Our twin boys, eighth graders are applying for freshman year. We value academics, strong sense of community, diversity and are looking for a school with as little party culture as possible. Boys play squash and want to go to the same school if possible. Applying to Taft, Hotchkiss, Choate, Groton and Deerfield. Any thoughts?
Taft does have a bit of a party reputation
Deerfield?
If you want as little partying as possible, focus on schools that have saturday classes. This leaves only one day of the week for partys/socializing.
Admissions officers generally don’t like to split up twins. So if the stats for your boys are similar, they will likely be accepted and/or rejected to the same set of schools. Because of this it may be worthwhile to broaden your list a bit more.
Have you contacted the squash coaches? They can sometimes help sway the adcoms
Have you toured these schools yet? Hotchkiss seems the most diverse/non-partying to me, based on kids I know at these schools. I agree that you may want to broaden your list a bit, unless you have a local back-up that you’d be happy with.
However, as @twinsmama will tell you from personal experience, there are cases of only one being admitted.
Even though I know that it wasn’t in your list, Berkshire School sounds like it could be a good fit. They just built a whole new athletic center with a squash center (10 state of the art squash courts) and it just opened last week! It also has good academics, a extremely tight knit community (student population is only 400) and it is very diverse. 34 countries are represented and 23% of the school is international:)
Thanks everyone! Starting the interviews this Saturday
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My guess is the odds change quite a bit if you are full pay (assuming both are competitive applicants). My children’s school even has triplets. Our story (to which @skieurope referred) is that only one of my well-qualified twins was admitted for 9th grade. The other was admitted when she reapplied for 10th grade. We do require substantial FA to make boarding school possible. Good luck to both your children! (Oh, and Mercersburg has a terrific squash facility. 
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