BS education is how you navigate all three on your own. Independent living, managing your time and discovering things about yourself without a lot of oversight or any outside interference ( see parents ) is key.
Is it worth it? That’s up to you to find out, but first put aside all your expectations and try framing BS as a journey without an itinerary.
What a lot of people miss or walk past is the personal growth piece - which is not only paramount, but is actually the hallmark of a BS education. I remember a very wise Master addressing my new SS Class back in the day and he closed his remarks by saying something that has stayed with me all my life :
The stage is set- now go and find yourself.
I see people pouring over BS college matriculation lists and I cringe because those are all individual results that have nothing to do with them or future results nor is it even relevant to what lies ahead. I’m old enough to romanticize my time at BS, but make no mistake - it’s an arduous uphill slog every single day and those experiences ( good and bad ) will stay with you for the rest of your life. Embrace it and everything else that will matter to you later on will fall into place.
To me- the reward isn’t the perceived prestige of a certain BS or even the desired college acceptance down the road ( I’ll call that a bonus ) - it’s the many gifts you leave a BS with. It’s determination, resilience and grit and so many other valuable skills that you’ll carry with you throughout your life… Spoiler: You just don’t know it yet.
My best advice to new parents / students : Forget about future college placement or any expectations you may have for now and put the premium on personal growth. It’s absolutely vital to having a happy, successful, productive and meaningful BS experience.
All the other pieces are in place and the stage is set. All you have to do now is go and find yourself. 
Agree with insights from @PhotographerMom .
As I posted on another thread a while back, you have more power than you think to make BS a meaningful and worthwhile experience. @mondaydevil asked “Do you think its worth it?” …if you are a student reading this post, my suggestion to you is that you think and prepare for how YOU will make it worth it. How do you see your purpose in going to BS? What are your goals for BS? You need to figure out how you will make it “worth it” for yourself.
Worry less about how BS may disappoint you and worry more about how you should not disappoint BS - - or yourself! Don’t be passive and wait for happiness, success, personal growth, relationships, wider world view, and all the other “gifts” of the BS experience to come to you…go and seek these out for yourself.
How do you do this? Make a choice to be open to new experiences, open to meeting new people, open to failing and to risk, open to stepping out of your comfort zone. One way will be to get involved in clubs, service groups, sports, theatre, the newspaper or year book, or other group on campus. To quote the great rock group YES, “Don’t surround yourself with yourself”…also helpful if you play chess.
Hear Hear @PhotographerMom !!
Wise words
One of the Cate seniors did a talk this year, and his reflections on how to approach bs, and life, fits the advice above:
When an opportunity to do something new presents itself, don’t ask yourself “why”. Ask yourself “why not”.
Love that. Worst thing that can happen is you try something you don’t like. But you could end up finding your passion. Either way you learn about yourself.
I have a question related to wait lists. We have heard from the school that my daughter was waitlisted at that they are not taking anyone off the wait list at this time due to full enrolment . We are brand new to this process and so are trying to understand the process.
For those of you familiar with this process, can you tell me if movement tends to happen when the first payment to the school is due? When is that first payment typically due? In other words, people may have indicated by April 10th that their child will attend, but really up until the point when you have to make a payment, are you really committed to the school?
I am trying to anticipate potential possibilities of when the wait list might open up. We are trying hard to remain optimistic that this dream could become a reality!
I am a fairly frequent “lurker” here and thought I’d add my 2c as I appreciate this group, some of you have had very thoughtful and insightful comments in this forum.
In hindsight our family entered the boarding school application process fairly late in the game (our child didn’t make the decision to apply until October) and our child had limited time to take the test, get applications in process, visit schools and decide where to apply (about 10 weeks from decision to application).
The process was all pretty foreign to our child (we live in the Southwestern US with very few kids attending boarding schools) both my spouse and I attended well respected “very highly ranked/prestigious” boarding schools . While rankings are unimportant to us (and in the grand scheme of life obviously), our experiences were an important perspective and helped us avoid the mistake of “applying by rankings”. - it was/is always fun to see our schools at the top of the US News, Niche etc rankings and there was and still remains a strong contingent of students (and even more so parents!) who were VERY proud of that fact and seemed to weigh significantly in their school decisions - it not only seemed silly but as a parent this drove me even more crazy personally. When my spouse applied their parents only deemed Exeter/Andover as worthy of attending so we know that attitude well. My spouse and I had very different boarding school experiences and both ended up attending Ivy League schools for both undergrad and grad school and all of our educational experiences have helped us considerably and served us well in our careers, family life and communities etc.
Our child is a high-achiever across the board (academics, extra-curriculars, test scores etc) but we after visiting we couldn’t even get them to consider our schools as their feeling was that the schools seemed too large and impersonal and despite attempts to “influence” our child our schools were never in consideration. While disappointing from a personal, connectivity and familiarity perspective (and legacy admissions!), we were actually very proud of their decision from a maturity perspective and based on our experiences and tours actually agreed with our child’s decision to drop Exeter, Andover and Choate primarily due to size, impersonal feel (despite our ongoing personal/family connectivity) and their perception of a lack of fit culturally. Although it did seem tempting at times as Exeter and Andover were both very encouraging and persistent in their recruitment. Based on that experience we focused on the schools we felt were a good fit with rigorous academics and in terms of sports/extracurricular activities in the “mid-sized” and smaller range but better fits in size and culturally. Again, our child eliminated some schools we were optimistic about as parents (SPS, Groton) but where they didn’t have great experiences with when we researched and visited and proactively narrowed our focus to five schools including some that we felt were more likely to be acceptances.
Culture was far and away the most important aspect for us and our child particularly clicked with three boarding schools - Hotchkiss, Deerfield and Saint Georges and also applied to a few others as well. From the very start each of these schools did an amazing job making our child connect with their community and based on our experiences they seemed to have the best balance of cultural fit and balance of world class academics, facilities and extra-curricular activities (and unsurprisingly we had excellent experiences with and felt these schools had the best admissions departments in our view - very helpful, friendly and accessible). When we had the chance to meet the heads of schools we found that to be exactly the case from a leadership perspective as well.
All of the schools mentioned are excellent institutions and each have their pros/cons but in the end our child felt that Hotchkiss was the best fit and as parents we fully agreed despite the fact that this previously had been the school where we had the least connectivity. The biggest differentiation culturally for us was the persistent theme that (while our child is an athlete) school spirit was not solely focused on sports and the campus leaders were not all from the “jock” or “NYC/privileged kid” crowd. The student body seems to embrace and celebrate excellence across the board and our kid really embraced that concept from day one as that was clearly not the case at certain schools.
For our family one other point that we heard that had a significant impact was the recurring theme that Hotchkiss seems to have superior leadership currently and that all while all schools have an ebb/flow over time, that this time may be the time where we are at “peak Hotchkiss” in that cycle. In fact, we learned that Kendra O’Donnell (former Exeter headmaster) now sits on the Board at Hotchkiss and and we heard anecdotally through a mutual connection that in Kendra’s view Hotchkiss may likely be the preeminent boarding school currently. Unconfirmed obviously but nonetheless the fact that she sits on the Board (and I don’t believe is an alum or parent) speaks volumes.
Again, this is all just my 2c for what it is worth. We have learned a lot in this process.
Thanks to those of your who have clearly invested a lot of time and effort making comments on these message boards that have helped us in our research and decision making process.