Tick tick tick tick

After Easter, we started to consider our deadlines to have Myles' arrangements in place. The big names in International Schools in Beijing usually started the fall semester in mid-to-late August. Local Chinese schools would return to classes September 1. Myles' visa would expire on October 6, a week and a half before his 18th birthday. This did not give us a lot of time to send out inquiries, follow-up with more questions, file applications, and then figure out how we were going to pay for it. 

Tick tick tick tick.

One of the hardest parts was deciding which schools to contact first. We were, of course, familiar with the big names in International Education in Beijing, like WAB, ISB, Dulwich, The Canadian School, BSB, etc. Myles and Brigid through sports and their art classes had been around kids that were enrolled in these schools. Conversations with parents on the sidelines had shaped some of my own personal rankings. Further, through sports, we were very familiar (and impressed!) with the facilities of WAB and ISB. But could we find some school yet unfamiliar to us, something closer to where we live than the more famous names in Shunyi, something that might not exhaust us financially?

Right at the start, we eliminated all high schools that required boarding. This was completely financially motivated. We would revisit this "school choice" again later, though, but in April, we were not yet that desperate.

Tick tick tick tick.

Late in April, Randy and Myles were at a Chinese Tea tasting event in Beijing. Among the attendees was a teacher at school in Haidian District attached to a University. Randy hadn't heard of this school before, and so he was intrigued. He mentioned to this teacher our situation, and asked if this school would be a good place for Myles to apply. The answer was, "no."

Randy paused here as he was relaying this conversation to me later. I jumped in with, "See? Just like [redacted name of school near Changping]. In all our years of meeting teachers from that school, not one of them suggested [redacted] for our kids when I tell them we homeschool and why. No one ever asked me,  'Have you considered [redacted]?' Not once!"

Then Randy clarified with what was said next. It wasn't that this teacher thought his employer was a less than adequate school. He was proud of his association with it. Rather, the school used an IB curriculum, and the structure of the program did not really permit non-IB students to transfer in upper high school grades. 

We crossed IB programs, and the equally insular A-levels, off our list. Through the summer, later, when friends would make casual inquiries on our behalf at schools where they knew someone on staff, the IB schools provided pretty much the same answer over and over. One school even noted that in their entire history, they had accepted exactly one upper grade transfer, and it was such a special case that it could not happen again. 

That left finding schools that offered simple high school diplomas, and that was a much more manageable list.

A list of schools we mostly already knew, mostly not near us, and all with a significant tuition bill. 

And then it was May.

Tick tick tick tick.