Choosing a Boarding School

The process was not difficult, although it was very overwhelming at first, and there's certainly no primer on how to select a boarding school for your child. My first step was to take a look at the State Department's allowances page to determine what our away-from-post school allowance was.* That gave me an idea of the maximum amount of tuition we could afford. Then I visited FLO's page on boarding schools to start gathering information about how the application process worked. Personally, I found FLO to be less useful than I had hoped. While they had a page of resources, which was helpful, when I contacted them directly they basically told me that I would have to figure out for myself what school was best for my child and how the payment process worked by contacting Post directly.

So we basically made our own list of criteria and then did our research online and over the phone to narrow down our choices to ones that we felt would fit our daughter best. First we narrowed our choices by location - it had to be within driving distance of DC. Then we narrowed by size - we wanted a school that was relatively small with mostly boarders (many boarding schools allow day students). Husband and I preferred an all-girls school, but we did not limit her to those alone. It was nice that she chose that for herself. :) We also looked for schools that offered her preferred activities: volleyball, horseback riding, singing, and a focus on the arts. I further narrowed the list by looking for schools that offered strong academic support, such as additional study skills sessions. Then we researched our short listed schools by checking out reviews from both parents and former students, and we also looked for ones that had 100% college matriculation. 

After we had our list down to about 8-10 schools, I started contacting schools directly to talk about what their admission requirements were and to see if they thought our daughter would be a good fit for their school. I was very honest during these phone calls and explained that although our daughter is incredibly bright, polite, and charming she also has a very hard time staying focused in school and often does not do her outside of class work, which has led to less than stellar grades. I wanted to see how the schools responded to this and what kinds of academic support options they offered. I shared my opinion about the schools I thought we ought to visit with my daughter, but it was ultimately her decision both on what schools we should visit and which one she wanted to go to. Throughout the process we were up front ad honest with C about why were looking at this route, and, honestly, she was super excited about the idea. I think she was drawn to the idea of going to school away from home. No more brothers and sisters to annoy her, no more chores to take care of, no more nagging parents standing over her shoulder every second of the day. Much like her mother, she was ready to fly to coop long before the normal age (I left home at 17 myself). 

We ended up only visiting 4 schools in person, more because the academic year was ending and we didn't have time to visit all of the ones we wanted to before the end of the school year. Although it was a pain in the ass to drive around to all of these places, take a 2 hour tour,  and then hop back in the car and drive all the way back home - I cannot stress enough that an in-person visit was really the key step in the process for us. We visited 1 military school, 2 all-girls schools, and 1 co-ed school. Only 1 of the schools was within a local commute distance. All of the others were abut 2-3 hours drive from DC. After each visit we discussed the pros and cons of each school and how they fit her. I reminded her why were having to go this route and emphasized the importance of turning her grades around. But it wasn't until we visited the last school, the school she ultimately chose, that she got really excited. After our visit and tour, we drove away and she turned to me and said, "Mom, that's the one. That's the one I want to go to. It just felt like home." And for the first time in her short life, I had some leverage. With just a month left to go in the academic career, C somehow managed to turn in (almost) all of her back work and finished the year with no grade lower than a C-. It was then that I was certain we were making the right decision.