School is underway!  The kids are learning their schedules, becoming acquainted with new and old friends, teachers and courses.  Every academic year is a challenging one in that it requires some new list of responsibilities for our children.  Some are entering a new school and have much to look forward to, others are getting re-acquainted with their friends and teachers from the previous year.  Whatever the scenario, it's time to get back into the swing!

For parents who have seniors in middle and high school, it's a new year but also the beginning of a journey to find the next school that your child will spend the next four years.  That requires a lot of decision-making, meetings, tours and visits to the placement counselors.  This is both exciting and scary!  Exciting because your child is going to the next level, starting anew, getting set to brave new adventures.  Scary because, for the parent, it's a daunting prospect to think about your part in helping to choose this new setting, this new locale, this new school!  After having gone through this process just last year, I would like to share some of my insight, experience, resources and yes, my opinion! (Did you really think you could get away from that last one!)

Okay, here goes!  The truth and nothing but the truth.......  so help me!

At the start of my journey to look for a new school, my first instinct was to listen to the placement team at my child's school.  This was a great place to start, but by no means did I intend to leave it all to them.  After all, we shared the same agenda (getting my child into a "good" school), so why leave all the work to them.  First, I created a table of schools and listed the qualifications that were important to me and compared the schools side-by-side.  It didn't take me long to realize that for most of the college prep schools, they all (at least the ones I was comparing) offered the same core courses as well as advanced (AP) courses.  I went down the list of qualifications to find that the things that made one school different from the other and applied in the order of most to least favorable.  The thing I came to realize is this:  most schools will offer the same core courses, a few clubs and sports.  When you start comparing the differences, you begin to look at student-teacher ratio, the specific variety of clubs and sports being offered, school size, location and reputation.  But.... at the end of the day, you have to make a decision that will make YOU AND YOUR CHILD happy! 

While this process is somewhat overwhelming, one thing to remember is this:  worst case scenario - after all the research is done and the decision is made - there's always the option to transfer!  If what your final decision was, turns out not to be not to be the right one or not what you thought it would be, you could do it again next year! (*big cheesy grin*)