Sandor is not going to enjoy the Scholomance. It's conceivable that that isn't true; it's conceivable that everything every adult has told him is wrong (it will not be the first time this has happened) and he will actually have a tremendously good time of it, but he isn't expecting it. Adults are usually not all that sensible, especially not his father; his father made it into Buda on the strength of maintenance and nothing else, and he and Sandor do not, in practice, speak the same language.

Not that this is surprising. No one speaks the same language as Sandor; Mari, a little, but she doesn't understand math and she doesn't understand metal. And Sandor understands metal; how to work it, how to hone it, how to keep it perfect and shining. He can see how copper and tin make bronze, he can see more than that, all the tiny whorls of this and that that go into making steel right, and he can use those even as a child, make knives, hammers, screwdrivers fit for his child's hands (already getting big; what's he going to be when he's finished growing?) He speaks in short, terse sentences to adults, he ignores other children, and he learns everything he needs to know about survival.

When he enters the Scholomance, it's with his tools and his knife and clothes he knows how to maintain, and a deep, abiding certainty that if he survives these four years, he's going to go be a hermit and live in a mine somewhere, and be damned to the rest of the world if it won't accept that.