<p>Everyone’s talking about advantages of boarding schools, e.g. good academics, sports, social, etc., but what are the disadvantages (for the students)?</p>
<p>1 Lower class rank, <em>possibly</em> worse college
2 Added expense if you’re partial pay or FP
3 Have to leave friends
4 More stress
5 Contained “bubble” that boarding school is (unless you participate in study abroad programs)
6 Anecdotal stories of rich cliques, social circles, etc.</p>
<p>But then you think to yourself- do the pros outweigh the cons? And to me, the pros win by a huge amount.</p>
<p>A prep school can motivate a student to work harder by providing better role models .</p>
<p>money nuff said</p>
<p>I guess I should clarify. What are disadvantages for the student (e.g. more stress as 98beebee said, but not money since that doesn’t directly affect the student) if he/she attends boarding school?</p>
<p>I think it’s all about the stress. I know such cases are rare, but stories of suicide and killings are usually correlated with anxiety and/or depression. I think that’s why they emphasize exactly what type of person a candidate needs to be in order to become a successful student. Traits like independence and self-motivation are crucial, probably due to the fact that one’s parents aren’t there for him/her all the time - especially during the fragile teen years.</p>
<p>I think it comes down to the particular student (personality, temperament, etc) as well as the particular school where she or he attends. In our case, the stress on DC is actually LESS at boarding school. Having academics, athletics, extracurriculars, and a social life all in one place has been wonderful. Yes, there are high expectations, but DC actually has <em>more</em> free time now, particularly on the weekends. It also depends on how rigorous the prior school was, and how well prepared the student is. There are so many factors. Also, what may be stressful or a disadvantage for one person may be perceived very differently by another. I do think parents need to think very carefully about what kind of kid they have and what kind of environment they flourish in. What our 1st needs is so much different than what suits our 2nd child, as they are such different people.</p>
<p>Well, my alumni interviewer told me quite a few, I think his main purpose was to try to get me uninterested in his school. Most of his views, I disagreed with, but no matter what I argued, he held on fast to these points: </p>
<p>1). No matter what, it’s always hard to be separated from your family, you will never be able to adjust.
2). The cost is too much, and it is often not worth it.
3). If you start after 10th grade, you will find yourself very lonely, as most friendships are already established, and you will most likely to be left out.
4). Some people do well, but many people also crash completely, and are left unable to adjust, and left hopelessly at the bottom.
5). The amount of work is stressful, and you hardly ever have time to rest. The workload is too hard to manage.
6). Ivy League schools are less likely to accept you, because you are from a school where everyone is a star, opposed to being from a low-end public school, where you are one of the only stars.</p>
<p>Most of these points are not my opinion, just what the alumni interviewer wanted to press upon me. I personally doubt that it is this harsh, but the alumni interviewer didn’t seem to like me… and these are almost the exact, hopeful words he left me with.</p>
<p>That is a really excellent list. Prep students also lose touch the with rough and tumble real world that you find in public school. </p>
<p>Stress is a big part of this list. High school is of course stressful no matter where you go. But after reading comments here and also articles at various campus newspapers about the incredibly high workoad, I wonder if prep schools are overdoing it these days. </p>
<p>Suppose that it is getting harder and harder to get into the Ivies and similar, yet the school knows its prestige is tightly linked to acceptance rates among top tier colleges. Could that be pushing prep schools to drive their students harder than ever? Are they pressured to keep the rates high, even if it burns out the students?</p>
<p>Yes, most boarding schools are academically rigorous but when I compare my child’s experience to those of nieces and nephews in public school, I realized it is stressful but not more stressful. In some ways BS can be less stressful than kids that are in the AP/honors track at a decent public school.</p>
<p>MY child’s school does not rank nor do they calculate a GPA. The students are high achievers but I found that they were also helpful to one another in BS. There wasn’t the comparing of GPAs, fighting to be top 10 or top 10% that you can see among many kids at public school. My public school nieces and nephews do a lot of homework as well, and in many cases more because there seems to be more “busy work” than I’ve found to be the case at BS. Bottom line, if your goal is to be competitive in obtaining a spot at a top college, Ivy or otherwise, you will be working a lot, period. </p>
<p>Also, many public schools are just as much “a bubble” or more so. Our local public school is less diverse both racially and socioeconomically than my child’s BS. Also, the student body at the BS is much more accepting of kids with differences although not everyone is - unfortunately that is just the world we live in, even among many adults. 
</p>
<p>Just MHO.</p>
<p>I don’t think this one was covered:</p>
<p>For some athletes and artists, boarding school can be too restrictive.</p>
<p>For example, the star tennis player probably benefits from living at home and traveling to USTA events across state lines. A boarding school will have teams that travel but your USTA points and ranking will suffer if you’re limited to that. At boarding school, highly competitive tennis can quickly become a single season experience instead of a year-round one. Excellence in boarding school team competition may be impressive to college coaches/recruiters but most other tennis athletes vying for scholarships or slots on a team are playing at the highest competitive levels all year-round. Boarding schools are not as well-equipped as mom and/or dad to indulge the travel demands. This may even apply in team sports, like soccer, where only one season is dedicated to the sport – while stay-at-home students are playing in leagues all year-round.</p>
<p>Highly gifted musicians may appreciate being in talented ensembles within their boarding school community and the instrumental or vocal lessons may be more-than-adequate, but moving to boarding school may mean parting with an exceptional instructor whose style of play or temperament may gel with you; it may mean a much more limited array of outlets and performances than you’d have if your parents could chauffeur you to performances or rehearsals that rotate in terms of time and location in ways that even a phenomenal boarding school transportation system cannot accommodate. Serious and highly gifted musicians in particular may find that they are at a great boarding school but there are artistic differences and disconnects with the musical instruction making an otherwise fabulous experience unworkable. It’s very much hit or miss – something that will happen again at college in all likelihood, so maybe that’s not a bridge you want to cross/burn just yet.</p>
<p>I don’t know about committed mathletes and how well boarding school serves them (if that’s something they wish to pursue through high school). As with tennis, simply having a team may not be enough. I recall one parent of a mathlete mentioning how much she enjoyed the experience of going to competitions with her child. That won’t happen at boarding school. That may be more of something that’s just a sacrifice for the parent, not the child. And it may be a stage in the parent-child relationship that is coming to an end regardless of the boarding school decision. But, again, if your child has some very special gift that is pursued at a very high level, year round, through extra-curricular pursuits that often require travel, be cautious about boarding schools because you may be giving up more than you’re getting in return.</p>
<p>Personally, if I went to boarding school, my biggest disadvantage would be dropping Chinese. A lot of better boarding schools offer Chinese, but it would never be as strong as the level I am taking here in China. Leaving my Chinese behind would only make me more of an awkward multicultural - at least I used to be fluent at both languages.
I would guess that if you were picked on at a boarding school, it would be worse than being in a private or public school. The people will always be around you, and there will be no “private space” anymore. (This may just be my school, but I know that students in my grade are constantly watching and judging each other. They don’t pick on people by race or anything, but by appearance, personality, or “coolness”. I’m assuming that it happens in boarding schools too, even if just a little.) If you were at home, if you did not have a happy social life at school, you could always make friends outside of school, like in your community service group or another sports team. Sorry, I don’t know what I am talking about, I am just making a guess. Anyone care to prove me wrong?</p>
<p>clairee; I completely understand where you’re coming from. I am also bilingual in Chinese and English, with English as my first language and taking Chinese lessons since I was 5 in New Jersey up to last year, with me now being in China. I had already figured that boarding schools would not offer Chinese at my level - the highest level available for my grade at my school - so instead of continuing on that path, I’ve chosen to start a new language - Spanish. But because my parents are Chinese, I am still fluent in the language, as I frequently use it at home, and I am also taking the AP Chinese exam this year as an independent study student. I don’t feel that I will ever completely lose my Chinese, and I will continue to practice through reading Chinese novels if I move to America. :)</p>
<p>As for the clique-y things, I have to say, that is actually one of the (minor) reasons I want to apply to boarding school. Don’t get me wrong, I am not unpopular or a social outcast or anything - I have my group of friends and some friends not in that group, but sometimes I just feel so alone, because I have no ONE best friend, and everyone in my close group of friends does, so when it comes time to choose one partner or anything… it gets awkward at times. Anyway, I understand your concerns for the bullying thing - there is no avoiding people. At all. But it is also a chance to start fresh and reinvent yourself. :)</p>
<p>no home cooked meals</p>
<p>^seconded! Forgot about that one…</p>
<p>Good to see the discussion of the disadvantages, It will reduce the pain of being rejected or not being able to afford it.</p>
<p>@clairee & aaralyn: You guys do know that some BSs have native-language Chinese courses and electives, right? (EX: Andover has this rotating series of three year-long native-speaker courses, that they say are taught to basically be the same as a regular Chinese-speaking high school, not to mention a bunch of higher than AP electives.) So… unless your Chinese is superb and you don’t have any challenge even in a Chinese/Taiwanese/etc. public school, I’d think that they would have enough rigour. And I say public because most of the time international schools’ Chinese curriculum are a lot softer than publics’.</p>
<p>With that said, I know that not all BSs have this. But I was pretty surprised at this being brought up, because Chinese is semi my first language (move a lot and have lived in Asia), and the reason why I want to go to these schools is partly because of their fantastic foreign language programs.</p>
<p>As my alumni interviewer put it, in an attempt to scare me off:
-He had to give up piano after attending a HADES - “no time”
-Pulling 2 all-nighters a week, on average</p>
<p>^^While late nights are a reality, I can only recall 1 allnighter in 3 years, and it was as much by choice as necessity. Yes, there may be some 5-hour rest nights, and general exhaustion is part of the BS reality, but these alum interviewers sound like real duds.</p>
<p>As I look deeper into the boarding school scene (at least from the one-sided point of view of CC), I can’t help but feel life there is a bit mechanical. All students do is try hard to balance the burdening homework load with ECs, which (I suppose) are mostly done to beef up their profile for college. I’m sure not all ECs students participate in stem from their real passion. Is there even time to breathe and be at peace at all?</p>
<p>I don’t want to burst my own idyllic BS bubble and would REALLY like to be proven wrong in this respect. I love challenge, I really do, but I too need some time alone.</p>