Yes - Some might "repeat" classes if they screwed up the first time. But the reclassified kids who do not repeat the classes are the ones that did well in the first place and would only see marginal benefit to "repeating" the same classes again. How do you think an admissions officer would evaluate the transcripts of two different schools with the same courses? I don't think he/she would completely disregard the worse transcript and would probably not put a lot of weight behind the "repeated" transcript because any idiot would do better the second time around and they are well aware of that. The whole idea of "prep school" is just that - prep them for college. Repeating the same classes as what was already taken at a prior school does not "prep" any kid better for college. The reclassifiers who don't repeat are being "preped" with APs in their Junior and Senior year as well as another year in the weight room and on the field for an all around easier transition. Not to mention the "away experience" of being away from mommy and daddy and having to develop independent study and living habits at a boarding school makes that part of the transition to college a lay up that many public school kids struggle with. [/quote]
I read this as you trying very hard to rationalize that junior is not a repeat a grader but a "reclassifier" but a lot of what you write out makes no sense whatsoever. If a kid is academically sound, and coach wants him but there is an agreement to do a PG year (post grad year, NOT a repeat a grade in 8th or 9th year) that is a completely different thing than going 8th or 9th grade twice to hit well on early recruiting.
All reclassifiers repeat. There is no such thing as reclassifying without doing a grade twice, and that is repeating a grade. You go on that these kids are not REALLY reclassifying or repeating so much as they are being "prepped". That is hysterical on two levels.
First, a PG is a kid who GRADUATED from high school and does an additional post graduate year at a boarding school. Yes, these are finishing school type arrangements for kids who need to pull their grades or scores up in order to admissions qualify at the schools who recruited them. Hockey players have been doing that for decades at the New England boarding schools.
Second, your local public or day private schools are not boarding schools. Kids in Maryland that go to a public school for 8th or 9th and then repeat that grade at an MIAA or IAC school are not being "prepped" as boarding students. They're just from families willing to write checks to keep their kid in the recruiting cycle longer when it doesn't appear they are good enough to be recruited as real 8th and 9th graders.
If there is such a thing as an academically gifted lacrosse player who is basically restraining to do a grade level over, but in your words is someone who is academically all the same in terms of progression and is doing AP courses as a junior or senior (cue the laughter) and is as you wrote basically a college freshman in the final year of high school...well, why don't those kids enroll at UNC, Michigan, etc. and redshirt a year in college instead of hiding in 8th or 9th grade a second time to audition better as lacrosse players?
That is the question, and when we take away those crutches the answer isn't "well, he ISN'T REALLY REPEATING and he SORT OF ALSO ISN'T REALLY RECLASSIFYING the way others are now putting it, but he is really PREPPING and taking all sorts of college credits in 12th grade and hitting the weights for one more year", it is that you made a family decision to make your son a social and emotional invalid to repeat a grade he didn't need to for academic or social reasons so he can show better as a lacrosse player. Just admit it and stop wasting your own time...at this rate your kid will only learn how to rationalize away anything and everything that is hard in life with excuses like you are doing for him.
