activities until the students reach 11th grade to keep their students focused on school, not college.
The college admission push typically kicks off in the middle of 11th grade (with some schools working with students in 10th grade). It often begins with a family weekend during the winter term. Parents and students meet in large groups with CCs, then with individual counselors assigned to small groups of students. These private sessions focus on what the students are seeking in a college (similar to the boarding school search process), and also on the extent of the family’s financial resources.
CCs will use this information together with student test scores and transcripts to propose a slate of prospective colleges. Many schools use software programs such as Naviance to assist in this task. By comparing a student’s test scores and transcripts against those of recent school alumni, the software programs can project likely college matches. Naviance is widely used by a wide range of high schools both public and private, but often to only limited effect if the school’s statistical base is small; a “B” rated public school which has only one grad matriculated to Dartmouth, and that ten years ago, cannot accurately predict the probabilities for a current applicant from that school to that college. whereas a boarding school with multiple recent admittees would have stronger data with which to work.
College admissions officers and boarding school CCs are closely connected, communicate frequently, and often socialize together. Many pros move from one camp to the other somewhat as realtors do, representing the “buyer” (the college), and then shifting over to work for the “seller” (the school). The familiarity between these two camps often means that school CCs frequently learn breaking news that could impact their students: perhaps what positions a college sports team is looking to fill, what the appointment of a new college admissions director may bode for the school’s rising applicants, or upcoming changes in financial aid calculations. CCs can also promote their star students to the colleges ahead to their applications.
The CCs have a vested interest in this process. They want to maximize their school’s “admit efficiency” and therefore promote students who are strong candidates likely to gain admission to a particular college and also likely to accept a place when offered. This increases the college’s admissions efficiency, ups their “yield” (admitting students who go on to enroll), and raises the college’s confidence in that school’s college counselors, thereby improving the chances for future applicants recommended by those CCs. This is why CCs often dissuade less than stellar students from taking “long shot” chances on colleges that will most likely reject them.
CCs also manage students’ application plans against the plans of other classmates. Though the notion that elite colleges take quotas of students from certain schools is decidedly false, large numbers of students applying to the same college increases the likelihood of more rejections, if for no other reason than that colleges prefer diversity of geography and school origin. CCs cannot and do not prevent students from applying to long shot schools, but do help their students understand their likely prospects and promote realistic strategies to achieve them.
Each student is given a list of likely prospective colleges by the CCs. This is partly to help the students understand where they will likely be accepted. It also helps the CCs, as each college relies on the school’s CCs to weed out the unlikely candidates from the applicants most likely to be accepted and to attend that college.
The advantages of boarding school college counseling are many. Fully staffed CC offices provide a depth and frequency of individual counseling that other schools lack. Students are given schedules to maintain – advance study for and scheduling of SAT/ACT exams and SAT subject tests. Parents are kept advised of progress. Many boarding schools host college AOs to interview students on campus. College coaches likewise are invited to observe prep athletes.
However, boarding school students face certain particular challenges in college admissions. Since prep schools by definition consist of students preparing for college, this usually results in many students applying to the same few colleges, usually those ranked in the top 20 or 30, a circumstance not so common in other types of schools, where a minority of students might be college bound (as in most public schools) or focused on local or in state colleges (as in many day schools). This results in much more potential intra-school competition at the boarding schools. Tensions and emotions can rise. Students often respond to this by avoiding discussion of their grades, tests scores, and college plans, thereby helping to maintain a friendly atmosphere before acceptances are mailed and hurt feelings and resentments are generated. Boarding schoolers may also find themselves at a disadvantage geographically. Whereas a student at a boarding school might gain some small advantage being from an underrepresented state, the school itself might be in Connecticut, an overrepresented state. In such cases, students must make sure that their applications emphasize their family’s location, not their school’s.
The schools typically allow 12th grade students to take a small number of “college days” in the fall and winter to visit prospective colleges. Students travelling to far off colleges often schedule college days on a Friday or Monday to combine with the weekend days in order to accommodate long distance travel. “Revisit days” handle similar travel needs after college admission offers have been received in the spring.
MINORITIES
The experience of minorities at boarding schools continues to evolve. In a repudiation of their past history, these schools now are committed to inclusive and diverse student populations and seek to foster tolerance and empathy amongst students from differing backgrounds. Minorities still face challenges navigating issues of race, ethnicity, religion, and sexual identity within boarding communities and also with their surrounding localities, which are often not nearly so progressive in their viewpoints as are the schools themselves.
LGBT students will find a range of situations depending on the school. Many schools have strong support groups and a culture of support; others offer official tolerance but with some hostility within the student population. As these circumstances are fluid and can change quickly, it makes sense to fully investigate schools as they are at the time of application, and not to rely on information that could be several years out of date.
INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS
Internationals have a long tradition in American boarding schools. In the past, internationals were a small population, with only a few students from the same country. Now international populations are growing quickly, in enough numbers at some schools that students can speak their native languages for much of each day, speaking English primarily in class. This can be counterproductive for many international families who may be sending their children to American schools to perfect their fluency in English and for cultural immersion. Internationals also find a wide range of support at the schools, with some schools providing “host” families to serve in loco parentis for students from far away. These families maintain contact with the student’s families and keep them up to date with their students’ activities via Skype and social media. Other schools’ cultures do not offer such levels of support for internationals.
WHO GOES TO BOARDING SCHOOLS?
Boarding school students now come from a wide array of classes, races, ethnicities, cultures and lifestyles. Despite this diversity, all students and their families have one or more basic motives for choosing a boarding school education. These include:
LEGACY TRADITION
Students whose parents and forebears attended the same school are known as legacies. Legacy families usually have a firm commitment of support for that school and regularly contribute money and volunteer hours. Because of this tradition, legacy students typically receive preferential treatment in admission, as is customary with most colleges.
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