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[quote=Anonymous]Oh, momma. I'm sorry about this, and I know you must be managing your disappointment as well as thinking how you can best support your daughter. That's all so hard.

We've just gone through this process for our DS entering grade 6 (coming from public, btw), but it brought back how stressful and random-seeming the grade 9 apps were for our DD and, frankly, for us as parents (shudder). Our daughter landed in a good place that's a good fit, but we frankly had no idea what would happen in pandemic admissions season.

I teach college, and anytime I agree to write a letter for a student--especially for grad school or transfer apps, I tell them that I will write the best letter that I can (and that absolutely I'm cheering for them!), but that it's often much less about the individual than about the wider cohort they're putting together or filling in. As much as it feels like a decision on individual worth, it's often about so many other things beyond the self.

I don't know whether it helps to say, but I'll go ahead and write down that I think it's increasingly hard to come from public school into private admission, especially in the COVID era. There are more applications, more competition, and I think with that comes more difference in how private schools support those transition years into admittance to the next place versus public schools. That's not one lick about what school is better than what, but whether folks are well versed in the admissions process to know how to write the kind of rec letter that stands out, versus the basic format that can be easy to breeze through.

What can you identify as good things about the school ahead for her? What excitement might you help build about a great, new building and new friends and new clubs and extracurriculars? One of the things that I think is true of all the high schools around here is that they're big enough that kids can find their "people" and their niches, sometimes even more than in smaller, private schools where you already have to be some kind of superstar or it feels a real risk to put yourself out there. [/quote]

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