<p>I had no idea that there were any American boarding schools, but I was just reading a thread where two separate posters were discussing their kids being ‘home from boarding school’. Is this a regional thing? I can’t even imagine that they are common in the US (but two posters in one thread…wow!). Are they mainly used to two-career families both with heavy travel? Kind of an “away” daycare arrangement? </p>
<p>My whole life I’ve only met one person who attended boarding school was a guy from the island of Malta. I’m very curious. Would anyone care to enlighten me?</p>
<p>There are quite a few boarding schools in New England. Not all who attend are rich, let along super-rich. Andover and Exeter, for instance, have done a great deal to increase diversity among their student bodies by providing scholarships. They can do so because they have endowments that would make many a private college envious.</p>
<p>Here are some excerpts from the Wikipedia entry for Exeter:</p>
<p>The top US boarding schools are among the ‘ivy league’ of high schools. They have large endowments, amazing campuses and every resource. Long the destination of the very wealthy, many are now very diverse though most remain haunts of the very well off.</p>
<p>Scroll down to the “Prep School Admissions” section of this forum and you will learn a lot about US boarding schools. There are hundreds of boarding schools in the US and students attend them for many different reasons. My daughter attended one in order to focus on music. My son attended several- well, we won’t go there right now.
Some students attend a boarding school for a year after they graduate from high school. It is called a post-grad (PG) year. It provides a year of maturity, beefing up the academic record, or, commonly, perfecting a sport and growing physically before entering college athletics.</p>
<p>I attended a boarding school because my parents were in the foreign service. I only boarded my senior year, the rest of the time I was a day student.</p>
<p>Students in the US attend boarding schools for lots of different reasons- family tradition, a much better education than what may be available in their local schools, parents’ jobs (diplomats, Aramco in Saudi Arabia etc), serious sports such as ice hockey that are not available at home. Some of them are wealthy, many are not.</p>
<p>Edited to add: See article linked in the thread Off to Dana Hall about a student from Ohio who has won a full scholarship (worth $40K+) to attend a prestigious boarding school in MA</p>
<p>One of my sons attended a boarding school at his request. I’m sure he feels he had an education that was superior to our local public H.S. It took my entire salary to keep him there. Fortunately my H earned enough to support the rest of the family.</p>
<p>We were “repaid” in a sense because the boy later had a scholarship to a prestigious OOS.</p>
<p>A lot of the girls who boarded at my school (it was also a day school) were the daughters of oil guys who lived in Saudi Arabia, where it’s a little tough for women to get an education… A lot of my friends had Aramco addresses. They were also from small towns around the state where the local schools might not necessarily get their graduates into strong colleges. A lot of girls were from different countries and their parents wanted them to have a good shot at admission to an American college.</p>
<p>D attended a BS this year (senior year) so she could focus on music…had gone about as far as she could in local community and needed the musical stimulation that could be provided there…We are not rich…I went back to work full time and even then we had to be careful with spending to make it work…</p>
<p>For her it was like going to college a year early…She is ahead of most youth her age in the area she plans to study…was it worth the sacrifice to us?? absolutely…the knowledge she gained and the college scholarship she was offered (which over 4 years will cancel out what we had to pay for the BS), the growth in maturity from being 1450 miles from home…list goes on… 1 year was great…2 might have been better…other than that she needed to be at home to do her growing up where we could oversee the influences she was being exposed to.</p>
<p>I went to a church school through 8th grade, and some of my classmates went on to a boarding school associated with the same religion. (I went to boarding school for part of high school, but to an irreligious one outside the US. )</p>
<p>The church-affiliated boarding schools were not super-pricey; they were intended for students from middle-income families, ones who were already paying for private school, but not a hugely expensive private school. (The school is likely subsidized some by the church, but I’ve never really looked into the school’s finances, so am speculating about that.) Just as a lot of Catholic schools are reasonable in cost, especially for parish familes, so were these church schools.</p>
<p>I enjoyed the huge public high school from which I graduated WAY more than boarding school, though; it was a much better social fit for me.</p>
<p>Several states offer a magnet school in specialized areas, and there is a boarding component to it for high schools students. North Carolina School for the Arts is particularly well known in this genre. It is unique in that its mission combines high school with collegiate and graduate students. Instrumental majors (strings and winds) are well integrated into the major performing organizations. Singers and actors have more specialized stratas of curriculum and opportunities. Dancers may begin younger than high school, but must live with a parent. If accepted as a North Carolina resident, all tuition, fees, room and board are free. Out of state high school students pay OOS university tuition, R & B. Textbooks for the music courses are not provided by the school, but all other books are for the high school students. North Carolina also has the School of Math and Science for high school students, juniors and senior only, and it is not part of a college or university.</p>
<p>Mom of a former Daisy. She left for 11th-12th grade to go to Interlochen for music. My D and aibarr know each other and both wound up at Rice (not the same year). WildChild was at the brother school through 8th grade…</p>
<p>Her brother and my son were in the same class at SM…we figured out the connection sometime last year…I am sure you know that 07Dad’s S is also a SM grad…and Xiggi was also in my S’s class until his family moved away…07Dad actually grew up in the home that one of my son’s best friends at SM lived in…</p>
<p>We have good friends whose D left GH for Interlochen in the twelfth grade as well.</p>
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