We are applying to BS’s for my son who is a very strong student with excellent grades. I wanted to inquire what folks here thought about what I imaginable is the inevitable slight slide in grades that comes with kids moving into the pressure cooker of a top BS. My son would be a 10R. How do colleges view the slide IF it happens… if an A+ student all of a sudden starts having B’s on his transcript? Could this risk be one not worth
taking ?
I answered on your other thread:
He will drop from an A+ student, so level-set his expectations.
95% of Andover students graduate with a less-than-perfect GPA, and they all go to good colleges. Every single college that has BS applicants knows the grading standards, and knows that A’s are not given out like candy.
3 Likes
Remember too that grades and test scores need to meet benchmarks, but acceptance may then depend on other things. Also that top schools are trying to assemble an interesting mix in a class.
This is definitely a concern - more for your sons mental health though. Most kids come into top schools and get grades they aren’t used to. You can ask to see the college profile for the schools you’re considering (maybe after you’ve been admitted). It will show you the typical grade distribution so you’ll know how intense the grade deflation is.
Deerfield has the 89. Groton has an article about how a typical student should be getting an 85 in history. That’s kind of a shock for a kid used to A+ grades. Obviously some kids are still getting what’s considered a “top” gpa but there’s really no telling if that’s going to be your kid.
Colleges know that your son is going from one school into a much harder, more rigorous school. They absolutely are familiar with all the top boarding schools, and will place your son in context. They know he is the same student!
5 Likes
I’m not able to determine how strong your public school is. You need a nationally normed test like SSAT to determine your sons strength. But there are big regional differences in school strength.
I’m in the DC region which is an education pressure cooker area. Kids moving here from other states Public struggle in the regular plain vanilla private schools.
Yes, that certainly will be tough for my kid. Any advise on how to prepare him for that? He was anxious two weeks ago that he “tanked” a test… I later found out he had gotten an 88… in a typically 12th grade AP class. Clearly this is a very important conversation we have to have. Are there any solid BS that don’t deflate grades ? In top BS’s is it deflation or are the classes just at such a high level that it’s hard to hit that mark?
I have a hard time using deflation where the average grade is around a B+. There is not the rampant grade inflation which exists elsewhere.
And yes the courses are generally more challenging. They require one to think critically, not simply regurgitate. The exams are not taken from the textbook. There are no retakes or extra credit. Rare exceptions to the above may occur.
And it you’re choosing schools simply because they inflate grades, you’re missing the big picture.
6 Likes
Also, it’s that every student in the class is in the top 10% of all students in the country, unlike public schools which have more of a range.
3 Likes
…and another way to look at it. Think about which experience will be most rewarding in and of itself, and which will better prepare him to take full advantage of the college experience when he does get there. For some kids this might argue in favor of BS whatever the difficult-to-predict effect might me on the college admissions process
6 Likes
When I was visiting South Africa one year, I helped an engineering professor grade exams. When he asked me how the kids were doing, I said a lot of them seemed to be struggling because they were making upper 70s or low 80s for grades. He just stared at me and said those were fine grades! It was a wake up call for me.
4 Likes
As mentioned above, all colleges know the New England boarding schools and understand the grading rubrics used at each, so let those concerns go. You also need to understand that the BS student pools are cherry-picked and comprise the cream of the crop from a global applicant population. It’s a highly curated group of achievers but, by definition, 50% of those “perfect” kids will find themselves in the bottom half of the class right out of the gate and at various times throughout their BS journeys. So, the question you need to ask if you are considering boarding schools is not how colleges evaluate grades but how resilient is your son? How does he deal with disappointment and what he perceives as failure? How will he deal with not always being on top? How have you modeled handling setbacks and what has he internalized from that?
Resilience is a primary trait boarding schools are looking for. For the most part, the BS pools comprise kids who are challenged rather than damaged by the many small “failures” they will encounter on their way to graduation. Somehow, the schools seem to know how to filter for this grit. There aren’t a lot of snowflakes in the BS communities, and those who enter at the more fragile end do seem to blossom rather than wilt in the process. Anyone concerned about BS damaging self-confidence might not be ready for or a good candidate for this option. These schools build confidence in students, but they start with kids who have already shown strong tendencies toward resilience.
If you search the archives here, you will find that grade deflation and how to handle not being at the very top of the class have been covered extensively, such as in this thread discussing what it’s like to be in the bottom 20% of the class. There have been many other relevant discussions on the college side, such as What Straight A Students Get Wrong.
The students who do best at BS (and in life) are those who were taught at home how to deal with setbacks and how to properly frame “failure” and whose high schools stretch them to take risks. Rather than looking for a BS that doesn’t deflate grades (preserves your status quo and insulates your son from the very important life lesson that he will not always be the best), you might ask each BS you consider how they help their students deal with the very paradigm they’ve set up. I’ve posted a few times how Choate attempts to deal with students’ fear of failure. They don’t always get it right, but they recognize the need to address the common anxiety that your son feels about his academic performance.
The bottom line is that you need to honestly determine what you and your son are looking to gain from boarding school that he can’t get from his local options. I always pound the drum that boarding school is about a stellar high school education, not college results. When the student is well-educated and resilient, college will take care of itself.
7 Likes
This is all going to vary student by student so I’ll give you one perspective. My daughter got all As and A+s in 8th grade. In her mind, losing a point on an assignment was a crisis; a B+ was a catastrophe. She’s not brilliant, just works really hard and the school did not (or would not) differentiate good students from great students in their rubrics.
Our primary goal for her isn’t to be top 10% at BS. It’s to stretch her abilities and become comfortable overcoming the challenges she’ll face in class. To gain confidence that she has the ability to fight through the struggle and get better as a result. We were very careful in choosing schools so she would get that challenge but not be overmatched.
After first marking period, given the grade distributions, she’s in the 2nd quintile of the class. Honestly, that was about what we expected and, even though she’s a bit disappointed, it’s not demotivating and she can build on it for the rest of the term.
So far we’re getting exactly what we wanted for her. The right amount of challenge, a focus on writing skills, and more individualized attention from her teachers. We’ll get her into the right college based on her interests and abilities when the time comes … but strengthening her abilities is the priority now.
4 Likes
There are many reasons to choose either private BS or local public. Grades are just a way to evaluate learning. I would help your child keep that perspective and not make decisions based on grades.
My own private school (a long time ago) burned me out with its rigor and I once read that private school student may arrive at college more “jaded” than their public school counterparts.
I sent my kids to public all the way through and their college admissions went really well. They had less stress in our mediocre public, and more time to do things outside of school that were really interesting. That said, their formal education was certainly lacking and we did a lot at home.
With an anxious kid, I think the decision is a lot more complex than which situation brings better grades OR college admissions. I would focus on the experience itself, and your kid’s overall well-being.
3 Likes
I’m going to share my son’s experience so far. I know every child is different but I hope this helps.
My son was at a local private day school and top of his class all 10 years he attended. We always told him all we cared about was his effort and his grades would be what they would be but he is a perfectionist so he was stressed if there was ever a lost point anywhere. But, even he would say he wasn’t “challenged” and perhaps he focused on being “perfect” because that is what he could strive for?
He just started BS in the fall and his mid semester grades are definitely NOT straight A+ but he was very proud of his grades (as are we!) because he is so inspired and challenged by his classes and teachers! Sure, he would love to have straight A+ but to see him so engaged and focused on the material he is learning rather than being “perfect” is great for us to see!
I don’t know how or why his focus changed so I don’t have any “techniques” to share. It seems like it happened naturally -it’s like he wasn’t challenged enough before so he gave himself the challenge of trying to be “perfect” but now he is being challenged in the right way if that makes sense?
2 Likes
No clue where you got that idea. Just trying to learn about the BS world and all it’s nuances…including grading.
1 Like
IMO it’s the same type of switch from moving from HS to college in terms of grading.
We moved our D to a college prep day school where the competition and rigor were much higher. D thrives in that environment but it’s not for everyone.
You know your child best but I’d have them do visits and sit in on classes and talk to current students. etc….
The only thing I will caution about talking to current students is that they are definitely prepped to tell you the workload is manageable as long as you have “good time management.” I think for some schools that isn’t really true. It doesn’t mean the schools are not good experiences but there are definitely varying levels of stress at these schools so you will need to dig deep after your son has been accepted.
2 Likes
You could have titled this thread “Big fish in a little pond - vs - little fish in a big pond”.
It totally depends on your child. If grades unyieldingly remain the focus of the parent and/or the kid, there is a high probability that BS is gonna be rocky. However, if your kid is soaking up all of the other great things about BS, their grades are likely to slip…and that’s OK. Because then they learn how to be a good person, not just a good student. And I’ve seen and heard kids’ grades then pick back up by junior and senior year. It’s actually a pretty cool transformation.
6 Likes