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The Art and Science of Choosing a School


            The arrival of spring coincides with lots of people in our community making decisions about schools. For Berwick, we are currently doing our best to convince our first choice applicants to choose the Hilltop over their other educational options. For our seniors, many are finally starting to have choices to make about where they might head for college next year. All of it makes me reflect on how one makes a good choice about schooling in these kinds of exciting, but inevitably ambiguous, situations. I can’t help but remember the story of one of my teammates in college, who chose to go to Amherst over another school in the league purely based on the fact that he could bring a car to campus in his first year. He had a high school girlfriend. While the girlfriend was no longer in the picture by Thanksgiving, Josh went on to be the leading rusher in Amherst College history, was a fine campus leader, and is now one of the most successful financial professionals I know. Good thing we had liberal parking rules for freshmen.
           
            In my case, I had the transformative chance to choose a private school as a sixth grader. My parents had never heard of independent school in their own childhoods, but my older sister had gone to one the previous year based on concerns that she had asked to hang out on the benches of downtown Needham one time too many with her neighborhood Middle School friends. I only applied to two independent schools and was fortunate to have to make a choice in the end. One was a single sex option that was widely regarded as the most prestigious in my area. Virtually no one said no to this school. The other was the co-ed school where my older sister attended against her own will. My best friend in the world had also been admitted to the all male option and committed to going instantly. He subsequently flourished there and ended up at Harvard for his undergraduate days. For some reason, I went against the grain and chose the co-ed option where my sister was going. While I do remember some elements of the culture there feeling more comfortable to me in the admission process, mostly I remember being a Middle School boy.  I thought six years of Middle and High School with only boys seemed needlessly dreary. The decision turned out ok in the end – I met my wife at my new school in ninth grade and the rest, shall we say, is history.

            None of this is to suggest that these decisions don’t matter, but I would say that in hindsight it is often hard to imagine having taken a different course. In the end, I believe that it is a feeling more than a well crafted pros and cons list that ultimately sways people on these things. Can I see myself here? Would this place make me happy? Do I want to hang out with these people? In a world of incredible marketing and recruitment efforts from all sorts of schools, it certainly is important to remember to “buy the car rather than the salesman,” so to speak. But one simply cannot over-emphasize the relational aspect of the decision. How one feels in a place really does matter. School choices might best be guided by some answer to the question: where could I be my best self? The answer to that kind of question is nuanced. More importantly…it is emotional.


            To all of you who are making such decisions these days, I would simply say trust your gut. School is what you make of it, but it is the people at that school who will inspire you to become your best self.

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