@ThacherParent very well said. And some “prestige” shoppers might also be checking off the academically sound box without doing due diligence.
Every family has a different calculus for fit. For some athletics, college preparation, guidance and many other factors are the reason to attend a BS. For others, prestige leads the way. Those “prestige” folks are pretty visible. They are also often “big donors” and their kids might be the full pay legacy based kids who slid in under that bucket ( the school needs these kids to pay the bills). Whatever the reason for attending BS, we can’t really question another families needs or weigh their merits.
As a family, we weight it all. It’s a lot of money to spend and we want to make sure money is spent correctly at schools that fit in multi-dimension modes for our kids. And we force the kids to consider ALL the factors too. Kids can be more impressed with prestige than their parents.
I do think there are instances where going to boarding school might not be the right choice - if you are chasing sizable merit aid from state schools where they have hard and fast GPA targets, you might be better staying home if the financial part is paramount to you.
Boarding schools can meet the needs of all and parents do need to keep that in mind.
But there are other BS students who do perform well and get big $$ merit scholarships like the Jefferson Scholars at UVa, as an example. But those are super competitive.
@one1ofeach Can you give an example or two of the colleges where these students aren’t qualifying for merit aid?
"They are also often “big donors” and their kids might be the full pay legacy based kids who slid in under that bucket ( the school needs these kids to pay the bills). "
From info I was privy to at the school with which I am the most familiar, legacy students actually had somewhat better stats on average than the student body as a whole. For a lot of reasons, it didn’t surprise me.
Merit aid is also given for other things like leadership, various forms of diversity, and other attributes the college values that aren’t always stats driven.
Some is just given as a form of tuition discounting for full pay families.
Any decent student can get merit aid, you don’t need 4.0 or even close to it. My older kid got a very nice offer without even applying for it. Alas, the key is that you have to be willing to go to your likely/safety school where your stats are in the top 20% or so. Which is a hard pill to swallow for kids/parents who want the absolutely best school you can get into. Reach schools are not likely to offer you merit aid (the most competitive ones don’t offer it to anyone).
I think the above couple of posts were intended for a different thread? This one is about Why Fit Is Important!
In reference to the OP and earlier posts about fit, I think it’s going to be important for prospective students to “find their peeps” and find the vibe that feels right. Don’t judge the school on the AO/interviewer you meet - you will probably never see that person again at school (unless you become a tour guide, or if that AO is your soccer coach). Do keep the contact information for the person who was your tour guide for later on in the year when you are accepted! That person can serve as a contact to meet other students during Revisit and to have additional insights that will help you make your decision after March 10th!
Observing my son at a TSAO school with an “exclusive” reputation (previously not a BS family, ever, and no pressure on him to apply) I find for the athletics to be FAR less intense and all the parents are friendly. I feel parents are just thrilled they got into “Andover” or a similar school. Athletics are a bonus vs a focus as a path to college attention competing in a public HS. Much less intense than high level club or public HS school events. On campus I find the students to be polite and curious…all was a good surprise.
Fit to me is about the academic burden and campus style. High demands and college environment or reasonable demands with a house vibe.
My younger son might be interested in boarding school but we know his academic fit would not be at the" top", and that is just fine. As people say, there is far more to BS than a Googled Top 10 list. CC success stories have made that clear to me, which will be a benefit to #2.
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.
Since there is a bit of a regrets vibe in the thread now, I will post my current one. We did do our best to consider academic and social fit, social fit was most important to our kid and he made his final choice based on where he liked the kids most at the revisit. And that all was fine and well. I do wish we had considered what someone else called ‘campus style’ more. The kid wanted college-lite environment and that’s what he got. Right now he would definitely do a lot better with some guidance and oversight. Now he is a freshman, and has time to figure it out (hopefully). But right now I really wish he were home, and I could make sure he gets enough sleep to shake the cold he has had since September, get all his stuff organized and nix some of the way too many activities he got involved in.
It also seems like some kids can fit in anywhere and some are very very particular. If you look at the thread regarding why kids decide not to apply to a particular college, it can be really enlightening. One of our kids had very narrow parameters and the other could really go to many places and be happy. Knowing your kid and family is what matters. As said elsewhere, most of the schools offer top academics when compared with other options.
I was glad to find CC during the application process. It helped define what various BS’s offered and how that compared to other options.
We were like @ChoatieMom and truly found CC after the applications were already in. We had NO clue. We knew no one that had BS experience. We flew by the seat of our pants. I do think we had someone looking out for us because DS ended up in the perfect place for him…and we knew after interviewing that his BS was a great fit for him, so it really did work out in the end. But there were so many other places I think would’ve been better fits than several of the schools he applied to.
I’m hoping we learned from this. DD will start her process next fall…our major focus has just been on the right fit. I agree with @ChoatieMom that the difference in academics amongst the schools is nominal, yet the differences in academics between our local schools and just about any BS is unbelievably vast. So, we will win in that department, but we definitely have to get the fit part right.
Apologies for taking this thread in a direction that I don’t think the OP was necessarily envisioning…
@ChoatieMom eloquently summarized my POV on BS in general with this statement: “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.”
I’m also very sympatico with @buuzn03 on the notion that “the difference in academics amongst the schools is nominal, yet the differences in academics between our local schools and just about any BS is unbelievably vast”.
The intersection of these sentiments is why I get so het up by the “go big or stay home”/“HADES or bust” folks. And why I push back on anyone claiming to target “big name schools” for any reason (outside of legacy/family tradition/etc.) other than a perceived (and illusory, IMO) boost in selective college admissions.
Yes, I do think that there may be a very small percentage (0.5%?) of kids whose needs may truly be best served by attending one of the most rigorous/challenging boarding schools in the country. But IMO, the parents of those kids are going to know that and not turn to some anonymous internet forum to help steer their child’s education decisions.
This may be true for some applicants but IME at least at our BS most kids come from places with very good to excellent local school options, both private and public. In fact, the college lists are often better for the local schools. So it depends very much on where are you coming from, but to assume most BS kids come from places with lousy schools is simply not correct. It may be local, sports, overall boarding school experience or lousy family situation or social drama at your ultra-competitive LPSl, or desire to go to college in the US and therefore do prep school there (for international applicants) that drives kids to go, but it is not the fact that you can’t get great education and get into very good college while living at home.
^I don’t think any of us stated this was a blanket situation. In fact, stated the difference between our local schools…which is nowhere near New England.
That being said, I still agree with @SevenDad and @ChoatieMom that you’ll get a great education at most any BS, but a great fit for the individual is much harder to find. My philosophy extends to colleges…the fit for the individual is far more critical than the rank on some random websites.
@417WHB: I never said that all BS kids come from places with lousy schools, did I? And neither did I say that you can’t get a good education at an LPS.
My point is that some folks have come to the forum thinking that Andover is somehow going to give their kid a better education than a less-well known BS. And I don’t think that is true.
What is so interesting about this notion is that Andover has a VERY different feel from many of the other bs in the area. So picking it just for reputation just seems so strange to me. It just really isn’t the right place for so many kids, kids who would almost certainly be admitted, so I really encourage people to visit. My son left our visit saying “why would anyone go here for highschool?” While a good friend of his came away saying “that’s the best place I’ve ever been” and ended up going to Andover.
For anyone getting caught up in the name game, just remember your kid has to live and thrive at BS for four years. If as a family you decide on a school based primarily on the name, you are depriving your child of an important choice. Life isn’t about where you went to school, it’s about how well you did at the school you went to. And having a good fit is priceless. IMHO>