<p>Hardly anyone got outrightly rejected from Choate or Deerfield. These 2 schools prefer to hand out W/L’s (i.e. weasel rejections). </p>
<p>Hotchkiss doesn’t beat around the bush; it either wants you or it doesn’t. I recall the AO we spoke with said they try to suss out the urban kids who will be unhappy in a remote rural location. </p>
<p>Thanks for doing this once again, GMT. I know it’s not fun to post W/L or Rejections, but I think the self-selection of CC posters (already a self selected group) skews the results numbers in a way that future applicants would mis-interpret.</p>
<p>This was a goof year for CCers who applied to NMH, Groton, Loomis, Hotchkiss, Exeter, and Choate. Its funny though, because I know most of the schools listed had lower acceptance rates than usual. Yes, I know that a lot of CCers will only post their acceptances if they post anything, but these stats are still compelling.</p>
<p>I think sometimes it might- if you’re unfamiliar to the boarding school scene or set-up, then CC can certainly fill in some of the gaps. But I think that people that actually post on CC are also highly motivated, bright people who are dedicated to getting into a boarding school, and most will only actually post if they’re accepted somewhere. Being on CC can have downfalls and upsides- you have more information, but you have less of a gut instinct sometimes. And certainly if you make yourself known and then bash a school (or praise a school), you might have influence. But “being” on CC as a whole doesn’t affect the admissions decision. </p>
For the most selective schools, I doubt CC had anything to do with getting in. I think it’s just a situation where the vastly more numerous applicants who did not get admitted are simply not posting their results. </p>
<p>Consider that Andover had over 3000 applicants in this admissions cycle. It admitted 400 kids and WL/rejected 2600. My tally for Andover has only 28 respondents, i.e. less than one percent of the total applicants. </p>
<p>The big takeaway from these numbers is not that participating on CC increases your chances, but that **the people who post here are not representative of the applicant pool. ** I am concerned that from reading the CC admit results, prospective applicants get an inflated view of what their chances really are. </p>
<p>I’m the only CCer that I can remember who wasn’t admitted to Groton’s second form. There was calrenoma, Grisom123, MDMomofTwo, grotonguy, debatesomethingorother. Curious… very curious. </p>
Senior member I may be, but I didn’t join CC until after my son was admitted to prep school. I was one of the people that never posted about that Grotton wait list @StarGirl! It was too stressful back then to even get on much–way too much chancing and hardly any really useful info about the application process. So I think the skew makes perfect sense; you might lurk before March 10, but would you jump on again if your child had a pile of rejections? I doubt I would. Those of you still here are braver than I.
Love weasel rejections, aka waitlist @GMTplus7–though in our experience, some waitlist letters carry more promise than others.
As another veteran of the waitlists, I think only a few felt “real”; that is, as if there was still an AO advocating for the kid. Most were weasel rejections…love the term @classicalmama. Now go do your laundry.
