<p>Is there a big difference between being a boarder and a day student? Would you say it is a good thing or a bad thing? Opinions welcome but personal experience would be great.</p>
<p>a boarder lives in a dorm and a day student just goes to the school? i dunno</p>
<p>no, there is not much of a differnce. A lot of day student stay almost all day, and just dont sleep there. By all day i mean classes, sports, dinner, and study hall.</p>
<p>Well day students stay for the most of the day - breakfast, classes, sports, dinner. I don't know any day students that stay for study hall, though. Umm I guess a big difference is that a lot of day students just get their parents to call and get them out of mandatory activities that they don't want to do while the boarders don't have a choice at all. Sometimes there are mandatory activities for boarders and not for day students, which we boarders find really unfair, but there isn't really anything we can do about that.</p>
<p>Some of the day students in my son's dorm to stay for study hall. He was just talking about that a couple of days ago....he was talking with one of his day student friends on the phone and the friend indicated he would be staying for study hall that evening. He says there can be a feeling of less integration with the day students, but that is more up to the day student and their parents; some day students spend all of their time (except sleeping) on campus....they stay on w/e's for instance; others are only there for classes.</p>
<p>It really depends on the school as well - what facilities they provide for day students and where they are located. Some (like NMH) provide a dorm room - X-number of day students are assigned to a dorm room. They can stay over even if they need to. Others have a day student lounge. Others (is it Groton or Concord?) don't allow boarders back to their dorms during the day.
At all schools we visited the day students are encouraged to stay for dinner and evening activities. It is harder, in many ways to be a day student - it is certainly harder to be a parent of a day student as you are picking up at all hours.<br>
When we first began this process, we were encouraged by our current school to not rule out boarding (we originally hadn't really considered it because we have a few great options that my son could be a day student at). The reason is that you are really only having your child home to sleep.</p>
<p>My d is at a 50-50 school. Her school has had some students there since kindergarten, but a small percent. She arrived in grade 9, new, and made friends with boarders and day students alike. She is very involved and spends lots of time--days and weekends--at school. The boarders, she says, have a more difficult time in some ways, particularly freshmen. Some of them miss home, of course, but also the amenities of running to the store for needed items for a project. Some her boarder friends say they wish they'd waited until 10th grade to enter bs--that they would have been more ready.</p>
<p>My S is at a 50/50 as a day student. He goes in early to join his boarding friends for breakfast and often stays late for dinner. At school weekends as well. He loves being able to come home and having more freedom than his boarding friends who have certain study hours and other restrictions. Sometimes he asks boarders home for the weekend to "free" them from boarding life. That said, it's been great for him to be at a school where he can make friends with people from all over the world. He whole school experience is richer also because of the number of activities/events planned on weekends.</p>
<p>Linda S, it's Concord, very strict people. lol</p>
<p>I read somewhere that day students (like any normal student) is allowed to get a car, while boarding students are not.</p>
<p>I am a day student at Exeter. The day student lifestye is really what you choose to make it. Some students arrive for classes in the morning and leave as soon as they end, then go home for dinner. More frequently, they finish classes, go to dinner, go to club meanings, study with friends, hang out, etc. I am personally the latter, and in that way I am still very integrated in the school community as a day student.
\ It's easy to be a day student if you live close to the school (10-15 minutes or less.) If you're farther away, it can get tricky - I live 25-30 minutes from school and I must say that life as a day student can be grueling. I usually am on campus from 8 AM and leave around 8 PM on average (though later as an older student, and earlier as a younger student.) The commute and the feeling that I simply come home to study and sleep before returning to campus makes me wish I was a boarder. That being said, I would still choose to be a day student at my school before choosing to not come at all.</p>
<p>wellll, my neighbor was a day
student at miss porter's,
and she hated it.
she said she had
a hard time fitting in
with the other girls.
i don't know if that's
just because its an
all girls school though.</p>
<p>My friend who goes to a 25%(d)-75%(b) school has about 50% day friends and 50% boarding friends. It seems like they're at least integrated at MX then.</p>
<p>I have a friend at NMH who is a day student, and he told me that he was once in class and his teacher asked who in the class were day students, so he raised his hand. One of his close friends looked at him and said "What are you talking about Jared? You're not a day student!" </p>
<p>What I gathered from this is that if you want to be a day student who isn't heavily involved in the school, you can be, but you can also be a day student who does just as much as a boarding student, just doesn't sleep there.</p>