We are putting together a preliminary list of boarding schools for my 7th grader who wants to attend boarding school for 9th grade. One thing she’s concerned about is finding a school where kids really stick around on the weekends and have fun. We have heard some schools may be “suitcase schools,” so if anyone is familiar with which have lots of students leaving on weekends it would be helpful to know. Also information about weekend activities at our preliminary list (below) would be so helpful! Thanks in advance.
Blair, Lawrenceville, Peddie, George School, St Andrews (DE), Mercersberg, Hill School, Choate Rosemary Hall, Taft, Hotchkiss, Kent, Miss Porter’s
That looks like a great list! You have a good mix of highly rejective schools and less rejective schools. And, you have a diverse set of schools in terms of ethos, which will help you find the right fit. As to finding schools where weekends are active, you can look at the overall metrics (size of school, percentage boarding, percentage international), which can be useful proxies. I think location can also be a useful metric to consider. My guess is that kids are probably less likely to go home from a harder to reach place like Mercersburg than a more easily accessible place. When you interview, you should also ask schools about the weekend activities they provide–both on and off-campus.
My daughter is at Hill, and they offer multiple off-campus trips each weekend. Some of them are cultural/educational while others are just fun (like the trip to Dorney Park this weekend or the Phillies game earlier in the year). There are also lots of things to do on campus during the weekend (sporting events, performances, movies, etc.). They also offer a regular weekend shuttle to Target and the nearest mall (King of Prussia, if you are familiar with area). Hill has a lot of kids around during the weekend, which makes sense since it is 75-80% boarding and everyone is required to board for at least one year.
You need to check…but some of these schools used to have classes on Saturday mornings…so leaving for the weekend wasn’t really possible. See if that is still the case.
Most schools will have sports on Saturday mornings, so it really leaves a day and a half to fill. My kid liked when it was quiet on the weekend and he could just recharge. All of the schools you mentioned have a majority of kids that say on campus and will have a mix of planned weekend activities and time to catch a shuttle to the shopping center and then just hang with friends on campus. Search for their social media pages. Often they’ll be a post about on and off campus weekend activities.
This may not be a great proxy. There are schools with high boarding percentage where most kids leave on weekends, because they are more local, because it’s the easiest way to avoid the rules, etc. There are schools with lower boarding percentages that manage to get many day students back on weekends.
I definitely agree that as you do visits, this is something to explore. It’s not just whether people stay, but what they do - and what the flexibility is around that. If it matters to you, I’d also ask about costs. Do you like the weekend programming? What do you do if you don’t? What if you just want downtime to relax? This is really individual.
I agree that you have a great list for exploring, and that is really one of the best things about the application process. It is a privilege to get to figure out what you want your 4 years of high school to be and then to make them that.
Consider how many day students attend and whether or not the school holds Saturday classes. In some cases, a school might have 50% day students and that can tip the balance in what it feels like on a Saturday/Sunday.
Unless most of them participate in weekend activities. This is such a nuanced topic as there are students who choose the day option in order to pursue an elite sport or otherwise engage in activities outside school and disappearon weekends. There are also local day students who choose to attend BS because so much happens at school on the weekends rather that at the houses of students whose parents are away.
Part of a prospective boarders exploration is around how day students participate in weekend activities. I can think of one school, not on the OP’s list, that has a high boarding % that clears out on weekends. A boarder who found it miserable transferred to a different school, again as a boarder, with a more equal day/boarding mix and had much better weekend experience.
I have a child at Mercersburg - the kids are largely there on the weekends. A lot of sports on Saturday and the school organizes off campus trips as well as brings entertainment to the school. My child loves it and seems to have a good balance of activities and time to study on the weekends. I highly recommend the school and am happy to answer questions!
Thanks very much. This is helpful to know about Hill. We’ve only visited one school so far (Blair) and they really emphasized there how much kids stick around on weekends. It seems like it may be hard to suss out where the kids pack up and leave on the weekends, if that makes sense!
Thanks so much! We actually just added Mercersburg to the list. I somehow had never heard of it! We will be visiting in about a week for the open house! My daughter is particularly interested in the arts as well as experiential learning and travel. So anything along those lines you could share would be so helpful!
Me too. I can’t think of one. Nor can I think of one where this is a thing.
Besides sports, there’s a lot of reasons for kids to stay on campus on weekends. Studying during the day and social events at night primarily. Most schools drive community through events on the weekends. It’s the way for Day students to be connected and boarders to broaden their friend groups and experiences.
As much as schools market the ability to go “insert nearest interesting city and town here,” they don’t really love you leaving campus. My kid has to leave a day a weekend for orchestra, and if truth be told, the school would rather she concentrate her musical activities there. Even more draconian for club sports, where they’re pretty much verboten.
I can come up with four boarding schools in New England where there is at least 20% day students and there is an issuer of schools diluting on Saturday and Sunday. Part of the issue is that there are also boarding students who live under an hour from the school. I will not share the names. I will say in the spring if it is still part of the choices, ask families how they see various ways students take advantage of weekends.
While you’re really asking how lively things are on weekends, OP, it might also be worthwhile in your visits to ask if there are many closed weekends or if there are any restrictions on how often boarders can leave. It’s a slightly different question, but if an AO is telling you that essentially “5-day boarding” is up to the family – you can have your kid home every weekend - you have opened the door to the question of how many people actually do this. As @kiwikool notes, this isn’tso unusual. Some schools may encourage families to do this, especially if they are ambivalent about boarding, and it does attract a somewhat different family than the one that is all-in on a boarding experience (including the weekends!) Anecdotally, it seems that this desire for a less all-in boarding experience was a bit greater post-pandemic.