We’re getting rather far from the purpose of this thread, but I would like to underscore the important of grit and resilience in succeeding in a BS environment, especially at the ones most chased here. During our years at Choate under the then new headmaster, the school was seriously evaluating the importance of these traits and formally addressing ways to identify and instill them. I posted about their process here.
Also, at revisit days, Choate’s AD welcomed admitted students and proceeded to address the question, “Why you?” He told a story about ponds and fishes and said that Choate had found something “big fish” about each of the students in that auditorium that was not related to grades or test scores. That stuck with me. It seemed that the better question was not why our son was rejected by other schools but why he as accepted by the schools he was. What did this particular school see in him that caused it to choose him over seemingly identical paper applicants. I mused on this here. It’s interesting that Choate’s AD was instrumental in developing the self-assessment that other BS picked up in later years as a supplementary tool to tease out personality traits that other parts of the application did not reveal. Resilience was one of them.
Most likely, you will never know why your student was accepted or denied by a given school, but the answer to “why was my child admitted” would be much more revealing than “why was my child denied/WL’d.”