I am a current Pomfret parent and would suggest that Pomfret fits into this category. I think the small size (about 350 students) and its somewhat rural location tends to result in students joining together as a community. The advisory program is great, and they have weekly advisory group dinners often at the on-campus homes of their advisors where the group can cook together and enjoy a “home-y” meal around the table. From what I see, the students are kind and collaborative and supportive and they genuinely like the faculty and staff on campus. My daughter has really come out of her shell in her three years there, and I believe it is, in part, due to the comfort level she feels at Pomfret.
@JCAmine Does Pomfret have Formal seated meals with assigned seating? If so, how many times each week?
@CaliMex Pomfret does have sit-down lunch with assigned seating. I believe it’s once a week.
Just checked Pomfret website-- looks like a great school we are looking for! Could you pm me (I am not allowed due to less than 15 posts), if you don’t mind?
Definitely look at St Mark’s!!! Their motto reflects their commitment to keep the school a tight-knit community.
FWIW - “Assigned seating” at schools that do it refers to “assigned table” (I don’t know any school with an assigned “seat”.)…Sometimes, these meal times are referred to as “seated meals”, “formal meals”, or “sit downs”. They are usuallly on nights or days when there are no sports competitions. Other casual meals are often referred to as “walk through” dining. Several schools also have students rotate for dining hall tasks (first waiter, second waiter, busing tables, clean-up, dish crew, trash crew).
IMHO This is actually a really great tradition and students benefit from it. These types of meals also serve as community building experiences. Students have the opportunity to have a meal with others from all grades and usually one teacher. Students make friends from different grades, different cultural backgrounds, different countries, etc. I think Groton has a formal seated meal 2x per week. I believe DA has the most number of sit-down meals per week (sometimes lunch, other times dinner ).There is a short video on Twines & Vines of a dining hall having a formal sit down lunch - you can get a view of it (video of senior prank @ sit down).
- Every parent I know at schools with these “Sit Downs” is happy with their student having this experience. Schools also have Advisory dinners - they are “family” like at the Advisor’s house, or sometimes the Advisory group will sit together at a table for a meal. One advisor we know at Groton used to take the group out for pancakes. Some schools have weekly advisory lunches plus a once-a-month dinner or party. Some schools offer one-one-one lunch once a month with your advisor.
Now for my honest opinion:
Newslash?Old traditional NE boarding schools that some folks refer to as “traditional” have TRADITIONS!
If you are a parent or student who is turned off by such traditions, I would suggest opening your mind and talk to kids who actually like it. There are few opportunities like this left in today’s world to sit down with a wonderfully eclectic group of kids (in real life, not on social media) and talk over dinner. If this is not your cup of tea, that’s cool…you can look to a different type of school…hey, maybe one that is less formal… As we say in the Mindfulness world, “Wherever you go, there you are”…Learn to “ride the wave”. If you want a more progressive environment, there are lovely schools that are less formal and less traditional. Fit is judgement free.?
@JCAmine does Pomfret assign your student to table or an actual seat? More importantly, Pomfret used to serve the best chicken pot pie. Is this still true?
I’m not sure if I’d describe it as home-like, but the sense of community and brotherhood at Salisbury (all boys) is strong and meaningful, and there are a number of traditions and features in place that strengthen bonds among the student body and with faculty.
- It’s small — just over 300 students, nearly all of them board, and many of the “day students” are faculty kids. Every faculty member I meet knows my son and something about him.
- There are 2x weekly sit-down advisory lunches where you eat with your advisor and advisory group and, if your advisory is small (like my son’s), you’ll sit together with another advisory.
- Chapel (non-denominational; 2x weekly) is mandatory. Students and faculty are invited to give “chapel talks,” which are reflective and often extremely personal. I’ve heard from my son that some are truly extraordinary.
- About once per term there’s a Friday night “house-to-house,” where faculty who live on campus cook and the students are invited to go house-to-house to eat with faculty families. There are also community days, when classes are cancelled and kids sign up for non-academic activities with a faculty member, which can be things like ice-fishing, cooking, or other outdoor activities and trips to local sites.
- There are other activities for the boys, like dressing up for Halloween, carving pumpkins, and decorating gingerbread houses, that are a fun distraction.
- The overall atmosphere is very family oriented. Many faculty have young kids, and on a Saturday afternoon the faculty families, their kids, dogs, and visiting parents are all out in force on campus. The atmosphere is low-key, festive, and fun — kids support each other and each other’s teams. My son has become a dog lover.
My son says school and the work are really hard sometimes and a grind, but he says it’s a great place to be even when things are rough.
This thread has me thinking about what “home-like” means. I think you can be very traditional and be home-like. You can have a lot of rules and supervision and be home-like. So is the question equate to how “nurturing” a place is, or how much freedom a student has?
I would love to see where the various schools fall on a “freedom” continuum, subjective though it may be. I wasn’t paying enough attention to that when Kiddo was applying. The schools vary widely on how they supervise study period, how much choice you have in curriculum, how much time you spend with an advisor, how “sink or swim” it is and generally how “watched” you are.
My initial impression of Cate was that there was more freedom than there really turned out to be (don’t let beach proximity fool you), and probably lots of small, nurturing schools get mistaken as more squishy than they are because they are nurturing.
I would say Cate is home-y because the adults feel like parents as much as teachers. But it is a strict home with traditions, chores and expectations and consequences.
@Golfgr8 Assigned table, not seat. My mistake in wording. I’ll have to ask about the chicken pot pie! They did build a brick oven in the dining hall a year or two ago.
Thacher has Formal dinners with assigned tables 4X each week.
@yynnbb – I went to Holderness School, and then went back and taught at Holderness School for a few years about 8 years after I graduated. 280 students, 6:1 student to faculty ratio, small dorms, experiential learning opportunities, and sit-down family style meals. May fit the bill for what you are looking for in a school.
I second Putney (although by its nature it is not for everyone) and also throw in Concord Academy.
Concord Academy’s boarding rate is 39% out of 395 students. It’s a bit concerning…what is your opinion?
This thread is eye opening to me as it is clear people are looking for very different things in boarding schools. My kid wanted a place that’s a lot more college like than homelike, nice campus with a town attached to it with lots of things to do, lots of classes and extracurricular activities offered, good community feel, big school spirit with rah-rah sports, strong teams and good coaches for his sports, lots of choices in class selection and definitely no Saturday classes. Seems like just about everyone on this thread was looking for complete opposite! Formal seated meals absolutely not on the radar, though good food in the dining hall definitely was.
College is going to be a shock to my son’s system with the reduced structure, increased freedom, and ability to leave campus without getting parental permission and signing out — LOL. He definitely enjoys the huge sports culture at Salisbury but would be lost without the structure.
Your kid is not alone, @417WHB and, because I didn’t find CC until after M10, we didn’t know to think or care about almost anything posted on this forum besides strong academics. We made no spreadsheets or lists or visit notes. Things like traditions, seated meals, good food, homeyness, town integration, matriculation stats, boarding vs. day percentages, etc. never crossed our minds. We just assumed that kiddo would be safe, relatively looked after, well-educated, and mostly in one piece at graduation from any BS, so they were all pretty much alike to us. I made my final choice based on the beauty of the campus, but ChoatieKid chose otherwise. He, too, was looking for a college experience, something totally different from LPS. And a chance to get away from the 'rents. We told him to apply and, if he got in anywhere, he could go.
We started out looking for a “college light” experience, just one that wasn’t going to be really cut-throat or wealth-oriented. Kiddo was always very independent, and seemed “ready to launch” in a lot of ways, so “college light” seemed the way to go. In the end, the schools he got accepted to were the ones that were on the more structured and supervised end of the spectrum. They knew something we didn’t.
While I think he would have been fine in a school that there was more college-y, he is learning discipline, time management and organizational skills that he didn’t know he needed. He has always gotten by without them (and honestly his parents are not great role models for). He is just learning them with some scaffolding around him first. It isn’t so “sink or swim” like I suspect it might be elsewhere. Over four years the school gradually takes away the scaffolding, and THEN he is really ready to launch. That approach makes sense to me for my kid. He would just skip to the end if someone didn’t slow him down and make sure he actually was developing the fundamental skills before he needs them.
Thinking about the OP’s question and some of the replies…when people read this thread, perhaps they also think of “home-like” as supportive, or having a lot of faculty involvement. Many parents on this thread will tell you that the importance of social/emotional support at BS is an important factor when choosing the best fit. Maybe feeling home-like to some means having nightly check-ins that are more than a quick proctor yelling “lights out”. Maybe this type of environment you are seeking is one that has a true holistic view of the child/teen at BS - beyond academics and sports. Knowing that there is support, supervised activities at nights and weekends, community-building activities are the fabric of a school not reflected by acceptance numbers, SAT scores, or matriculation stats. IMHO it’s very important and not discussed enough. Be discerning parents and look beyond viewbooks or chance-me threads. Some schools do a great job of developing a sense of community. Other schools are more into the mantra of “ we want our students to advocate for themselves”… Just saying, you need to cut through the BS of BS… Having the social-emotional support systems in place are particularly important for kids who are being sent far from home or internationally. Some kids may need more of this than others.
Love that, and it would be a great title for a new thread. 