How to choose between NLCS and DAO (unfortunately!)

[Mark Thyme]

BarnetDad, I guess if you plump for NLCS, we'll see you there. Made our choice today.

Talking to friends who have daughters at NLCS as well as at other schools (mostly SPGS), North London is a gentler, friendlier place with better music, good sport and equivalent academics. The girls there seem to be more heterogeneous than many private schools, and more than HBS from when we were looking at that last time.

Parents? All I can say is who cares. It's the girls that count. I've met some parents at SPGS who I've found awful, just awful, but the girls have been uniformly charming. I suspect NLCS is the same. By the same token, my children are all smarter, nicer and more sparky than I am and I hope to h*ll nobody judges them on me.

But I hear very good things about DAO and one of the most spectacular in-all-respects girls we've ever known (my wife helped her get into Cambridge when they stupidly turned her down) went there.

[NLCSPAPA]

Mark Thyme....agree that it's about the girls but you seem to have done a 360 on NLCS. Funnily enough, I was close to rejecting the school because I shared your view on their hard sell approach. Well, thank heavens I had more sensible people around me.

[BarnetDad]

A 360? So his view is unchanged?

[NLCSPAPA]

The views have turned around...gone from pillar to post...at least by past posts standard.

[shootmenow]

I can assure you that the NLCS parents are a really nice bunch of people. Very diverse and down to earth. Please keep in mind that a lot of girls live in places where houses aren't so expensive and the parents scrimp and save for the fees. Several of my DD's friends have help with the fees. The girls don't care if their mates live in a mansion (none of DD's friends do) or a basement flat out in the 'burbs (several). It is big enough that your DD will find friends and, if you can put your preconceived notions aside, you will too. I really like my fellow parents. They get involved with school life and it makes it feel like a community.

[aban]

Hi, Can any of the current NLCS parents (or those in the know) PM me please about how much typically the extra school expenses are ?? (apart from the tuition fee). Thx.

[NLCSPAPA]

What we know is that you pay £657 per annum for lunch (obviously this will go up but at the interview stage my daughter loved the chocolate custard pudding and the general view is that the food is good over there..payment not compulsory.), the coach fee is around £960 for a one-way trip and around £1500 for a round trip....there's an insurance fee of around 2% of fees...you have to opt out....and there is the individual music fee of £215 per term (may go up)....and of course there are trips outside the country but not that many...France and Spain are popular choices for language learning purposes....a new angle worth considering may be costs for any exchange programmes to Jeju....best way to think as someone advised us is to pretend that the first term fee is £7k..

[Mark Thyme]

nlcspapa, I take it you mean 180 degrees. Actually, it's probably more like 30 degrees. I've always felt that the margins between these schools are so fine that whatever choice you make, you won't go wrong. So it's down to convenience, cost, trivia and reputation and feel and whatever grains of information you can glean.

I didn't like Bernice McCabe's hard sell, and hated it from when we went there looking for primary schools for our eldest girl. Which was the biggest reason NLCS was our third choice after SPGS and HBS. SPGS suits our first daughter, though NLCS and HBS probably would have as well. She's a psychologically tough cookie and handles the pressure well.

For number two there were a number of factors at play. We didn't go for HBS and felt SPGS wouldn't suit her (and so did SPGS). But at the same time NLCS wanted her enough to give her a generous scholarship.

What can I say? We make our choices from what's available and then rationalize. I'm still not fond of the management consultant feel at the top of NLCS and am at a loss as to why they're involving themselves in South Korea. I suspect its driven by MBA thinking rather than what's educationally sensible.

I hear very favourable things from parents who have girls at both NLCS and SPGS and so we're optimistic.

[NLCSPAPA]

I think more like 60 degrees retraction Still, your views were very helpful to us when we visited here looking for a way forward with our options. Thx!

[BarnetDad]

Thanks for all the reassurance! So are there any other budding gymanasts going?!