Agree, and this is true in the NEPSAC schools too.
But the weaker academic schools are not necessarily better in sports, in fact often the opposite is true, the ‘acronym’ schools have some excellent sports teams. I think it is hard to find a balance, because for some sports you pretty much have to be recruited to ever have a shot of playing on varsity, as they recruit PGs and juniors to come and play every year. We wanted a place with a path to varsity for freshmen starting on the JV team. But then again, you want strong players to practice with and compete against if you are serious about the sport, and coach who has actual coaching experience and knowledge of the sport. Which is not at all a given as BS staff wears many hats and some of the teachers coaching teams know very little about the sport and don’t particularly enjoy coaching either.
Perpetuating the stereotype.
For years on this site, a large percentage of us has held up unmeasurable and unquantifiable “fit” as the lodestone for enlightened families looking at boarding schools. And yet a still too-large percentage of folks will never walk this path. For this group, the lure of statistics, rankings and “prestige” are like Sirens begging them to approach the rocky coast, the safety of the ship be damned.
The rewards are great for the parents and children able to prioritize or at least give equal billing to things like happiness, personal and intellectual growth, development of values, empathy toward others, kindness and honesty when making a four year decision for their child and/or themselves. What good is a degree from St. Prestige if its disconnected from the kid being the best possible version of himself or herself at the end of the four year journey? I guess we can argue about what constitutes “best,” but in my world happiness, confidence, kindness and honesty are certainly components.
I have recommended for years that parents come back to a target school in the afternoon, not under the watchful eye of admissions, and attend a game or concert etc. You learn SO much about culture that way. It was an essential learning moment in our selection of a boarding school, one of several excellent ways to determine fit.
St. Prestige or Saint Prestige = two words that say so much about prep schools. Thank you.
P.S. Sounds like an appropriate title for a tell-all book. Or a new clothing line.
@Publisher - Think you might have missed the point. LOL
I understood your point, just making my own. Great phrase/ name.
Agree with the post above that mentions trying to spend time on campus after or outside of the interview. It’s very difficult for most of us to manage this, but if you have the time try to spend some free time on campus - at a game, at lunch, at the nearby inn, with parents of current students or talking to current students. Kiddo and I had a great bit of luck by meeting a very friendly custodian at one of the boarding schools we toured a couple of years ago. Really fun information and helpful. We also learned a lot by visiting dining halls that were open or having lunch on the day we were touring. Helped to get the vibe of the school. Attending games and also arranging to see team practices, talking to players and coaches, all helpful.
I’m all for fit, don’t get me wrong, but the reality is many of these schools are more alike than different and although some students/families might feel a better fit at one place than others, for some students they could be equally happy in many places.
I think we all bring a bias towards our own decisions being the best, the “right fit” unless your child becomes unhappy and it becomes obvious it isn’t a good fit - but that often applies to the decision to attend boarding school period from cases I’ve seen.
Any one visit or two or even three - there is a fair bit of luck involved - serendipitously crossing paths with that helpful and friendly custodian, getting an interviewer and tour guide you click with, visiting on a day when morning chapel was extra special and made the community more uplifted and happy, etc. - or the opposite and having an off day.
Often prestige does come into play and to some degree, I don’t think that’s necessarily unwarranted. For high school years, not all kids NEED to go to boarding school. Many have very acceptable options in their own back yard. Sending your child away means making sacrifices both in terms of money and the time with your children. We did cut our list down on two criteria - one was definitely perceived quality and there for value to us (different than prestige IMO because we certainly weren’t doing it for bragging rights) and the other was distance. Given so many great school with in less than a 2 hour drive, as excellent as Thacher is and I’m sure my kids would have loved it, it wasn’t an option for my own 14 year olds. We all have our own criteria.
FIT is important but nothing about these schools is the real world. Admissions is hand-picking kids that meet their definition of “diversity” and probably more importantly, wealth and ability to give and give back to the schools. If the schools really thrived on diversity, then all these kids would be getting along once they arrived at the utopian school.
Totally agree. Both my kids schools chose from an excellent set of choices. Any of them would probably have felt right for one reason or another.
Well obviously about half of the students need to be able to pay full price and donate. Many schools have between 40-50% of kids on financial aid though. Seems like a fair trade off.
I’m unclear what you are really getting at.
@doschicos said exactly what I wanted to, and much more eloquently. That was 100% true for us as well, down to the 2 hour distance radius for the schools we looked at.
I may actually go further and say there is really no perfect school for most kids and you need to decide what are the must haves and dealbreakers and then come up with pros and cons of each place. Visit certainly helps, but it can certainly be a crapshoot on any given day. Going to games and talking to coaches certainly helped us a great deal. But I don’t like the idea of falling in love with one school that is deemed ‘perfect fit’ for two reasons:
1/ you can get crushed by ending up waitlisted or rejected on decision day
2/ you get accepted and your expectations are so high that when inevitable something does not go as planned it is a massive blow that’s very hard to recover from.
Also, I do think a fair number of people on this board use advice of ‘look for the best fit’ as euphemism for “odds are you are not getting into Andover or Exeter, so if you are serious about attending a boarding school you better broaden your search”. Which is much more about expectations than a fit, IMO.
^^ Although I think many people, though, are saying “I am really smart and high achieving, so those schools are my fit” without realizing that even less selective schools will be as good an academic fit and maybe a better social fit.
One of my son’s friends went to a non NE boarding school that is often touted as great academically just not in NE so different vibe, etc. His friend frequently face times or texts him from class. Classes look like a zoo so I am on the fence about less selective schools really being as good an academic fit. My kid would have a fit if he ended up at that school and kids were behaving that way in class. I frequently get texts from the kid and he’ll say “I’m in Spanish class and I’m bored, what are you up to?” Yeah, just an anecdote, but a bit odd to me that a school that is supposed to be so high falutin academically is just so lax about class time.
Since we’re getting into it here…yeah, but for how many new-to-BS families is the primary criteria a perceived advantage in selective college admissions?
An advantage that I held/hold/will continue to hold that is largely illusory.
I assumed most people thought of it the way I did - namely colleges admissions might take a slight hit but that college would be “easier.” I also wanted actual teacher access (BS) vs the illusion of teacher access (large LPS where kids go for extra help and find 20 kids in line in front of them).
I think what I am finding from older kids’ parents is that college admissions is taking more of a hit than I assumed it would. I think for some kids that is just fine and similar to BS “fit” there are an awful lot of choices that will likely fit just fine. For some, with specialized interests or a somewhat narrow athletic profile this might be a bigger deal.
@one1ofeach Are these parents of current seniors you are mentioning? It’s too early for them to speak to the college process, IMO, because they aren’t done yet.
I also think that those inclined to have unrealistic expectations are the ones to complain the loudest. I would imagine their are people who are fine with how things are but they just keep their mouths shut.
Have you seen your child’s school’s College Profile? I noticed it isn’t publicly available, which differs from many other schools that put it on their website. Consider asking for it.
Also our school puts a document with all the colleges applied to in the past 2 years, broken down by GPA in the parent portal. One can see that there are many good outcomes, and that the acceptance rate for kids from our school is almost always higher than the general acceptance rate.
But @doschicos is right – current senior parents are experiencing the most anxious time right now, without yet knowing how things turned out.
Yes current seniors, but applying to schools that are not “top tier” and should not be reaches for the kids. Have already gotten word about missing out on $$ because of GPA.
I have not seen the profile but the parents of seniors were all talking about it, I believe they got it parents weekend… That’s where I got the 7 kids with grades in the 90-95 range which I thought was somewhat extreme. Top GPA is a 3.8.