Hi
I would love to get impressions of Mlllbrook. Is it academically challenging, especially for a bright student? How intellectually engaged are the kids? It seemed like a very warm, close community is that the case?
I know a couple of kids there, who all seem to love it. One of them is my son’s best friend, and in his first year at Millbrook, I was driving him home for a long weekend. I was asking him questions about how he liked the school, and he was being the typical teenage boy --happy to answer “fact” questions but not very forth-coming on “feelings” questions. Finally he said, “I don’t know how to describe it, Millbrook is just a happy place.” I thought that was pretty high praise from a 15 year old boy!
Definitely a very warm close-knit community, and I’m sure even more so after the terrible tragedy the school suffered recently (the Athletic Director was killed in a car accident, his two young daughters were also injured in the accident, and his wife – also a teacher at the school – is pregnant with their third child).
I know that teachers from other local schools (including Hotchkiss and Indian Mountain) often send their kids to Millbrook, which always seems to me like a good sign. I can’t really speak to the level of academic challenge the school poses, but I would say that the kids all seem very engaged and enthusiastic. And how can you beat having the chance to work at the school’s zoo as an extracurricular activity??
We were fortunate during our visit to have the Headmaster take over and show us around for part of our tour. What impressed me most was how much he seemed to know about every single kid we crossed paths with during our walkabout with him. He is quite well-respected in in the prep school world.
Millbrook is academically fairly weak. It’s a very nice little school. Very homogenous.