I was just wondering which schools lean Liberal and which lean Conservative
Leans Liberal
St. Andrew’s
Hotchkiss
Choate
Concord
Emma Willard
NMH
Taft
SGS
Leans Conservative
Portsmouth Abbey
Not enough personal experience with other schools to say
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The simpler question is which lean conservative. It’s a short list, at least among the schools discussed here with any regularity. “The rest” lean liberal.
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As noted above, most boarding schools discussed here lean left. All have members of the community that lean right.
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Which schools do you think lean the most left on average?
Just curious, why does it matter? Pretty much any east-coast BS leans left, especially in the administration, and between schools, there is very little variation such that this question should be a non-factor.
There isn’t a single boarding school where you’ll be ostracized for being a vocal progressive advocate.
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Leans super liberal: Andover
Leans liberal: Exeter, Milton, Hotchkiss (more global, not that liberal). Lawrenceville
Not liberal: Loomis, Groton, Middlesex
Leans Conservative: SPS, Deerfield, Taft
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Serious question for those who aren’t familiar with this.
Is this poster talking about the kids or the faculty? If it’s the kids, do they really care? Was it only me who had zero opinion on politics until I was about 20?
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Maybe not the only one, but you would be a distinct minority at a BS.
They can clarify, but generally when a poster asks, it’s in the context of “Would I feel comfortable as a ______ at ________” in general, the faculty and students tend to be aligned politically, but this also often depends on average age of faculty.
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I asked my Deerfield student this. She said “maybe, not leans… there is a lot of everything “, which imho, is a good thing. (The there is a lot of everything part).
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of course, you will feel the difference which will directly impact you and what you think about the world
Zeography may be more worried about the opposite situation.
I assumed everyone knows who the largest donor of deerfield is and how many old money families deerfield has… over generations…
This is not accurate. You are conflating “not liberal” with traditional. They are not the same thing. All those schools have generally liberal faculty, meaning they are mostly “woke” folk. At all those schools there are kids who are on a range of a political spectrum. Even episcopal, with a larger group of conservative students, have a mostly liberal faculty and school outlook.
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I did not find Deerfield to “lean conservative”. As stated above, the student body doesn’t skew one way or another, but the administration and faculty are overwhelmingly liberal–in my time there, I’d come across a few faculty who might’ve not been as far from the center as others, but to me, I couldn’t care less as I don’t judge someone’s character or revolve my relationships around political beliefs.
One way or another, in life you are going to come across people who have different perspectives and experiences than yours, and will likely hold different opinions on political issues. If you are going to boarding school to try to find an ideological “echo chamber”, I think you’d be doing yourself a disservice on a number of fronts, and will be in for a rude awakening once you go out into the “real world”.
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Of course we know. That has nothing to do with the current vibe of the school. My current student there says it doesn’t lean one way or the other, has students with all kinds of beliefs and finds it accepting of many different views and opinions. These kids learn how to have constructive and respectful conversations about their differing views.
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Thanks for all the replies!
I was just wondering because at my current middle school you will get socially ostracized if you think differently and friend groups are based on political opinions. Although I was not ostracized by many people I just wanted to know if any boarding schools were like this. Thankfully, I think I found out that none are like that now.
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However, if you were to compare the vibe at DA, as an example, to that of George or Westtown, for example, it would seem very conservative.
If there is something that really matters to you, look a bit more at any school to see what the fit is. Left-leaning means different things to different people!
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My suggestion (repeated elsewhere), is that you look at the student newspapers at your target schools. You might gain a sense of what is top-of-mind or the hot topics on campus. All school papers have opinion sections. While these opinion columns and articles probably reflect the interests of the papers’ editors more than a true cross section of the campus community, you will gain some idea of what’s being put out there. You can access the papers online.
You can also look up online postings and events for specific organizations on each campus. There are political, cultural, and special interest societies at each school.
BTW - please don’t let dress code influence your perception. At my kid’s school, the dress code was changed during Freshman year. Surprise! No way in h-e (double hockey sticks) would my kid have applied to the school with this dress code….but stuff happens. My kiddo and others get creative with the dress code and it’s no big deal.
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Interestingly enough, we just had a climate survey report that said conservative students at LC don’t feel supported…
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