> Interestingly enough, they don't allow clients residing Yukon, Ontario and
> Newfoundland & Labrador.

Are you sure?
If you select 'Canada', and then 'Yukon', it seems you can just go ahead and proceed with your application.
I assume they would either not give 'Yukon' as an option to select, or inform you you can't open an account after choosing 'Yukon'.

I haven't gone further than the second screen because otherwise I might end up having an account at Saxo (plus I'm not from the Yukon territory), so maybe the reveal doesn't happen until later in the process.

Maybe I'm missing something, but why wait?
The OP gave his word to a school, but said they've since changed their mind: they don't want to work at this school after all.
If there's a chance the school will want to hurt the teacher's career, for example by informing SA, that chance will increase with every day they don't inform the school they've changed their mind. Yes, the school will ultimately be ok, but their attitude towards you can be managed by how quickly and with which message you will inform them. If I was an admin, and a newly hired teacher would inform me a week before the start of the year, I would be very motivated to make sure other schools and Search would know to avoid this teacher. However, if I was told early May and I the reason given was somewhat acceptable, I would think 'Darn!' and then move on.

How would SA find out?
The job wasn't listed on SA, and since they weren't involved I doubt the school will think to report you to Search. They might not even know you're on Search, and if they are, they might not want Search to know they recruited a teacher who is on Search without telling Search that they did.

I do agree with @sid: tell the school you're backing out in a respectful way with some apologies thrown in, and try to make them understand why you're doing it (assuming you have a good reason to go back on your word). Do it as soon as possible because they need time to find someone else - every day you wait they will be more pissed.

teachingoverseas16 wrote:
> I heard through the grapevine after some digging that UWCSEA does not have accurate
> salaries posted on Search and other forums and that the actual packages are higher
> than posted. One person also told me she believed they offered a 13th month which
> doesn’t factor into the base salary where SAS does not offer that. Can’t speak to the
> accuracy of that, though.

That's also what I heard - that the salary is higher. I thought that perhaps they lowered it since then, but your explanation makes more sense.
Their profile used to (as in: around 5 years ago) include the sentence "Annual Gratuity based on 20% of gross salary (not including housing allowance)", with about the same salary in the profile as they list nowadays.
Back then it all (including that gratuity and housing) came to around 100K per annum AFTER taxes (which are around 15%), if I remember correctly. Of course it depends on where you are on the pay scale and having kids will also affect this.

Yes, the “no teachers above 35” is incorrect. All people I know that currently work there are between 35 and 55. There might still be an imbalance (my sample size is small), but it's not that you won't have a chance there after you turn 36.

I know a few people working at UWCSEA, and all them enjoy working there. They do indeed work hard though (some of them harder than they have to because they just can help themselves), although not 12 hour work days.

Not sure if I'm correct, but it does seem the salary at UWCSEA has dropped a bit, or maybe the other two of the top 3 schools there have just increased theirs significantly, leading to a bigger gap.

PsyGuy wrote:
> @Heliotrope
>
> Data doesnt have an opinion. The interpretation of @Heliotrope isnt a
> property of the data.

I'm saying the data doesn't support your opinion.
You say it does.
We disagree.

And another predictable reply that usually follows or accompanies your previous one.

I just realized I'd previously said I'd stop replying to this topic, so I'll try again.
Have a great day, and apologies to the OP, but I think you got your answer already before we (@PsyGuy and I) let this spiral out of control. I'm sure @shadowjack got to finish his bag of popcorn after all.

I just believe the data says something else.
Although I suspect on vaccines we do agree.

"Do your own research", a @PsyGuy classic for when he's backed himself into a corner.
I did expect you to use it in this response (you're wonderfully predictable, as am I probably), but it's still good.

PsyGuy wrote:
> No there isnt. The strong research has a very clear interviews are
> worthless conclusion. The studies that show validity are either very weak
> studies or flawed.

You're of course welcome to believe that. I don't.


> Prior to that I disagreed, that fairs will continue as long as leaders and
> recruiters want them because they enjoy the fair and the dynamics they
> benefit from, not because they get better data about fit.

You're of course welcome to believe that. I don't.


> We disagree.

You're of course welcome to believe that. I do too.

Yes, we disagree.

PsyGuy wrote:
> Yes, as opposed to the @Thames Pirate continued TPF, whose premise is that
> tiers are an illusion. @Thames Pirate is one of those leadership
> cheerleaders who dont believe in tiers, so that all ISs can claim they are
> 'a top tier IS', and does that by claiming tiers exist differently,
> independently and uniquely in the mind of each individual. Tiers are not a
> delusion nor are they illusory.

So... you say @Thames Pirate says tiers are an illusion (she doesn't btw, she just points out they're personal, not official), so schools can say they're NOT an illusion?


> Indeed, @Thames Pirate is unequivocally wrong. There are absolutely
> formalized criteria. @Heliotrope is part of that leader cheerleader group
> like @Thames Pirate that unless some group of leaders, or
> agency/organization of consultants provides an publishes it cant be
> official.

I'm no one's cheerleader. You're the one who is of the opinion that leadership is always bad. I'm of the opinion that if a cross-section of the teachers on this forum would be promoted to those leadership positions, they would likely make pretty much the same choices as current leadership. Amongst teachers and admins alike there are a lot of good people who do their best and have the best of the school in mind, and a few selfish pricks who lack empathy. Just because I'm a teacher I'm not automatically against all of leadership, just against bad leadership.


> It actually does allow you to do that.

How then?
All you do is list some factors that can be used to judge a school by. Nothing is quantified, I see no numbers, ways to measure, how to weigh them. You're basically saying: "Is the money good?" and "Is the school good?". It's not telling me what the threshold is for tier 1 (what and how criteria need to be met). So no, you can't unequivocally determine if a school is tier 1 using what you posted here, that is assuming someone would accept your claim that there are actual formalized (but not official) criteria.
Also interested to know how you got by these 'formalized criteria'. Or do you consider yourself the authority that decides these?
I'm not saying the 'criteria' you list aren't helpful when researching a school btw.


> Sounding like tier 1 to @Heliotrope doesnt make the IS a tier
> 1 IS.

Yep, it does make it tier 1 for me.


> This IS may be a tier 3 IS that @Heliotrope would just happen to be
> happy at, its still a tier 3 IS.

As I've said before, the school I'm at currently is one you've once described as tier 1. Luckily it's tier 1 for me as well, but for some teachers with different priorities it wouldn't be tier 1. I have been happy at a tier 3 btw, but I could still clearly see where the school could have made changes that would have made it a better working experience for me, so me being happy didn't make it a tier 1 for me.


Let's just accept that different people use the tier system differently.
Some, including myself, use it as a way to rank schools into different categories (3 or 4) where the higher the tier (or lower, depending on how you look at it), the more a school meets their criteria of what they think is a good school for them to work at. The fact that most people's priorities overlap makes it that a lot of schools are on a lot of individual tier 1 lists (hence why I made the list).
Others, like you, might think that tiers are not determined by someone's personal priorities, but somehow universally quantifiable.

PsyGuy wrote:
> @Heliotrope
>
> No, its not. Not all research is created equal. The strong research has a
> very clear interviews are worthless conclusion. The studies that show
> validity are either very weak studies or flawed.

There is good and bad research supporting both positions.
We disagree then.


> No, its what I wrote first in the 7th post in this topic.

Yes, and I then agreed that "fairs will still happen in the future because recruiters believe the in-person experience gives them a better sense of the candidate". So: "That's what I said. We agree. Hurray!"
You're the one who then brought up the research.

Sometimes it isn't. That @PsyGuy doesn't dismiss it doesn't mean it can't be dismissed.
My approach is to base my decision on multiple data points: the experiences of several teachers who work or have recently worked for the interviewer in a role similar as mine. I doubt my single experience during the interview outweighs these combined experiences, unless something really serious happens during the interview (as in the interviewer hits on me, makes racists jokes, etc.). Some recruiters can make a great impression, but if the people working for them tell me alarming stories and are warning others off, I would reconsider. I know from experience it can also be the other way around. For all the schools on my current short list I know at least one person working there that I can approach, so I don't have to rely on the 20 minutes of the interview to form an opinion - even though a first impression can sometimes be very telling.
You can do it differently though.

Indeed, @Thames Pirate is correct: there are no official criteria.
Also, conveniently, he has never posted these 'formalized criteria' someone can actually use to determine if a school is tier 1. At most it's what he posted just here, which will not allow you to do that.

I've never seen any criteria posted anywhere by anyone for that matter, and no teacher I know uses these supposed formalized (yet somehow unfindable) criteria to come up with a tier designation.
How do they come up with a tier designation for any given school then?
It is done by collecting rumors ("a friend of my colleague worked there and really liked it"), various lists of what other people think are tier 1s, school reviews, leadership reviews, reputation, some hard data that is available like salary and benefit figures (often from Search), and/or a healthy dose of 'gut feeling'. Sometimes it's just two or three of these, and the research stops. People then look at what they value most in a school (salary, work-life balance, location) and assign a tier. "I can save around 20K there, Vincent said the leadership treated him fairly when he was there, 90% of the students is international - those are all things I'm looking for, so it sounds like tier 1 to me).
People's priorities often overlap (savings potential is very important to most), and lots of people read the same reviews, etc., so the various tier 1 list have a lot of overlap. Therefore lots of schools will be seen as tier 1 (rightfully or wrongly) by and for most teachers, while others will have other schools on their tier 1 list.

It's because of all this that my 'bloated' list is not a list of schools that are tier 1. It's merely a list of schools that are often mentioned by other teachers as being tier 1.

PsyGuy is welcome to post his own list of the schools you consider tier 1 here. Just omit the school names (since we can't post those on here) and just mention country & city and number of tier 1 schools in that location - most if not all on this forum will be able to figure out which schools you'd be referring to. That way we can get your perspective as well.