<p>I have a daughter in the 6th grade. She is very interested in boarding schools for high school. Being from Louisiana, most of my friends find this idea insane. She is a smart, hard working student. She is very artsy but we don't have anything in our area to foster her love. I want a school that's strong in academics. </p>
<p>I have called a couple of schools and asked for information - Linden Hall, Chatham Hall and Hockaday. Can anyone give me information on these or any other schools? She wants an all girls school, which is perfectly fine by me.</p>
<p>I am a school teacher and my husband works for a large oil and gas company. We will be on FA. I am hoping my southern belle will fit in at these schools... :-)</p>
<p>I recommend you the Dana Hall,Miss Hall,Miss Porter,Ethel Walker or Emma Willard.Those schools are truly amazing.And if she is interested in IB,choose Annie Wright.This school is outstanding
You can research more on boardingschools.com-> a good source as boardingschoolreview (many information in boardingschoolreview is wrong and old)</p>
<p>We are so glad we discovered Westover. After our visit, I would recommend it to any girl seriously considering a girl’s school. They have a very active alumni, a strong endowment for a smaller school, and the atmosphere is very welcoming. They are also very strong in academics. Their curriculum for upperclass students is full of electives. We visited two girl’s schools and Westover was by far our preferred choice.</p>
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<li><p>Search for the Linden Hall thread here, where more than one source claims that it skews heavily toward international students and results in a particular culture.</p></li>
<li><p>Consider the percentage of boarding to day students. If your daughter is going to be a boarder, I’d think you’d want her to at a school with more than 50% boarding…so the culture of the school doesn’t change too dramatically on the weekends. At least that’s what I’d want for my own kids.</p></li>
<li><p>Finally, I would advise you to look for schools with either a high endowment, a high endowment/student, or a high percentage of kids on FA…I think all of these would point to a higher likelihood of the average applicant receiving aid.</p></li>
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<p>The thread referred to above about Linden Hall appears on the Prep School Parents forum. If the posts are even half true, yikes. Hockaday is a big school with a relatively small percentage of boarders. Very well known, fantastic reputation, and generally described as a super-charged competitive atmosphere. Certainly that sort of environment suits many girls, but is not for everyone. I’ve said it on another girls school thread, if your child might thrive at a small school, Chatham Hall is a gem. The resources devoted to 140 or so girls are incredible. iPads standard in many classes (likely all by the time your D reaches 9th grade), stunningly low student-teacher ratio, welcoming of all faiths while maintaining established Episcopal School traditions, >80% boarding, good mix of girls representing a variety of states with a reasonable number of international students, strong college placement, and perhaps the most generous scholarship and FA program of any BS anywhere (funded a few years ago by the largest single donation ever made to a girls boarding school). Can you tell I’m pleased with it? :)</p>
<p>We seriously looked into Linden Hall with our oldest. We both liked the idea of an all-girls school. Linden Hall seemed almost perfect for us on paper. Our only problem was that it was smaller than we were looking for–but we would have learned to love it. But the tour really turned us off to the school. It may just have been our tour guide, but she seemed fairly inept and awkward, and she didn’t have much to offer in way of “X is a negative about this school, but Y more than makes up for” things to say. Instead, she came off as a blazing campaign ad that makes the school look like utopia. I know that she is supposed to sell the school, but sometimes it works better to admit that there are not-so-great parts of the school, but that A) the school is working on fixing them and/or B) something else makes up for whatever the negative is (at least in my opinion).</p>
<p>Over lunch, several of the girls at the table seemed a bit snobby. The classes were far larger than we had been expecting, given the size of the school, which led us to think that maybe the student-to-teacher ratio was a bit high. We really just didn’t get a good feeling from the school, so we did not accept their offer for admission. D graduated from a very large, co-ed school in 2011, and she loved it there.</p>
<p>We’re now looking for our second daughter. We’re looking at Emma Willard, Chatham Hall, and Westover, as well as other co-ed schools. D2 isn’t so excited about the all-girls schools, but she absolutely loves Emma Willard’s campus.</p>
<p>For our older daughter, we also looked at Chatham Hall, Miss Porter’s, Emma Willard, and Miss Hall’s. For what it’s worth, Chatham Hall was our second choice.</p>
<p>Emma Willard looks amazing on paper, and I am looking forward to visiting in the future. Again, if not for CC, I probably would have never heard of it or looked more closely.</p>
<p>I go to Linden Hall. I like it but yes there are a lot of international students and it does change the climate, but I still like it. If you have any questions about LH send me a message.</p>
<p>I’m going to be a freshmen next year at westover, and I’m also from the south and have looked at top dc private all girls schools and top girls boarding schools and I can defiantly say westover is by far the best (in my opinion!). Great community, strong academics, close to NYC and Boston! I would defiantly consider Westover for high school, trust me it’s worth the wait!</p>
<p>Thanks for all your replies! I very much appreciate it. Does anyone have 1st hand info on Chatham Hall? It looks beautiful. I would love to know if the small size hinders academics. Thanks again!!</p>
<p>We looked at Chatham Hall and my daughter was accepted there but chose not to attend. The faculty was very willing to accommodate academic needs and seemed extremely interested in attracting girls with upper level academic interests. What totally turned my D off was the attitude of the girls at revisit day. The current students were not friendly and, in fact, made fun of other visiting girls (making comments about them to each other within earshot of the visitors). It may very well have been just the girls my daughter was paired with (it was a day and overnight visit, in the dorm) but it was an extremely negative atmosphere. I was also concerned that the staff didn’t seem to be aware of the environment they were putting the new girls into. Again, may have been just our situation, but a caution for others to look closely and try to get a good feel for the existing campus environment before putting your daughter there.</p>