I posted my results and I hope it will help future applicants in their journey.
To future applicants, if you are reading this:
Take SevenDad’s advice to heart! Cast a wide net and apply to a lot of schools. The work will be hard but it will all be worth it in the end. I only applied to two schools this year and it was definitely one of my biggest regrets. I am seriously considering re-applying next year and if I do decide to do so, I will DEFINITELY apply to more schools (in fact, I have my eye on 15 currently ). Please don’t make the same mistake I did and apply to only a few schools and/or apply to only acronym schools (HADES/GLADCHEMMS)…there are tons of schools out there and a brand name does not guarantee a right fit.
Try as I might (I do have a day job unrelated to all of this), I could not keep from checking the forum yesterday as people’s results rolled in. I even checked out the “M10 Freakout” thread in the Cafe (a place where I rarely go).
And the disappointment was palpable.
While I’m disappointed that you didn’t get the results you wanted, I am glad that you can now appreciate why I, among other long-term parents/posters, champion taking a “wide net/look beyond the ‘usual suspects’” approach to BS (if going to BS is in fact important to you). I have sat on the sidelines for a few years now watching kids (including my own) go through the process. I have been in the offices of admissions officers and talked about my kids’ strengths and weaknesses — and their “fit” for various schools. As the saying goes “this ain’t my first rodeo”. But still, as you can see, my message often falls on deaf ears. Believe it or not, I am much less active on the forum now than I was in the year after my older daughter went through the cycle. That first year, I was a truly a man on a mission.
In that first year, I posted a blow by blow accounting of my older daughter’s search/apply/admit/revisit/matric process. I did this to give people unfamiliar to the process some insight into what happens, but also to show that even a kid with great stats can get flat out REJECTED by a school. Keep in mind that neither of my daughters applied solely to “ACRONYM” schools…I didn’t counsel them to do so, and I don’t counsel people from the forum to do so either.
Part of this is about increasing your odds by considering schools that have higher admit rates/at which you will be more of a “catch”. But it’s also about opening one’s mind to the possibility that you could get an EXCELLENT high school education at more than 5 schools. And quite possibly, that a school outside those “top 5” could be a better fit for the applicant — which will only enhance the applicant’s chances of getting admitted.
Best of luck to you and all other students considering applying again next cycle. And also to those who feel they are done with the dream of BS. As I hope you can see, no matter what happens on M10, life can and does go on.
My son applied only to two schools. One was Andover, one was Peddie. I couldn’t suffer the process for more schools, but those two are very different. I agree with casting a wide net or diversifying. I just couldn’t handle all of the visiting schools and managing all of the applications.
I would love to have applied to multiple schools for my boys, but they have another parent who is in opposition. I was able to apply to the one school simply because it is in relative geographical proximity. They were basically screwed from the moment he put “$0” as the amount he was willing to pay, on his FA forms. I’m proud of them for being waitlisted.
@andoverorpublic/Britmom5: Thanks for your posts and please keep in mind that I was not trying to excoriate anyone for taking a different route. My post was very general and of course does not take into account various individual family situations…also note that my own kids applied to a very short list of schools (3 and 4 respectively).
Didn’t take anything personally, Sevendad! Just adding info. These are kid #4 and 5, btw - and the other 3 are all successful adults, so - it all works out in the end! It also means that i’ve been through the college app process and the 4 years of that, several times too. (Including moving kids in and out od dorms with infant twins in tow - lol) To be honest, in the end - it all comes down to what kind of people we’ve raised - rather than where they end up.
I agree with you @SevenDad. I just don’t think casting a wide net necessarily includes applying to many schools. I think applying to different schools is more important. My son got into Peddie in the morning and then Andover in the afternoon. If he had not gotten into Andover, he would have been ok getting into only Peddie. He still has no clue whether to stay in public or go to Andover or Peddie
@andoverorpublic: Can I ask what made you look at two schools that most would consider (whether accurately or innaccurately) fairly far apart — with regard to geography, selectivity, and “prestige”? Was it the swimming program at Peddie?
In some respects, it comes down to: do you want to only go to a specific school or do you want to go to boarding school? If your choice is to go away to school, then maybe use the formula used by a lot of people searching for a college…
1-2 reach
2-4 likelies
2-4 safeties.
Keep in mind that just because YOU deem a school a safety, there are still no guarantees. All of the top 30-40 boarding schools will provide an excellent education. Therefore, they are all popular places to apply (remember not everyone who applies is here on CC – there are even people who have not even heard of CC!). That means that even so-called “safeties” will not accept everyone. This is what is meant by casting a wide net… not applying solely to the 10-12 most well-known schools. For future applicants reading this: you need to do the research to determine which schools you would be a desirable applicant and a good catch for their school. If you find that sweet spot, where you are a “catch” for the school and the school is a good fit for you, then you have a higher chance for success.
Obviously, there is the “go big or go home” contingent. This advice is not aimed at them.
^^ agree this represents some of the parallels to the college app process . . . however, will claim that FP and geographical diversity are somewhat more predictable factors for the BS application process. This is because the BS are somewhat more cognizant of their bottom lines since the “elite” BS have relatively less endowment than their college counterparts (greater than $1M per student as opposed to less than) . . . so a FP to Choate, let’s say, gets a bit more lift than they would to Amherst or Brown. I’d also say that the qualified Alabama applicant probably gets more mileage from that at Groton than they do at Harvard.
NO rigorous analysis to support this, but just an armchair assessment after following admissions for a while with real interest.
I have to say the chances forum here just kind of killed me, there were countless kids there and in the cafe on the “freaking out” thread who were such totally long shots for the tiny list of schools they were applying to. And then they are all encouraging each other, “don’t worry Andover and Exeter don’t look at SSAT scores as much as blah blah” or “I am sure they will understand that you got a couple of Cs but they will take you anyway” and they are being encouraged in this process by each other when they have so clearly set themselves up for disappointment. I lost count of how many times I replied that yes actually those schools do care about grades and SSAt scores, that that was the price of entry after which they then only take the kids they want…but I was drowned out by the 14 year olds. I felt terrible for the kids but I definitely was looking like a meanie…my kid gets the benefit of my realism but these kids seem to be largely managing the process on their own. Its an awfully hard thing to do at 13 or 14
@LifeLongNYer: Yet one parent on the forum felt that I was uncharitable in using the words “hubris” and “overconfidence” to describe some applicants…in this (and really every) app cycle.
And here’s a reality that certainly “bites” for us - we had the test scores (99th%ile), the grades (all A’s), the geographic diversity, were full pay AND had a legacy connection at two of the schools my kid applied to - and we still got 2 WL and 2 rejections, plus 2 WL at the local private schools our kid applied to.
Obviously they saw or heard something that made them think twice - a lack of maturity, a problem with something that we haven’t even thought about. But there had to have been something that made them decide “no” instead of “yes”. We’ll probably never know what it was, but I hope that our kid will emerge on the other side of this process a better person. We want her to realize that there are “options” right here that can get her where she wants to go if she chooses to take advantage of them.
@sevendad it was hard for me to write the above post without using the word hubris frankly. On the other hand isn’t that the nature of teenagers? It reminds me of I why I am not a teacher, at some point why bang your head against the wall?
jmtabb - Did your kids get WL/Rejections at the Legacy schools? I think that the legacy connection helps at that one school but hurts at all others (because of yield protection). If there were competing legacy applications this might have paradoxically canceled out any potential advantage and also hurt your app’s at other schools.
My advice - call the WL schools and let them know about your loyalty to that particular school. They may have been quick to place you on the WL thinking that you were a shoe-in for the other legacy school.
@stargirl3 I hear you. There were a couple of really vocal kids this year who themselves had very very slim chances at the very very few schools to which they were applying and every time some new kid showed up asking if they had a “chance” these same kids would reassure them that “SSATs don’t really matter” etc etc etc. I am just not sure where that idea even comes from? If the school has a 94% average SSAT thats what it is, period. The statistics should speak for themselves, its like a form of magical thinking that I find maddening. But I am a big believer in preparing for the worse and hoping for the best.
@heartburner - yes, we got the two WL at the two legacy boarding schools, plus at the two local private schools our kid applied to. The “feeling” we get is that the WL decisions are probably soft “no”'s, though there isn’t anything specific we can point to.
To be honest, this entire process has been a bit of a bitter note for me. I’m not so sure I want to give $200,000 of our hard earned dollars to a school we have to beg for them to reconsider our kid. But I’ll probably give it a couple of days for me to think about this a bit more rationally before we do anything.
@jmtabb: Sorry to hear your final results…your story further underscores how competitive (and sometimes seemingly arbitrary?) the final decisions can be. Even if a kid checks off all the boxes (and has legacy status), it STILL might not go their way. So how can the average smart kid who finds this forum feel at all confident about their chances, especially at the most selective schools?
). Please don’t make the same mistake I did and apply to only a few schools and/or apply to only acronym schools (HADES/GLADCHEMMS)…there are tons of schools out there and a brand name does not guarantee a right fit.