All boarding school websites feature photos of happy and engaged students in a strikingly-beautiful campus. So how are you supposed to choose among them? Rankings are less-than-transparent about the criteria used. And acceptance rates can be misleading: Selectivity is a sign of popularity, not a proxy for quality. To find the best matches for your family, you’ll want to consider factors that aren’t always considerations when choosing a school. Below are just some of the questions you may want to ask:
Boarding vs. Day Student Population. What percentage of the student body boards seven-days a week? There is no right or wrong answer, but there are good reasons to choose a school where your student will be in the majority. When day students and five-day boarders predominate, the campus is likely to empty out on weekends. Socializing may be more likely to happen off campus, in day students’ homes, where there might be less supervision. On the other hand, a day-student at a boarding school where they are a small minority may feel left out of community activities unless they stay at school until fairly late on weekdays and return on weekends for campus activities. Either way, campus programming is often optimized for the majority, so be sure to ask how the school ensures that all students feel equally supported.
Formal/Community Dinners. How often are students required to attend formal dinners with assigned seating? Most boarding school students hate the idea of dressing up and being forced to sit at a particular table, away from their closest friends. However, boarding schools with more frequent formal dinners often have stronger community bonds because students get to know peers in other grades and faculty members who might not be their teachers. These dinners are often where students learn the art of conversation and become more comfortable conversing with adults.
Advanced Offerings. How does the school handle students who have surpassed the most advanced course offerings in Math or a foreign language? Some schools are happy to create a more advanced class upon demand, even for an individual student. Others will arrange for independent study or encourage online learning. In some cases, they might prefer to have the student serve as a teaching assistant in less-advanced classes. If you suspect that your student is likely to need more advanced coursework, make sure you know the school’s standard procedure.
Extracurricular Activities and Leadership. Which extracurricular activities and clubs are available on campus, how active are they, and how are leadership positions selected? It is important that those activities most likely to interest your child are both available and well supported. Too often, students start clubs to pad their resumes, but they meet infrequently and there are few opportunities to show impact, which is what colleges care about. Some schools limit the number of leadership positions a student can hold, reserve those roles for seniors, and/or have faculty committees choose each organization’s leaders. Best to find out in advance.
Academic Support & Tutoring. Where do most students get support when they are struggling with an academic subject? How common is it for students to have outside tutors to manage the rigor of their course load? Most boarding school faculty will have regular office hours. There are usually peer tutors for most subjects, too, including a student-led Writing Center. Sometimes, these resources aren’t enough and families have to hire outside tutors for their students to keep up, even at schools that might explicitly forbid outside help. This can be a sign of an extremely competitive culture or of coursework that is unrealistically rigorous for most students. There’s no judgment here. Each family can decide whether this aligns with their values and preferences. Unfortunately, it can be difficult to get a straight answer from administrators, who may not know themselves how often students rely on outside tutors to keep up. To get the straight answer, you may need to talk to current students or their parents.
College Counseling. What’s the school’s approach to college admissions? When do students start working with their college counselor and what is each counselor’s caseload? These are the most important questions to ask when it comes to college admissions. Many parents make the mistake of choosing a boarding school based on the school’s impressive college matriculation list. These lists are misleading, however. They rarely reveal how many of the students were legacies, recruited athletes, or the children of families that the college’s Advancement or Development office would like to cultivate. Resist the urge to judge a school based on its matriculation list.
Advising. What is the boarding school’s approach to advising? How many students does each advisor advise? At the vast majority of schools, students are assigned an advisor who serves both as a mentor and as a primary contact for parents. These are some of the most important relationships your boarding school student will have. Find out whether advisors support students throughout their high school years or whether they specialize in supporting students in a particular grade. You’ll also want to know what happens if the student and advisor are a bad match and whether advisors plan activities for their advisees as a group. If so, ask if the school has guidelines to ensure a quality experience for all students. (You don’t want to get a call from your child complaining that someone else’s advisor does a Starbucks run every Monday and hosts a weekly movie night if your own student’s advisor rarely hosts students.) Guidelines can help limit these kinds of discrepancies.
Discipline. What is the school’s approach to disciplinary problems, including the use of alcohol or drugs? Does the school have a “one-strike” rule whereby students are automatically expelled for particular offenses? Or do they have a more flexible approach? How do they handle allegations of sexual misconduct? Some schools are quite strict when it comes to drugs and alcohol and will expel any student in a location where others are drinking alcohol or consuming recreational drugs, even if they themselves are not. These schools may or may not make exceptions for students bringing an intoxicated friend to the Health Center for help. When the penalties are too high, some faculty may prefer to look the other way and peers may be hesitant to ask for help. When it comes to sexual misconduct, it is important to know how incidents are handled by the administration. Don’t be discouraged if a boarding school had a recent incident or investigation. That often means that they have now adopted much stronger safeguards and improved staff training.
Special Considerations: Learning & Thinking Differences. How does the school support students with learning and thinking differences like ADHD, dyslexia, ASD, discalculia, and more? What percentage of students make use of these special resources? What kind of training does the staff have? Is there an additional fee? If your child has a learning and thinking difference, you’ll want to make sure the boarding school has the right resources to support your student. Some schools have a dedicated learning center with specialized staff and structured group and individual offerings. In some cases, a significant percentage of the student body takes advantage of these resources and there is no stigma to being seen by peers on your way to or from this learning center. That’s not always the case, however. There are also boarding schools that have a single individual in charge of providing support to all students with thinking and learning differences. Regardless, you will want to learn as much as you can about available resources and staff training, including whether classroom teachers receive any formal training in supporting students with thinking and learning differences.
Boarding schools can be fantastic settings for adolescents. They are surrounded by caring adults and mentors whose guidance they are often more open to than they are to parental advice. They get to practice living away from home and are often far better prepared to excel academically once they go off to college. But no two boarding schools are alike and it is important to choose one that aligns with your values and preferences and where your student is more likely to thrive.
