Open Houses
An important part of choosing a school is actually visiting the schools on your short list. It also takes a lot of your time. From the school's point of view it can get a bit hectic trying to schedule 50 visits on the same morning or afternoon. That's why many schools will schedule open houses. It is a more efficient way of handling a lot of traffic. What about the interview and testing? The school will explain how all that is handled. Procedures vary from school to school.
Looking for a list of open houses? Your state association of private schools will usually have a list. School websites will also have information about their specific events. Early November is prime time for open houses. Make the most of it.
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Comments
Open houses are a bad way to give out information to prospective parents. This is what a good web site does for you. Open houses show off the school at it’s best light and are as true to the school as a condo time share prospectus.
At. St. John’s we had periodic open houses, but they were more for the existing students, their relatives, and alumni than for new parents.
Our vetting process worked like this:
Parents complete the application paperwork.
Recruiter looks it over for obvious bad fits.
About 10% losses here.
Secretary makes an appointment for parents and prospect to visit the school.
On arrival a boy is pulled from class gives the family a
tour of the school The parents are encouraged to ask
the guide questions. The guide is chosen for both his positive attitude and for his candor.
The tour takes about an hour.
The parents and the boy are interviewed separately.
While the parents are interviewed, the boy takes some basic mental ability tests.
The interviews take about an hour each.
There is a joint interview then, and the recruiter lays
out any potential problems and issues.
We tell them to go and talk it over.
If the recruiter accepts the student, he sends out a letter telling them of this, and asks one of the parents
and the student separately to contact him and tell them of their acceptance. This often allows the recuiter to
find out oif the student really wants to be at the school.
Despite this, the system doesn’t work.
What we are looking at now is a system where a prospective student spends two days at the school — one academic and one non-academic day — as the shadow of a present student. Parents also spend a day,
but their day is dropping in on classes, meeting the staff
that would interact with their kid.
A well run school should have a large re-enrollment rate
each year. If you have a school of 600 spanning grades 7 – 12 and have an 85% reenrollment rate, you need to take in about 200 students a year. Which in turn means