Thought I’d start a thread so people can comment on California boarding schools. They tend to get very little attention on this forum, but are wonderful options for students and faculty who might prefer sunshine to snow!
Schools to consider include:
Besant Hill
Cate
Dunn
Midland
Ojai Valley School
Santa Catalina (Girls)
Stevenson
Thacher
Villanova
Webb
What did I miss?
Athenian
(They have board and day students)
Flintridge Sacred Heart (girls) in La Canada takes day and boarding.
Priory
Archbishop Riordan in San Francisco has boarders… mostly from other countries. It is all boys.
My son will be a freshman at Stevenson in the fall. We’ve been very impressed with the teachers, admin and students we have met so far plus such a beautiful campus and location. Will keep you guys posted. Let me know if you have specific questions on this school and I will be happy to try to answer them once we have more data 
@Piratesmom My son will be a freshman at Stevenson also! I’ll work on getting more posts so we can PM each other.
I’m also relatively familiar with Webb. It is unique in offering a two schools in one model where boys and girls have separate classes 9th and 10th grades. An interesting hybrid for families interested in the benefits of all-boys or all-girls.
That would be fab. I’m new to this board so it will be a while before I get PMability!
How did you end up choosing Stevenson, @Piratesmom and @westcoastmom987 ? Did you consider other schools?
Stevenson was highly recommended to us by an educational consultant in the Bay Area. We looked at mostly day schools in SF as well as on the SF peninsula, 3 Nor Cal boarding schools (although Stevenson was the only one that was predominantly a boarding school -the others were essentially day schools with a few boarders) plus, for the heck of it, Exeter and Andover. Hard to say exactly what it was about Stevenson that resonated with my son. At the end of his shadow day he just knew it was the place for him. The academics are rigorous but they also want to help the students “shape a joyful life.” It has an amazingly beautiful campus-hard not to be joyful living there I would imagine :). Other schools we really liked were Woodside Priory (day and boarding) and Bay School in the Precidio (day school) but we are super excited to be a Pirate family.
Stevenson sounds gorgeous. THe only reasons we didn’t consider it were because we were looking for a much smaller school and needed a lot of financial aid. (Stevenson’s endowment per student is quite small…we assumed it would be tough for them to be generous.)
Their website states that 40% of kids receive financial aid and that they try to meet 100% of demonstrated need. The (I’m guessing) fairly high % of full pay international boarders may mean that the funds don’t need to stretch so far? What schools did you consider @CaliMex ?
We considered a LOT of schools and narrowed the list down to small schools (200-400 kids) with a high proportion of boarders, a strong and positive/deliberate community/culture, and substantial endowments.
Our two favorites (by far!) were St. Andrew’s School in Delaware and Thacher, but our daughter also applied to Berkshire, Cate, Emma Willard, Middlesex, and Westover in addition to a few SF day schools (Lick-Wilmerding, University High School, Urban).
We needed a LOT of financial aid, so we cast a wide net. It is quite a bit harder to get admitted if you need aid. One school’s fundraising documents actually spell out the difference: the admit rate for full pay kids is 16% and for financial aid kids just 9%!
@Piratesmom @westcoastmom987 we too have a son who will be a freshman at Stevenson this fall! Looking forward to PMing once we all get a few more posts under our collective belt!
I am very familiar with Santa Catalina and am happy to answer any questions that readers might have about the school.
A lot of the things mentioned by @Piratesmom ring true for us, as well. My son was very much on the fence about boarding, so we limited the initial search to several SF Bay Area day schools plus Webb, which we were familiar with having lived nearby before we moved to the Bay Area several years ago. The net we initially cast was too narrow; my son was waitlisted everywhere he applied during the regular cycle. Stevenson was recommended to us early on, but since he wasn’t familiar with it, I couldn’t talk my son into a visit or application initially. Once we did visit, we really liked how happy the students seemed, how supportive the administration and faculty seemed, and how incredible the setting was. My son was hooked after visiting! In hindsight, it was probably the best fit for him all along.
^^I love this kind of story!!
I appreciate this thread! My son is just a rising 7th grader but he’s interested in attending a boarding school. Nobody I know or in my family has attended one so I don’t know where to start. We live 30 miles from Ojai, so we will start there. Stevenson looks like a great school-and the location is wonderful, I love that area.
@basil1 There are so many great schools in your area! I wish we had visited Midland, Dunn, Besant, and Ojai Valley School… Great schools that fly under the radar on this New England-obsessed forum 
@westcoastmom987 Such a happy ending! I hope your son has an amazing time at Stevenson!