I would appreciate any particular thoughts on the type of kid who would flourish at SMS and, perhaps, the type of kid who might not flourish. I would also love input on (in no particular order):
- what weekend life is like on campus (given how small the school is, and how many of the students are day students or live reasonably close, how is the experience for students who live far away);
- the boys' hockey program; and
- questions you wish you would have asked/areas you wish you would have inquired upon before you or your son/daughter enrolled.
(I would have sent DMs, but am a new member, so don’t have enough posts. I have been lurking for the past year, have used the search function & have read all the prior SMS threads.)
Thanks in advance.
I will PM you more specifics (this will also enable you to PM me back) but let me address some of the issues that would affect a broad group of people.
Weekends-- SMS limits the number of day students per class. We personally know some kids that were told they’d need to board to have a spot. There are many “Boston area” kids. That being said, SMS has many community weekends where kids are required to stay on campus and participate in school activities (community service/team building games/etc). They also have weekend activities almost every weekend, like movies, hiking, shopping, go carting/paintball, Bruins games…they’ve also had hypnotic, magicians, and other performers come to the school. The number of kids that stay on campus is generally proportional to the attractiveness of the activity. DS can’t come home on long weekends since we are from Texas. He says it is definitely quieter on campus then, but he actually enjoys it. He likes getting extra sleep (dorms are much quieter), longer showers, shorter meal lines…true down time. Even during these quieter weekends, he has friends to eat with, workout with, have snowball fights with. The school is so small that everyone knows everyone. So, there are never any anonymous people on campus with you.
Questions I wish we’d asked (DH said the exact things I was thinking when I asked him his opinion)…1) transportation/holiday schedules. 2) classics program and its effect on other foreign languages. We’ve learned a lot about both of these subjects and continue to navigate our way, but we would have avoided a ton of stress to know how these things worked beforehand.
The boys hockey program is solid. They take about 18 total on varsity & about the same on JV. They develop their team from the bottom. They do not recruit ringers for upper grades to stack their team. A kid that was on JV two years ago left this year for the US National Juniors team, along with the starting goalie. So, freshmen may start out as JV, but will definitely develop and advance to varsity & beyond.
I’ll PM you, but hopefully this helps!
The stuffed animal question reminded me of this fact about SMS. It is a very dog-centric school. The bookstore has a dog, Bella, that greets everyone everyday who comes in. During assessments week, they have a puppy play, where kids can go to one of several rooms to pet, play and relax with faculty and/or local parent dogs. Several teachers bring their dogs to class or their offices. DS misses our dogs, but he says he always can find a pup to love on which improves his mood, lessens stress, etc. Dartmouth allowed us to bring our dogs to class and I loved that about the school!
Thanks, Buuzn03, for all of your great counsel and information. Thanks to you and the wonderful kids, coaches and teachers our son met at revisit day, he has decided to go to St. Mark’s this fall. We are very excited!
Omg!!! We are so excited!!! Welcome to St Mark’s!!!