Rejected...No entrance Admissions letters from prep schools put parents on edge

boston.com ^ | March 13, 2005 | By Douglas Belkin, Globe Staff |

[Tax-chick]

I guess that would make your parents early baby boomers. The dating is in dispute. Someone has come up with "Generation Jones" for the 1952-62 group.

[KC_Conspirator]

Apparently you missed the story's that came out in the press in the last 2 weeks. Don't worry, I'll let you do some searches and read in order to catch up.

[vaudine]

Our son got into a premier prep school for his jr/sr HS years as a poor boy on a scholarship. He was in a dope ridden, overcrowded school, and I just wanted something better for him. I had read a book about one of the "premier" prep schools--comparable and close to Groton--played them in sports.

He was asked to come for interview and we could not afford to fly to New England, so they said see one of their board members closer. I cold called a Director on the board who lived 65 miles away. He asked what my connection to the school was and I said nothing, just wanted better for our son. He laughed and said he would put his secretary on to make an appt.

Long story short--our son was one of 150 accepted out of 750 or so applying. His two years there did him a lot of good accademically and gave him an outlook to aim higher for a profession. This prep school on his resume after university helped him to get a very good job when jobs were tight.

I have no regrets about sending him. However, he got in when a lot of rich kids didn't. I guess he and the other 25% of scholarship boys were their "diversity." No, we are not a minority.

vaudine

[Primetimedonna]

"The youngest "baby boomers" were born in 1962, by the most commonly-used dating."

I'd never heard that. I was born in 1947 and always considered myself towards the end of the boomers!

[Boston Tea Party]

I believe that that's how Colgate University got founded.

[Rubber_Duckie_27]

The market for the prep schools in Connecticut is a bit less stringent. A lot of middle and upper middle class parents send their kids to Catholic high schools instead of true prep/boarding schools. I still don't get the cachet of it.

We have two highly-regarded single-sex prep schools within 10 minutes of my office. A number of coworkers send their teenagers there instead of to the local public schools (one of the top 3 districts in the state). I don't understand paying the mortgage on a modest $350,000 house in a town with awesome public schools, only to pay another $30,000+ per year PER CHILD for them to go to boarding school a few miles away.

Then again I'm not originally from Connecticut. People here do strange things in order to appear like they have money - even if they're mortgaged to their eyeballs in order to put on the show of being affluent.

[paltz]

which schools?

[Snickersnee]

Maybe he should have considered building a whole other school. Then he could guarantee admission for his child. :)

Sounds like Leland Stanford.

[WillUSMC]

Long time lurker here, rare poster. I graduated from Lawrence Academy in the '60s. My family was not wealthy. I had a scholarship and worked in the kitchen. I did well academically and co-captained the hockey team. I went to Brown, but dropped out in my Junior year to enlist in the Marines. After a REAL tour in Vietnam, I finished up at Brown and went on to Harvard Business School, paying my own way through both.

That little school in the Massachusetts countryside gave me a fine start in life, and I still send them some money each year. Not all the New England "preppies" ended up like Kerry. Maybe he went to the wrong school.

[Rubber_Duckie_27]

Miss Porter's and Avon Old Farms. Choate is about 25 minutes away. Others in CT that colleagues send their kids to: Suffield, Loomis Chaffee, Ethel Walker, Hotchkiss, Westminster. Some are day students, most board. I guess if day student tuition is $22K a year, another $10K for them to board isn't as big a deal.

[Koblenz]

Back in the 1950s and before, these elite prep schools were based largely on class. Children of wealthy, Northeastern establishment types went to these schools unless they had severe learning disabilities. Admission was based largely on ability to pay and connections.

Starting in the 1950s, these schools, like the Ivies, became much more oriented towards two goals. One was to get the best students, and the second was to get more diversity. These two goals sometimes conflict of course. But they've pretty much pushed out the establishment kids unless those kids are really smart.