My little sister went to a great boarding school in MA for fresh-soph year. she came home for family issues we were having and I feel bad! she has never stopped talking about the feel of the school and redid her bedroom the way she had her dorm set up. The kids she kept in contact with all are going to ivies or southern schools or trinity/wesleyan and what not. I made mistakes in my own college process not being aware of a lot of great schools and I feel bad I can’t really help her so can someone give some reference here? I’ve been in california by myself for a while and all I can think of is Pomona.
What are some colleges that have the feel of a new england boarding school regardless of location?
her major would be neuroscience.
I don’t know about the neuroscience part, but Hobart and William Smith feels like a boarding school. You probably need to give more info about the admissions side of things – a kid with a good chance at Williams and Amherst probably isn’t considering Hobart and Trinity.
Georgetown dorms are not like a New England boarding school. The academics are for sure. The rest of the campus has that feel and some super new buildings like the student center. And it’s much larger than the other schools. Campus is pretty and the neighborhood is hard to beat. It’s great but I don’t think it’s what you are asking.
Lots of boarding school kids go to Georgetown (popular choice) but I wouldn’t say it is boarding school like other than being a little preppy.
I would suggest the previously mentioned Trinity, Middlebury, Bates, Bowdoin, Colby - pretty much the NESCAC colleges. https://www.nescac.com/about/members
Also, small to medium sized schools like Davidson, Richmond, Wake Forest to name a few.
Looking at the most recent matriculation statistics for a New England boarding school, Hamilton, Bowdoin, Scripps, Middlebury, Trinity and Williams appear as the most popular small-college destinations for its graduates.
Most BS are small and isolated. This allows for a tight community that has to make it’s own fun. Colleges like the ones @doschicos mentions are similar.
It’s not unusual for BS kids to want something completely different for college (i.e., bigger and more urban), so where they go is not necessarily a re-creation of where they’ve been.
@littlewomancoco Pomona is part of the Claremont Consortium which includes Harvey Mudd, CMC, Pitzer, and Scripps all withing walking distance of one another. Each of these could give the New England BS impression. Caltech in Pasadena is very a very compact community, too.
In Los Angeles, there is also Occidental. Another school to look at is Denison in Ohio, which has a real New England feel and is four-year residential. Maybe Kenyon in Ohio as well, although I am not as familiar with Kenyon. .
Andover has more of a college feel than other New England boarding schools.
Most rural LACs replicate the boarding school bubble effect.
Kenyon College, Bowdoin College, Davidson College, Bates College, Colorado College, Sewanee-University of the South, Connecticut College, Denison University, St. Lawrence University, and Williams College are some “colleges like New England boarding schools”.
In my opinion, Kenyon College and Bowdoin College are two “colleges like New England boarding schools”. Any search seeking to replicate the feel of a New England boarding school might want to start looking into these two prestigious LACs.
Sewanee-University of the South shares its campus with a boarding school.
Obviously this is a subjective matter; for example, I do not see the University of Richmond–mentioned above–as resembling a New England boarding school since it is a bit too large & too suburban / urban. In my opinion, a main characteristic of a New England boarding school is the isolated community feel which leads to a campus culture shared by all. Isolation forces the community to bond. While this may be attractive at a young age when first venturing away from home, for some it may be too constricting & a bit suffocating as a 19 or 20 or 21 year old young adult. Purely subjective.
P.S. Among the Ivy League schools, I think that Dartmouth College most resembles a New England boarding school–although not in an overly restrictive fashion.
I went to boarding school then went to college at St. Lawrence. People used to call our boarding school JV St. Lawrence and call SLU Varsity Boarding School.
I would say any small NE college will be similar with all of the ones mentioned above being the most similar to boarding school. I wanted to keep the boarding school feel and I loved SLU, Hobart, Hamilton, Colgate, etc. I looked at Boston College, UVM and UNH but thought they all felt too big for me.
A good friend of Ds went to Taft and said U Richmond felt almost exactly the same. The architect was the same for both schools so they look alike but even the students seemed similar.
"Pomona is part of the Claremont Consortium which includes Harvey Mudd, CMC, Pitzer, and Scripps all withing walking distance of one another. Each of these could give the New England BS impression. Caltech in Pasadena is very a very compact community, too. "
Boarding schools in MA are nothing like the Claremont Consortium or Cal Tech, first would be the difference in the demographics, boarding schools in the northeast are predominantly white, Cal Tech is predominantly Asian. There is zero similarity, and I would not suggest that anyone who likes their boarding school experience in MA to attend Pomona or Cal Tech. Totally different environments.