40% means more than half of applicants are rejected so while higher than many other BS, far from “automatic admission”
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I think Congratulations might be a kinder response!
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Exactly - 40% acceptance at the college level is a competitive school as well! Winchendon is a great school, we know several of the staff and they are great, dedicated, passionate about what they teach and the school. It is a little on the smaller side for us - we are hoping for a school perhaps at 350 kids or above but it is a great choice if the others do not come through with a “Yes!” and “FA” we got decent FA from Winch - although we may appeal to try for more as we were going to be a day student and now boarding seems a much better option (farther than we thought after considering having to drive there/back on colder, darker winter evenings!
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Congrats on the 11th grade acceptance(s), that is hard to get in at that level - we are a 10th grade applicant and while there are fewer spaces than 9th, 11th has even fewer! Thanks for the names of the schools, it is always fascinating to see where others are applying and getting into!
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One thing I have learned in this process is that the endowment is not necessarily a true indicator of financial aid. We have friends, who make less than I do, at bigger schools with bigger endowments, with less financial aid.
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Good point - also we have found different websites list different endowment amounts for the same school - sometimes the difference is in the millions. Boardingschool.com does not always have the same numbers as other websites. Is there a simple place to find the endowments of each school by name or easy place to find on their own websites? Thank you for any help, just very curious!
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I’ve always looked at boardingschoolreview.com, but honestly endowment was never a criteria I looked for because there are so many other aspects that affect what schools will shell out! I always looked for merit scholarships, though, when searching to help find additional money. I was told by an AO that some schools need to give more financial aid as an incentive to get students there. The schools further outside of the metro areas, the schools “in the middle of nowhere”, the lesser-known schools, etc., are likely to give more aid than some of the bigger, well-known schools close to the bigger cities simply because they need to. My daughter’s FA this year was split between merit scholarship and financial aid. I have no idea how that works on the school side - I am assuming different funds, but I honestly do not know. I am already preparing myself that our FA won’t be as generous at the schools she applied to this year because none of them really need to entice students to attend as much as where she is currently. I am hoping because she is a recruited athlete that it helps, but I am not overly optimistic about it. We shall see come M10!
My daughter (now a senior) received very generous FA from a small school with a small endowment ($25M). Small endowment doesn’t always equal insufficient financial aid. She thrived where she landed. Hoping the best for her younger brother next week.
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My son is a recruited athlete at several of the schools he applied to, the others he did reach out to the coach(es) and had some good talks but was not as aggressively recruited. We/I look at all aspects of a school from size of student body, staff, even the acreage a school is on! So looking at the endowment is only one of the many details (or minutiae depending on your POV) that we look at! I find it all very interesting but that is just me!
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For me the endowment - is an indicator of available funds to invest into the school as needed.
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Yes. For example, Hotchkiss gives every entering student a laptop (they didn’t want to only give them to financial aid kids, because they didn’t want any differentiation based on money) That’s the kind of thing a big endowment gets you.
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I’m kinda wondering if anyone knows that it’s like too be waitlisted? Like how long until you find out if your not going in if your waitlisted and how many people are for each school?
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theres a pinned post about waitlist
Generally for the tippy top boarding schools waitlist is like rejection
and they may tell you like in april or may that you’re accepted from WL (but that would mean you chose to stay on WL instead of eg just taking offer of another school)
or you may get particularly lucky and be accepted from WL much sooner than that
but most of the time its just a rejection
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Gotcha, thanks that makes sense
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Any chance you could link me the post? I can’t find it
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Let me see if I did this correctly:
Lots of great information there. Especially about the different “buckets” a student can be placed into (boarding/day, needs aid/full pay, girl/boy, etc) which can affect your chances of being taken from the waitlist depending on what the school needs.
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Awesome, thanks! I’m defintley gonna check that out
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Hope you won’t even need it! 
Best of luck next week!
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Friend daughter on waitlist at Middlesex last year - she is now attending - she got off the waitlist so there is always hope! She got off waitlist in early April before the April 10 deadline and she got massive FA.
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I think it helps when parents release schools they know they are not going to attend. As waitlist can only open up when there are spaces available.
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