Culver Military Academy

ssacdfamily
Wed, 23 Oct 2013 14:00:53 +0000

Hi - our family has a 2013 graduate from CGA and a class of 2015 at CMA - both having a great experience.

In the regular interview - you visit for a day, and a student guide takes you around to visit classes. This pretty much sold my daughter on the school - she visited a humanities class and participated in the discussion, and walked out convinced she wanted to go to the school.

The school does seem to be well mixed - lots of close friendships (not dating, friendships, though there is plenty of dating also) between boys and girls. Classes are co-ed, music and art (orchestra, concert band, jazz band) are co-ed, and some of the sports (fencing, swimming, track, etc) practice together and seem to have a good co-ed vibe.

CMA has its governing system (military activities) and CGA has its governing system (prefect system) - similar but different. I feel that my kids got/are getting the best of both worlds - a co-ed school, but with some of the strengths of a single-sex school as well.

One very interesting side-benefit of the student government systems is that by the time you graduate, you have been interviewed for jobs and you have interviewed others for jobs - experience I sure wish I had had when I was starting out in the working world. Don’t know about the possibility for weekend jobs - town is pretty small. The Center for the Entrepreneur is talking about setting up a student-run cafe, though - that might be something to ask about.

Flight - I don’t know if winter school has it, summer school does - if so, it’s in a simulator - they used to actually have flight training, but there was a crash some years ago, and the airplane part of the program was discontinued - the air field is now a vegetable garden and a rugby field (my CMA student doesn’t know I’m writing this, but if he did, he would be saying “tell 'em about Rugby!” - so for the record, there is a Rugby program, and it’s great - the varsity does well, the beginners get developed, and many of the developmental players go on to JV and varsity slots).

Scores - range is pretty wide - they have top scores there, but also lopsided scores (my 2013 graduate was one of them - strong verbal, “needed help” in math) and folks who may not come in with good scores but leave with stronger scores. IMHO, part of the magic.

I probably know least about your financial questions - sorry not to be more help here. The Batten and Duchoissois scholarships are obviously big deals, but my impression, having met some of the winners of same, is that the process is fair. There is a lot of financial aid available, but probably best to ask the admissions office directly.

Feel free to PM me if you have more questions