If folks are going to complain how the Boarding School admissions process is starting to resemble the College Admissions process in its unpredictability, then maybe more families need to start treating it EXACTLY the same way.
If you want to go to boarding school:
Choose 3-5 Reach schools.
Choose 2-4 Match schools.
Choose 2-3 Safety schools.
(Sorry WolverinesFan, didn’t mean to reply directly to you).
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.”
of course. I am merely saying that those kinds of experiences give opportunities to share anecdotes about humility and humanity. Babysitting is not what gets you in to a school. It’s what you learned about yourself / your life etc from babysitting.
More parents are wondering how to evaluate " Resilience" that is hard to demonstrate in application and interview. I believe competitive team sports (in various teams and various levels) could demonstrate that very well, but I don’t know how much weight it plays in the admission evaluation.
Can we return to the original purpose of this thread, which is to help applicants, and to a lesser extent, parents of those applicants navigate the wait-list process.
Tabor waitlist is closed
Sorry again for responding so late, I’ve been busy at school. The school is Middlesex
Anyone have updates on the status of waitlists at Loomis or Hotchkiss, any waitlist movement, or where these schools might be in the process?
We haven’t gotten the typical “we’re fully enrolled” or “we’re not looking at the waitlist this year” email…
We havent received anything from Loomis yet (9th and 11th grade WL)
My daughter got fully enrolled letter from Hotchkiss. She applies for 9th grade. Not getting it is a good sign. Good luck!
Has anyone heard anything from Deerfield for 9th grade girls? I haven’t heard anything from them, is that a good sign?
It certainly isn’t a bad sign.
In reality though, the only GOOD sign is getting “the call.”
Has anyone heard of any waitlist movement for Boston area day schools? IE-CA, Rivers, Nobles…we haven’t had any updates yet
Following! We have not heard anything yet from these schools.
I’ve heard from friends that sometimes they don’t send out a “we’re full” email, so there might be nothing coming either way!
Not really true, we applied last year for our other kid, if you are on a waitlist you will definitely hear something eventually!
Some schools don’t update at all unless you ask.
BTW. Proctor is full.
Any movement for 9th grade girl at Concord and SPS, anyone heard?
Anyone heard from Groton yet?
Thank you all for the great info. I was a student at SPS this year, but I threw in an application to Exeter (My brother goes there) and I originally got waitlisted. At April 9th my family received a call from Admissions telling us that I had been admitted off the waitlist.