Applied

The private middle school application process is now complete. We have applied to schools A, B, C, and D, and maybe it is weird that I’m not telling you which is which but we are still in the application process and this is a public blog! (If you care to know I’ll gladly tell you non-publicly.) We have attended tours, open houses, visit days, parent interviews, focus groups, and informational sessions. We have completed four different applications, including questionnaires, essay questions, transcripts, IQ tests, standardized test scores, and teacher recommendations. We have also completed and three distinct (and extensive) financial aid applications.

All of us like all the schools. All of us have the same favorite, and the same pair of second-favorites, and the same one we like the least but still better than our neighborhood public school. I call that a successful process! Jordan can especially see himself at School A, which he perceives as being full of kids like him. When he said that to one of his teachers, she asked, “What are you like?” and he said, “I make friends easily, I get along with a lot of people, I am kind. I hope it is okay to say that but this is how I see myself.” I think this is a very nice way to see yourself. I also think he would fit in very well with the kids at School A, though I would describe their similarities differently (I will try to articulate that later).

Jordan is very perceptive about the social environment at the different schools. At one point he said, “The kids at [School B] were nice, but I wonder if they are mainly nice at first. I think they are kind of like [name withheld],” naming a kid he knows who is a major “cool kid” (and not Jordan’s type). I think he totally hit the nail on the head…that is exactly my impression of the kids at that school. And this is nothing anyone would have said to him; he detects this kind of thing with his finely tuned social radar. Another exchange we had, after a visit to School C in which I asked him to reflect on all the schools he had visited:

Jordan: I liked [School C] fine. I think [School A] is a lot like SJCS.
Me: In what way?
Jordan: They are both open to ideas.
Me: What do you mean by that?
Jordan: If you have a suggestion about how something could be better at the school then they will consider it. Because they think other people might have really good ideas. Including kids.
Me: And you think [School C] is not so much like that?
Jordan: It seems like they feel like they are already very good the way they are, so they do not need to be open to ideas.

ZING! He is so right: School C is more polished, whereas School A, like SJCS, has a more community-based feel to it. I think it is fascinating that he picked up on this. It’s nothing that any adult at School C would have said.

Now we wait and see who admits us, and who offers us a financial aid package that makes attendance feasible for our family (if anyone). My fingers-crossed guess is that School A admits us and gives us financial aid we can maybe sort of live with, School B admits us and gives us next to no financial aid, and Schools C and D don’t admit us because they get a million applicants for about five spaces each.