Unique Boarding School Offerings From the Top American Schools

Below you will find some of the most unique boarding school offerings in the United States.

Paleontology at The Webb Schools‍

The Webb Schools is a mid-sized school located in Claremont, California. Freshman year, students complete a foundational, intersectional 9th grade science course. One science they study in this course is the basics of paleontology. All students are also taken to a location that has not yet been fully excavated to dig for fossils. Those findings are then added to Webb’s collection. On campus, they have The Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology, the only nationally accredited museum in the country located on a high school campus. Over 90% of the fossils in the museum were discovered by students. Students who enjoy this introduction to paleontology can continue to take paleontology courses at Webb. Students study the fossils found on collecting trips and produce original research in collaboration with museum staff, which they can submit for publication in serious science journals. Over 50 student-co-authored papers have been published in regional and international scientific journals so far.

Horse Program at The Thacher School

The Thacher School is a smaller school located in Ojai, California. Other schools have equestrian programs, including Kent School, the Ethel Walker School, Dana Hall School, Portsmouth Abbey School, and Asheville School. However, Thacher’s program is different. In addition to their Equestrian Team, which competes every season regionally, they offer a unique horse program. 

In their first week of 9th grade, students are paired with a horse. They are then taught to ride and care for the horse through the entire year. On campus they have stables for the horses, a field built for practice and competitions, riding arenas, and hiking trails that connect to the Los Padres National Forest. Regardless of the weather, students practice the real work and responsibility of feeding their horses and mucking their horses’ stalls. During the year, every student completes a weekend horse packing trip, led by experienced packers. They also have optional horse camping trips available to them. By the end of their freshman year, students are ready to race their horses in a school-wide event. Some students have chosen to compete in Extreme Cowboy competitions. 

The goal of the program is to teach students key skills, including patience, humility, self-confidence, and tenacity. After 9th grade, students have the option of signing up for a lottery to have access to a horse for trail rides and the like each season. 

Students do not need to come in with any experience with horses. 

The Environmental Immersion Program at Choate Rosemary Hall

Students with a passion for protecting the environment gravitate towards Choate Rosemary Hall. Many top boarding schools teach Environmental Science courses on campus, but often they hold a limited number of offerings. 

Choate Rosemary Hall is a large boarding school in Wallingford, Connecticut. Through their Kohler Environmental Center, selected students complete an intensive, yearlong program conducting environmental research. Students have the ability to conduct research in 3 working laboratories, 2 classrooms, and a greenhouse. This research can include natural science, social science, and/or humanities. Participants in the program also partake in field trips and meet expert speakers. 

The school as a whole makes an effort to minimize their carbon footprint with energy efficient buildings (LEED Gold and LEED Platinum certified), sustainable food and water practices, solar energy usage, carbon offset purchases, and the frequent re-evaluation of their current policies.

Glassblowing at Woodside Priory

Boarding schools emphasize the importance of having a creative outlet, and Woodside Priory is no exception. Woodside Priory is a small school located in Portola Valley, California. Woodside Priory has a Fine Arts building for diverse visual arts instruction, including standard offerings, like drawing and painting, and less common offerings, like metalworking and glassblowing. 

Glasblowing is a craft in which the artist blows air into partially melted glass in order to change its shape. Artists can use various tools to shape the glass, including marvers, paddles, and jacks. The craft is known to be challenging, as the artist needs to understand how to control the temperature of the glass and manipulate glass while it is malleable. 

Students in grade 9-12 at Woodside Priory have the chance to master flameworking and kilnforming. When flameworking, students use a torch to heat the glass. When kilnworking, students use a kiln to heat the glass. After completing the first course on the subject, students practice designing molds for their products, melting the glass into casts, and firing glass in kilns to make complex designs. 

Outdoor Programs at Berkshire School and The Webb School 

Berkshire School and The Webb School each combine features available at other schools into larger programs. Many schools take students on hikes. Some schools offer rock climbing and ropes courses, including the Cate School and Woodberry Forest School. Some schools take students on camping trips, including the Thacher School and The Athenian School. Several schools offer mountain biking, canoeing, fishing, and hiking as a club or athletic alternative to sports. These activities are all intended to help students stretch outside of their comfort zones, build relationships with their classmates, work as a team, and develop leadership skills. Berkshire and Webb offer these activities in a more robust and consistent fashion than most.

Through the Ritt Kellogg Mountain Program, Berkshire School familiarizes students with hiking, biking, canoeing, climbing, fishing, trial building, wilderness first aid, outdoor cooking, survival skills, map reading, and trip planning year-round. Their campus stands at over 400 acres, large enough to enable extensive exploration. 

At The Webb School, W.I.L.D. is offered as its own class, an extracurricular for weekends and breaks, and a mandatory part of academic classes and sport teams. An English teacher may ask the W.I.L.D. program to teach a lesson about starting a camp fire in connection to a book they are reading in class. A coach may ask the W.I.L.D. program to provide the team with teambuilding exercises that require a mix of problem-solving and physical agility. Their trail room offers all the gear students need to participate in any part of the program. 

Beekeeping Club at Asheville School and Governor’s Academy

Beekeeping is the act of caring for bee colonies. Beekeeping can teach students problem-solving skills, mindfulness, bee biology, observational skills, adaptability, teamwork, and leadership skills. 

Asheville School and Governor’s Academy each have a Beekeeping Club, where students safely master these skills with their classmates. 

FIRE at Westover School

People often say they wish they learned more about personal finance in school. Westover delivers just that! The Financial Independence, Readiness, and Empowerment Program at Westover teaches students personal finance and entrepreneurship with a woman-centered, real-world approach. Westover School is a small, all-girls school in Middlebury, Connecticut with a focus on developing girls into changemakers. 

9-Hole Golf at The Hotchkiss School and Culver Academies

Golf is one of the less common competitive sports to find on boarding school campuses, but even more rare is the existence of a golf course on campus. Both the Hotchkiss School and Culver Academies offer a 9-hole golf course on the premises. 

The Hotchkiss course is over 3,000 yards and has a par of 35. The course ranked in Golfweek’s Best Courses You Can Play list in 2016 and 2023. It was also named in Golf World Magazine’s issue on the 25 best golf courses in America in 2010. In addition to students playing on the Hotchkiss Varsity Golf Team and JV Golf Team, Hotchkiss students have the ability to play on the green whenever they have free time and it is not in use. In addition, Hotchkiss has an indoor practice facility.

Culver’s course is just over 3,200 yards long and has a par of 36. The course has also been ranked in the rankings of the best golf courses in Golfweek, Golf Club Atlas, and Golf Course Trades. In addition, Culver offers an indoor simulator for use during cold weather.

STEM Research at PRISMS

The Princeton International School of Math and Science (PRISMS) is a very small school located in Princeton, New Jersey. The school was founded with a focus on STEM education, drawing from the Eastern and Western approaches to science, technology, engineering, and math. Many PRISMS students identify research as their favorite experience on campus. All 9th graders are taught to draw connections across the Arts, Science, and Engineering, conduct research, analyze data, and prepare publications. In 9th and 10th grade, students develop their experimental design, statistics, and literature review skills. Throughout all four years at PRISMS, students learn inquiry and problem-solving skills. As upper classmen, students must complete a 2-year research project on a STEM topic of their choice. 

Sit-Down Meals at Deerfield Academy and The Hill School

Deerfield Academy is a somewhat large boarding school in Deerfield, Massachusetts and The Hill School is a medium sized school in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. They have close knit communities in part because they use a special system to help all students get to know each other. For several meals each week, students are assigned to a table with people across all grades and interest areas. Students have time dedicated to socialization with people they might otherwise never have interacted with, enabling them to quickly get to know many people in the school community. The assigned group remains the same for several weeks in a row, so that students have more time to form new friendships and mentor/mentee relationships.

Internships at The Madeira School

While several schools help students complete internships for credit, The Madeira School uniquely aids all students in completing at least three internships before graduating high school. 

Through their award-winning, work experience program, Madeira has helped students get internships for technology companies, at museums, with judges, and on Capital Hill. In fact, every graduate of Madeira interns for five weeks on Capitol Hill in a Congressional office or advocacy organization. At the end of the experience, students form a legislative proposal based on field research on a policy issue of their choice. The Madeira School is a small, all-girls school in McClean, Virginia, a short drive from Washington D.C.

Arabic at The Hill School and Choate Rosemary Hall

Most schools offer French and Spanish courses on campus. Many also offer Chinese. A handful of top schools offer classical languages. However, The Hill School and Choate Rosemary Hall are unique in their decision to offer Arabic.

The Hill School offers Chinese, French, Spanish, and Arabic from the introductory level through the advanced level. Much like a college, The Hill school uses immersive, in-context teaching methods to teach their languages. They describe their courses as fun and rigorous, infused with cultural and historical content.

Choate Rosemary Hall not only teaches the Arabic language, but offers an Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies program. They also offer courses from a beginner level to an advanced level. Students complete intensive study of Arabic by reading literature and learning about Middle Eastern history, politics, food, dance, music, art, and architecture in Arabic. The study can include international trips. Choate Rosemary Hall also offers the standard and uncommon language offerings mentioned earlier: Chinese, French, Greek, Latin, Spanish.

Journalism at The Masters School

The Master School is a medium-large school in Dobbs Ferry, New York. While most schools have a student newspaper, The Masters School goes well beyond the newspaper in their teaching of journalism skills. The Masters School values the journalist lens as a way for students to better understand the world. They teach vital media literacy skills and analytical skills to help students comprehensively and accurately unpack news stories. Students explore visual mediums for sharing the news as well, learning how to navigate Adobe InDesign and Final Cut Pro in the process. Students consider the best mediums for sharing stories, including print, the web, video, social media, and podcasts. In response to the recent cuts to local journalism across the United States, they are more invested than ever in their journalism program. Yearly students attend journalism conferences, and sometimes they even present at said conferences.

Research-Grade Telescope at The Thacher School and Cranbrook Schools

In The Thacher Observatory sits a PlaneWave CDK-700 telescope. The research-grade telescope has a lens of over 27 inches. With this telescope, Thacher was able to expand their astronomy program. Thacher has students working on the cutting edge astronomical research program in collaboration with teams at Boston  University, UC Santa Cruz, Harvard, and the Las Cumbres Observatory.

In the Cranbrook Observatory at the top of the Cranbrook Institute of Science sit three telescopes. The primary telescope is a 20-inch CDK research-grade system. Students have access to the Cranbrook Observatory.

Year-round Sports Training at IMG Academy and The Webb School

Most top boarding schools only offer one term to play a given sport. However, some students want the opportunity to specialize in one sport and train for only that sport in preparation for college recruiting and/or a career in that sport. IMG Academy and The Webb School offer year-round training in a sport and aid with the college recruiting process. While one does not need to practice a sport year-round to be recruited for that sport, this approach may be right for student-athletes who want this specialized training.

For more information about what might be the best school for your child, reach out to Crimson for a free consultation here.