BoardingPOV

Michelle:

First off, congratulations to all who applied to boarding school and got in! It is quite an achievement and something to be proud of! After all your hard work, you finally made it, now comes the “easy part” ( well at least you’re in, right?)

choosing the school.

Most people apply to [...]

Dad:

So I promised a “what you can do while waiting for your decision letters”, and I will say a few words on that in a moment. But first, I wanted to tell you about an unanticipated side effect of sending a daughter off to boarding school…

O.K., so she’s not really crazy.  Michelle’s [...]

As Malcolm Gladwell points out in his book: ,Outliers: The Story of Success
“Knowledge of a boy’s IQ is of little use in a formful of clever boys”.  That is to say, super-high intelligence is of little consequence when there are other factors that also contribute to success in life.  Things like being able to [...]

Dad:

We had a nice comment from reader “Valerie” a few days ago. In her comment, she says “The only reason my parents think I shouldn’t go is that they would really miss me if I did” and “They understand it would be a great opportunity, but there is also the cost (to consider)” [...]

Once the decision was final that I would be attending boarding school I was finally able to tell all my friends about my decision. Most of my friends had already decided where they were going, as for me it was a harder decision. All of my friends were excited that I was going to my [...]

near tears saying; “how can I possibly let her go?” and her friend quietly saying “She’s a great kid – how can you NOT let her go?”

Michelle: This turned out to be a really hard choice for not only me, but my family as well. I knew what I wanted to do, and that was to go to boarding school. Not just any boarding school, but my top choice. It was everything I had ever wanted.
In the end it came [...]

Boarding schools are expensive – typically in the 40,000-$45,000 range.  After you swallow your gum (ulp!), remember to relax and look at the bigger picture.  Long gone are the days where only the Rockefellers and the Kennedys are going to these schools.  The schools often have large, even huge, endowments  primarily for the purpose of [...]

Mom & Dad: This was Michelle’s second hurdle – at roughly $38 -$45,000 a year, she knew that expense was a consideration.  We’ll talk a little more about the strategies we tried, in a post later this week.
For now, we’ll just say that when we were debating Boarding versus Local school options, there was [...]

Michelle: I honestly didn’t really know much about financial aid, other than the basics. I knew that many schools offered it to students they really wanted at their school, but couldn’t afford it. I knew that my family did need financial aid, just not how much.
I worked as hard as I could to get accepted, [...]