I hope the admission process is going well.
The sport situation at Eton is terrific. I ended up loving rugby after getting to try it out in my first year having had no prior experience (surprising considering I was 5’10 and 75kg!) and there were 5 teams so there’s places for all levels of expertise; cricket was similar as well as although I never chose it, I know there were teams for the most and least experienced of players. The scheduled timetabling for sports is a bit different to most prep schools however:
Every term, you choose what’s called a “major sport” that you do 3-4 times a week (IIRC it’s Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and fixtures on Saturday)
Autumn term: choice between rugby or football - in Year 9+10 all students are required (or at least strongly encouraged) to take part in the house football competitions as well. I wouldn’t recommend choosing football for your major sport as everyone ends up playing it anyway and as there are so many students who choose it there end up being loads of teams and a lot of people never get to play in school fixtures despite being still good.
Spring term: choice between hockey and “field game”, which is a sort of rugby/football hybrid. There are also house competitions for it but hockey players don’t have to take part as it’s quite specialist with complicated rules.
Summer term: choice between tennis, cricket, or athletics. A lot of boys also go out onto the fields as a house and play casual football matches in the evening as the weather is nicer and sunlight hours are longer.
Then there’s what’s called “minor sports” which are rotated every half term and are a way to try out nicher sports like wall climbing and martial arts. There’s also fives which is the one that’s similar to squash but played with your hand (it hurts!)
Sports is a massive part of the house and general culture at Eton so it’s good that he is keen, there’ll be tons of new stuff for him to try as well.
It’s nice to hear of a fellow linguist! I was very excited to find out what I could experiment with at Eton - as for scheduled subjects, all students in Year 9 pick two languages and have the choice to carry on one or both for GCSEs. The options are French, Spanish, German, Russian, Mandarin and Japanese (no prior experience for any required). There’s also Latin, including for those who have never done it before, and Greek (which I’m pretty sure King’s Scholars are required to do in their first year).
There are also informal language classes but these are dependent on the teacher who offers to host them as it comes out of their free time. I did Arabic but unfortunately I’m not too sure on the availability of extra languages now as it’s very transient. For A-Level, Italian, Czech and Portuguese are all offered (for students of French, Russian and Spanish, respectively). The language department is also very open to bespoke requests; if three or four students want to learn something not formally offered by the school they’re happy to find a teacher to provide lessons with no extra charge for the students. The one downside is that the school is very reluctant to allow students to take extra language GCSEs, even if it’s the student’s native language, so as not to overload pressure on a student. But even so, there will be many opportunities for language enrichment beyond the standard GCSE programme.
Social-wise, the school is very socially-focused just due to its nature as a boarding school, but also because of the many events that are put on with local girls’ schools (most notably Holyport, StG Ascot and StM Ascot). There are so many opportunities for extra-curricular activities (I personally made some amazing friends in Farrer, the college’s main theatre department) that just about anyone would be able to make plenty of friends, especially someone sociable like your son. Even failing that, he’ll be spending every day with his housemates which is something I miss a lot and helped me to build some really memorable friendships.
Sorry for such a lengthy read! I tried to be as in-depth as possible but feel free to reach out again if you have any more questions, I understand it’s probably difficult to find first-hand experience of more recent students so I’m always happy to give information. Hope the tests go well!
-O