I’ll add that my daughter researched, visited, and in the end wasn’t interested in any of the “usual suspects” schools so she applied to what many would call a list of all hidden gems:
Emma Willard
Miss Porter’s
Proctor
Pomfret
Millbrook
Suffield
She was accepted to all and had a very hard time choosing between a few in the end. She decided to attend Proctor due to the incredibly friendly students and faculty plus not only the campus (2500 acres with ponds and trails and mountains - they have their own ski hill and ski jump!), but also the breadth/variety of courses available (over 30 different types of art courses alone plus courses like ornithology and forest ecology), and their very unique off-campus programs (she is particularly excited about European Art Classroom).
So far it has been an overwhelmingly positive experience. A couple of bumps here and there, but nothing serious and nothing I wouldn’t expect any kid to go through learning to live away from home the first time. I would highly recommend looking into schools beyond the “usual suspects” and to keep an open mind. In the case of our daughter, she was looking for:
Kind, caring community of teachers and students
Great arts/theater community
Option to run XC/track
Natural beauty/surroundings
No more than about 400 students
Lots of academic options in terms of courses offered
Among a few other things.
She researched about 35-40 schools, narrowed it to the 13 or so we visited, then applied to 6 that she liked the best and felt she could see herself at.