I wish our process was as @ThacherParent describes. I wish I had found CC before our son was accepted to BS. Our sole criteria was to get our son the heck out of Dodge, a bully-full, grade-inflated AP rat race with three universities (the website of the flagship advising, “please allow 30 minutes for your application”). And we lived in the best school district in our state. We had no idea there were 300 boarding schools in the U.S and, sadly, no clue there were choices in CA, so much closer to home. We had lived in the Boston area for ten years prior to moving out west when kiddo was two and were “familiar” with a handful of names, so our son looked into those and applied to four, accepted to two. We never heard the term “fit” and never considered a fraction (any?) of the excellent criteria always highlighted here. We just assumed they were all waaaaay better academically than what we had here (we did nail that one), so any one of them would be just fine. Our son only visited one with his dad. I visited none until the two revisit days for accepted students. So, unlike @SevenDad’s helpful and oft-revived “One family’s BS search and application process – start to finish” thread, we really did do this with no other thought or effort beyond “pick a few that appeal to you and fill out the apps; if you get in to one, you can go.” That was our process start to finish.
I’ve told versions of this story here over the years because we didn’t go about it in an informed way, and DH and I have had our regrets about his choice. He did not choose the school we liked the best or the environment we thought would be kinder to him. But, he has no regrets, loved his experience there, did very well, made a ton of friends, and got where he wanted to go (again, not our choice for him, but that’s another story). My takeaway now that it’s almost nine years since his BS application round is that although I agree with @doschicos that some students could be equally happy in many places, I wish we had been better informed and steered our son’s applications using “happiness, personal and intellectual growth, development of values, empathy toward others, kindness and honesty” as primary criteria. His list would have looked a lot different than it did and, perhaps, he would have had an even better experience. Ultimately, I think he conformed to his school rather than enjoying a glove-fit for his personal shape, but we’ll never know.
So, I will champion all the good advice to choose your boarding school carefully taking the time to seriously evaluate all of the things that are important to your child’s well-being and find schools that walk and talk your values. All these years later, I think that our sole focus, quality of education, is least important because I believe it is least differentiating among the schools discussed here. Our son could have gotten a stellar education at any of them. We should have moved on to way more important things. Don’t be like us. Listen to @ThacherParent.