Wow…I’ve never heard of Middlesex being referred to as a Target school, much less a safety! Take your MX acceptance with pride!
Agreed @buuzn03! The only sentence in which MX could be referred to as a safety - “I applied to Star Fleet Academy, but just in case, I applied to MX as a safety.”
Congrats on the MX acceptance!
@Altras and @dogsmama1997 Thank you so much for your advice. I’m sorry to respond so late, I’ve just been avoiding CC while letting everything sink in – and was busy at my first FRC competition!
I’ve been making plans for next year and now honestly think it might be for the best. My family will save a lot of money, and I’m planning on looking into dual enrollment so I can save some money for college too, and maybe change the trajectory of my education to something I feel more comfortable with. I’m excited for next year, since my friends from middle school will be going to school with me, but also not sure how to balance my new friends in my new class and my friends from middle school. But it can’t be much worse not than having friends at school (which was what I entered my public high school with in September).
Honestly, with how quickly I was able to start making new plans (which was a surprise… I didn’t think it would sink in) maybe I wasn’t really meant to go to boarding school and kind of knew it all along…
Anyway, so it doesn’t seem like I just disappeared, I wanted to say that I’ll be avoiding CC, which I do feel really bad about, but right now I think the best thing is for me to forget about boarding school and start to move on with my life, and make new plans. I’ll take it step by step from there.
Thank you again.
@ThatScorpio,
Good luck with whatever you decide to do in both your academic and personal pursuits. I think I speak for all of us who have come in contact with you here on CC when I say that I am sure you will be successful and happy with the path you take and your future. Boarding school is not the only path in life, and I think many of us on these threads (particularly applicants, but also some parents) seem to forget that. It takes a lot of maturity and introspection to recognize that.
Good Luck!
CC4life
What should I do if I’m waitlisted at all the schools I applied to and am accepted by none
@Saucerking27 You have come to the right place - read this thread. Several kind posters have doled out advice on what to do many times on it. If you don’t have the stamina for the whole thing, head to post #1952 by @PhotographerMom and go from there. Good luck!
@MAboarder -Middlesex as a “safety school”?? I think I just spit my coffee out.
Speaking from the perspective of a parent of a child who experienced all waitlists last year, I strongly echo the advice given here. I will add a recommendation to use the Schools with Open Seat listing provided through the SSAT - google “open seat list SSAT”.
We waited longer than we should have last year hoping for waitlist movement before using this in May to find a fantastic school for my son. Families without an acceptance in hand should start using this resource now to make phone calls to these wonderful schools with open seats.
@MAboarder Middlesex received 1250 applications for 110 spots this year - with that admit rate you should be thrilled to get an acceptance.
If you don’t have much luck with the SSAT site, boarding school review also provides a list with current open seats. Surprisingly, there are a few schools frequently mentioned on CC that state they are not yet full.
^^^ And do note the reason they are not yet full is NOT that they are less than desirable schools, but that they have yet to finish building their incoming class. Just because a school has some spots left doesn’t guarantee you’ll get a spot – but it’s certainly worth exploring the possibility. You may be just the kind of student they’re looking for!
In the years that I’ve been on CC, I think I could count on less than two hands the number of students posting here that they were taken from the WL. It seems like there will be small activity right the April 10 time frame and then again when the first tuition payment comes due, which is different for every school. My DD’s school seems to take a few (3-5 at most) from the WL, but this happens much later in the summer, like scary late in August.
I second @MAandMEmom --I’ve not seen a lot of movement, either in my time here.
Consider this a good trial run for college. There are colleges with an incoming freshman class of 500 who will put 850-900 kids on the WL. I recall one of those took 2 off the WL. It’s very disappointing.
The reality is that many schools will cherry pick a couple of kids off the WL - having more kids than beds is a disaster for them, and a WL is how they get to 100% capacity but not 101%.
But this is also a way of not turning off counselors, alums, etc. to the school. They don’t want to discourage good kids from applying by rejecting all of them. So as noted, it really means “probably not.”
In the category of wish We had known…there is very little movement on waitlists. Honestly, at the highest ranked schools it can be zero or single digits. I’m so glad my kid finally made the choice last year between the two acceptances. We know that choice #1 never had a slot cone available in the category kid was in. Parents and students accept that a waitlist has minimal chance of changing. As others have said, love the school that accepte you. My student is very happy at #2 choice and doing great. It took a while to realize that waitlists =no. Once that happened our student could move on. I wish we hadn’t been so optimistic about the waitlist. It would have saved a lot of doubt and anguish.
I was recently waitlisted at Exter for the 10th-grade repeat. However, I won a huge award recently, and emailed my AO about it ( They asked for updates).
Does anyone know what the waitlist is like for 10th graders or 11th graders? And what if there are twins who both were waitlisted?
I would like to express a counter point of view.
I agree that most of the top 20 schools (at least those in NE region) all have admission rates of 10~20%. so one school might take 250 out of 2,000 applicants, while another school could take 200 out of 1,300 applicants.
Among the applicants, there are an insatiable demand from Asia - so I guess 3,000 applicants collectively applying for 200 spots (among the top schools). and another 10,000 domestic kids compete for approx. 3,000 spots (collectively.)
Since most of these 10,000 applicants send applications to the same 5~10 schools, at a very high correlation rate. In reality, this could cause the yield to go down very deep and pretty quick, once you reach “4th, 5th, 7th ranked schools” - if there was ever a universal ranking table.
With average yield of 50%, this could translate into 1,000+ spots swing and it would not be out of range to think 50 students come off WL at one certain school. My point: if you are WL at D, H, M, M, X, Y, Z, there can still be hope out there.
I am inclined to agree with @Heading2HS’ assessment. I believe we are seeing the same phenomenon with college applications due to the introduction of not only the introduction of The Common Application but also increasing demand from China. I am looking at many kids with multiple (some are at half a dozen) acceptances and have to imagine those spots will eventually open up.
@ChoatieMom, @PhotographerMom – Thanks so much for the advice that you’ve posted on this forum again (and again, and again). Even though we’d read through the old posts before we got the news, we came back to the forum to help us focus on the “what next” question when we were waitlisted at the one school to which we applied.
Unless something magical happens (and we’re not holding out much hope), we’ll be back at our local day school (which is terrific, by the way) for high school next year, a little richer for at least having gone through the boarding school application process.
Thanks again for taking the time to contribute to a forum like this – it really helped us navigate through the whole boarding school application process.
Hey guys! I got waitlisted from Milton, SPS, and Webb. While I am fine with my current school situation, I would love to get off the WL and get to one of these schools. I know the chance of getting off the waitlist is small, but I may as well give it all I got right? I was wondering if sending in an updated video of my baseball skills as my first video was very lackluster and I didn’t feel it represented my true abilities. I’ve also one a few academic awards in the time between the apps due date and and now. Is it worth sending in an updated video of my baseball abilities, my awards list, as well as a paragraph or two telling them how much I would love to go to the school given that a spot was open? Should I just give up on this idea of getting off the waitlist?