Anonymous wrote:Overthinking and over-writing. Esp the latest PP. Crafting, agonizing and spurning?

You forgot the “coveted access”! 🤮😂

Overthinking and over-writing. Esp the latest PP. Crafting, agonizing and spurning?

Feeling this post. Having done family interviews with prestigious schools that ultimately granted us coveted access, but then saying no, gives me anxieties about how this goes in the future when admissions teams are carefully crafting their 9th grade cohorts and we will seem to have spurned them. We really liked so many of the schools!

Schools know that many families pick different schools for different kids. The family of a friend from DC’s k-8 who got into the school DC is at but turned it down and picked another, just enrolled their younger kid at DC’s school, which clearly didn’t hold anything against the family. You aren’t burning bridges by declining schools.

I have multiple kids and this did not cause any problem at the high school level.

You're overthinking. The admissions officers are people just like you and I and recognize that different kids need different schools. They're not going to hold it against you that you didn't send one kid but might want to send the next. A huge percentage of families in the independent school community have kids at multiple schools.

When you apply for the sibling, address it directly: Big Sister chose another school, but this school is perfect for Little Brother because...

How does one keep one application season from affecting siblings that will come in future years? Our DC was quite successful during the US application season and we had the good fortune to agonize over a wealth of choices. We left the final decision up to DC, and decided on the final day. Now we are anxious about our next child, who has different priorities, inadvertently being affected by our decisions not to tend truly wonderful high schools—schools that our next child would probably love to attend in a few years. They are immediately recognizable as siblings from biography if not from name. Thoughts for whether we are overthinking?