Is it possible to switch private high schools over the summer?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You never know till you call. I’ve heard of some very good schools having random openings in the summer.

This. Definitely depends on the grade at each school. I would pick up the phone and start calling.

[Anonymous]

From very recent personal experience, yes. It will be very helpful to have a compelling reason for the switch, including good reasons as to why the need to switch has arisen late. (That will also help in discussing your contract with your current school.) If you have a connection to the prospective school, and/or specific reasons why that school is a perfect fit, that would also be helpful.

[Anonymous]

Yes. We got some end of year feedback about our DC (middle school) that made us very concerned about next year and we decided to look around.

We knew we were in the hook for two tuitions (and were willing to pay for both). I called around to six schools to see if they were taking applications and three still had spaces. I opened applications at all three and filled out/submitted the portions I could without asking for teacher recommendations.

We met with our DC’s division HOS, spoke to our DC, and spent about 2 weeks thinking about it before we decided not to have DC leave now. While we don’t think the current school year is going to be great, it’s not truly an emergency and we want to make sure we are going to land at a good place for DC. We don’t want to move DC and then move them again for high school. The three schools that had openings will definitely be on our list, but we are going to have DC apply out during the regular admissions cycle this year.

If you have ever gone through out of cycle admissions, you will get a decision as the schools make them, and you will get 1-2 business days to accept the spot. So unless you have a first-choice school, you don’t really have the ability to “choose” a school for your child the same way you do for regular admissions. We were not expecting to leave the school, so we don’t know very much about other schools, and websites provide limited information - this was a big factor in us wanting DC to go through a regular admissions cycle - it will give us all time to get more information about the schools.