March 10th, the date designated for boarding school notifications this year, has come and gone. My firm’s regional offices in Manhattan, Greenwich, CT, Woodbridge, CT, White Plains, NY, Fort Lee, NJ, Princeton, NJ, Boston and Los Angeles are inundated with phone calls from disappointed, unhappy and anxious parents (who were not our clients). International parents, from Moscow, another from Guangdong Province and another from São Paulo have already scheduled meetings to fly over and meet me in our Manhattan offices. All understand the importance of continuing the process in pursuit of the goal: admissions to a top private school for their children. Their next mission in pursuit of this goal is to determine what to do next.
If your child was rejected, what can you do at this stage in the process? You must identify what may have gone wrong during the application process. Sometimes there is an oversight or omission in preparation of all application materials. Sometimes, schools are presented with an application that’s not consistent with the student and/or family profile.
From my observation, there are five crucial potential missteps during the application process: (1) Parents assume that it’s all about connections. (2) Parents and students don’t prepare enough for the interviews. (3) Parents start too late in the admissions planning process. (4) Parents assume that their skill sets and/or titles give them an admissions edge. (5) Parents make the mistake of retaining an inexperienced educational consultant who is not versed in the admissions policies, diplomacies and politics of top boarding school admissions.
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In all cases, I endeavor to discover the details as to why and how a student was rejected and what mistakes were made. I use the information I gather in conjunction with the current admissions policies of each school and the long-term working relationships that I have established with schools to re-energize a student’s application, make recommendations to improve the student’s profile and properly connect the dots within their application and beyond. By careful navigation, it is possible for students to be reconsidered and admitted.
Dr. Paul Reginald Lowe is the managing director and lead admissions expert and founder of Private School Admissions Advisors a part of the Pinnacle Educational Center Admissions Advisors Group network.
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Dr. Lowe specializes in providing exclusive concierge-type admissions advisory services for families and students who are interested in applying to and experiencing the unique educational environment and communities of Ivy League and highly selective colleges and elite private day and boarding schools.
Dr. Lowe is an active member of several professional organizations including: the Higher Education Consultants Association (HECA), the National Association for College Admissions Counseling (NACAC), the New York Association for College Admission Counseling (NYACAC), the New Jersey Association for College Admission Counseling (NJACAC), the International Association for College Admission Counseling (IACAC), and NAFSA: Association of International Educators, American Foreign Service Association (AFSA), and the Admissions Leadership Consortium (ALC).
