Has anyone known someone who sent their kids to one or had any other experience with them?
Missouri has one called Wentworth Military Academy but they are having trouble staying open as a traditional campus and have moved to be more of a day school.
I know one family with a daughter at one but its because of her disabilities.
My sister sent my niece to a boarding school for high school. Well, it wasn’t exclusively a boarding school, but my niece boarded. And she’s teaching there now. I honestly don’t know why my sister sent her there - it’s not like they were super-rich or anything.
The nice part was that the graduating class was maybe 20 girls, so a really good student-teacher ratio. I don’t know what other advantage it was - she didn’t aim to go to an Ivy League school afterwards, and I’m not sure what sort of job she’d have gotten had she not been hired at the school. Anyway, that’s all I know personally about boarding schools.
My sisters and I are the only ones in our family who didn’t go to boarding school. In the UK it’s still quite usual, and they are always very good schools.
My mum and her sister where quite miserable at first (Wycombe Abbey, the best for girls in the UK). They had fun later on, and now have fond memories of all the opportunities the school offered.
The interesting thing is that they never really talked with their mum, my granny, about how they felt about being sent away at a young age. I am very close with my granny and my mum & aunt, so I’ve heard all sides. My granny was miserable, and they never knew. Imagine having your babies, and sending them away when they are 7 or 8 years old. She told me she cried herself to sleep every night, but she was doing what she thought was best. She told me how missing them was a visceral feeling. She didn’t even know if there was another option, everyone she knew sent their children away.
ETA: All my cousins board(-ed), and many of my friends did. They all love it.
I came very close to being sent to military school, but my parents’ laziness to not fill out paperwork won out over their desire to not have to be parents.
I know a diplomat and his wife who put their kids in boarding school while they take different assignments, but I don’t know them well enought to know how that’s worked out for them.
I have a friend who sent one of their daughters to Montana Academy. It’s about 30 miles away from Glacier Nat’l Park. They have a tiny enrollment (like 70 kids), and it’s for “troubled teens.” She had a lot of behavioral and emotional issues, and she’s done very well there from what I hear.
When I was in college, I dated a man who graduated from this school. He didn’t do well in a regular public school (knowing what I do now, I suspect he may have Asperger’s) but he did extremely well here. He now has a Ph.D. and has taught at a state university for many years.
He is honestly the nicest person I have ever known; we just didn’t have as much in common as we initially thought we did.
Also, after I graduated from high school, I worked in an office for a while before going to college. One of my co-workers, and the best friend I made there, was deaf and went to a state school for the deaf. Her hearing impairment was so profound, I really don’t think she could have been mainstreamed nowadays.
Around this same time, my brother and I had a blind friend who went to the state school for the blind, although I’m sure he could be mainstreamed nowadays. The needs of blind people, and deaf people, are very, very different.
I’m not sure NCSSM was the what the OP had in mind. We did live on campus, but it was a free magnet school for anyone living in North Carolina.
We certainly had our share of nice, odd folk. Given that our mascot was the Unicorn and the school is known as the school of S & M, you might expect some interesting alumni.
That said, my experience was that it was basically like going to college a couple of years early, but with less drinking.
I had a lot of undergraduate friends who went to boarding schools. They were more mature and the students who adjusted to the university with the least amount of difficulty. Those had gone to single sex schools were not thrilled with the coed environment. The chief criticism from the guys was it was much more difficult for them to concentrate with all the women around (and our dress code was anything, but naked). None of women liked having mixed classes either. The most common compliant, “Actually when to they (the guys) grow up?”
I grew up in Connecticut where there are many boarding schools. The son of a neighbor attended one of them (Hotchkiss? Kent?) on a hockey scholarship. And a family friend sent his son to Hopkins (although that’s a day school, not a boarding school).
The only ones I knew of were the indian boarding schools and the one for troubled teens. I don’t think I really knew anyone who went to either one. If I did, no one said anything.
I went to boarding school for my junior and senior years. I liked it.
I went to sleepaway camp in New England for a few summers in high school and it seemed like half the other kids were boarding school students. Deerfield, Phillips Exeter, Phillips Andover, Milton, Groton, Walnut Hill, Putney, etc. They were all pretty nice kids, but it always struck me as a bit strange that they went to boarding school during the year and then their parents sent them to sleepaway camp for 5-7 weeks in the summer, too. I mean, were they ever home?
I was in boarding school in the UK from age 11 through 17 when I graduated. Boarding school and hostels were quite common back then, especially for rural kids who didn’t live close enough to schools to attend daily.
I fucking hated it. But I did get a stellar education.
I went to Foxcroft School (www.Foxcroft.org) for high school. I went there by my own choice and loved it.
I went to boarding school for high school; boarded all 4 years. A Quaker school in PA near Philadelphia. It was great and certainly made me more mature than my peers when we were entering college. And I got an outstanding education.
My best friend went to Andover during the same years - I think she struggled more than I did but also made a great success of it. In the North East & New England its not all that rare to go to prep school (a private school that has both a day student and a boarding option). Some of the usual suspects were mentioned above, like Hotchkiss, Andover, Putney, Deerfield, Choate etc and I knew kids who went to some of these schools in college. Its a bit of an old-boys(and girls) network.
I’m not sending my kids to my school, because I live in CA now and don’t want to be so far from them, but if we lived within a few hours drive I absolutely would.
Ok, curious. You all that went to single gender schools. Did you do mixers and such with other gender schools? Wasnt it lonely not being able to date and such?
Now I have heard they are more common in the UK. Why is that? Why dont parents just send their kids to a school in their community where they can see their kids and be and active part of their education?
Wow! Alot of people on this board have experience with boarding schools. Then again more people are from the east coast or the UK. Here in the midwest they are not as common. I definitely see the advantage of sending your kid to a college prep high school where they wont be distracted.
Some questions:
Dont parents want to be an active part everyday of their kids education? Like helping them with their homework. Getting to know their kids teachers. Going to sports, plays, recitals and other activities?
Is the education you get there that much better than the public and private schools in your home community?
What is the youngest age you have seen or heard about at boarding school?
That brings me to the conclusion that going to a boarding school is kind of a family tradition for many people. Is that correct?
I went on a couple of site like for Phillips Exeter and was impressed. It seems like a great school for kids who need the focus and the structure.