I wouldn't be overly constrained by finances nor would I be overly constrained about whether top boarding schools have enough HG and PG kids. They do. I would worry about whether your 14 year old kid can emotionally handle living away from home in an environment where they will not longer be the brightest fish in the sea. I saw lots of kids, particularly the 13 and 14 year olds, that just couldn't hack it.
That fits my experience as well. <points to self-- scholarship kid, boarding school in metro Boston>
The absolutely most difficult thing was realizing I not only wasn't flavor of the week anymore, but was, in fact, slightly behind everybody else. Not because I wasn't smart enough, but because I hadn't had access to the sheer number of experiences that my classmates had. Reading about Indonesia and living there for a year because your Daddy is with the State Department are two entirely different animals.
The second was that I had no clue how to study, though I couldn't have expressed it as such. I'd simply never had to.
