@417WHB, you wrote that “the whole independence thing is totally overblown on this board, few kids have real need for this at 14 and they all will get it at 18 when they go off to college so where is the big rush?”
I explained why, in my book, independence at 14 is a big selling point. I didn’t claim that BS is the only way to independence. How is that a tunnel vision?
Since I have one in BS and one at home, I obviously do not believe that BS is the right choice for everyone. But BS is the right choice for many. When they or their parents share positive experiences about BS, why diminish them?
I don’t diminish anyone, just like everyone else I provide my POV and since the first bunch of responses were all very rosy I tried hard to balance it out. By independence I meant living away from home, most of the other things mentioned are really more function of parenting than anything else. My kid loves the fact that boarding school eliminated the hours spent in the car every day and the easy social life there, but the living in the dorm scenario is far from ideal. It bugs me endlessly how monstrous of a pit their room and the entire dorm is at this point. At home we may be on messier side but we’d absolutely insist on cleaning up long before it got to this point. I don’t think any adult ever actually walks in, or tells them they ought to clean up. It could easily be a location for ‘Animal house’ at this point, I would be hard pressed to find a frat house on my older kid’s college campus that’s worse than that (minus the alcohol hopefully but would not bet a ton even on that). I don’t think anyone but me ever emptied the trash in their room, it is overflowing every time I walk in. And we won’t even talk about the smell.
Is BS a good fit for every kid. Nope. Parents and students should think long and hard about what BS represents, not only financially but also based on grades, sports, extracurriculars and all the rest.
I find it strange to think that the outcome of an Ivy league acceptance is the criteria for anything. And I say that having three Ivy league degrees and another degree from a highly rated specialty program. Those of who have Ivy league degrees recognize that a name brand education is just one tool in the set of things you might want to have in life. Not the end all be all. And today, there are so many colleges which are highly ranked and offer an intellectual life that is “Ivy like”.
How many kids get into an Ivy in your town? That will depend on where you live. And who cares about anyone else? Everyone has their own path.
BS is great for kids who are intellectually interested. We were torn over sending our kids to the local public (sends at least 20 to Ivies ( MIT/etc) per year) vs. BS. The rat race was on at the local public. It’s a great place but the pressure is intense and focused on AP’s and GPA. Yep, grade deflation exists at BS, but I’d rather have my kid earning real grades than inflated ones. The reality is, it’s going to be tough to earn top grades at a top university without doing the work and being prepared. They earn those grades at BS.
We knew going in, that matriculation was going to be tougher but were willing to trade it off for the best possible preparation. Don’t regret it for a minute. We’ll base the outcome on whether kids think it was worth it 10 years from now. Having a Sophomore who loves to go to school, is challenged (finally) and has like minded peers and supportive teachers is more than we could have expected. It’s awesome.
Our kid also learned that every kid at BS has one or more special talents. They are musicians, mathematicians, athletes ( sometimes in many sports) and most still manage to get good grades. We raised our kids to focus on what they were doing not what others are up to so they didn’t believe that they were the “best” only that they were working their hardest. At the local public kids are GPA focused to the point of extreme. Few do both sports and academics at a high level.
I like to research so went in to the BS process very wary of the marketing hype. In the end what “sold” us was the depth of learning and focus on developing students who will go out in the world and do many things. That just wasn’t available at all the the public school.
Ultimately, it’s not where your kid goes to college. It’s who they are when they go to college and beyond that matters to us.
That wasn’t my experience in my 7 years with two kids - nor my own BS years. Do you think this is just your kid’s dorm or campus wide? I think it can vary a little from dorm/house head to another. My kids lived in 5 dorms between them. The messiest one was actually a girl’s dorm. One of my son’s dorms was super tidy!
I think this is the heart of the matter. For our son, it didn’t take ten years. He started thanking us for his BS education while he was there and countless times during his college years as he watched kids painfully learn things (under extreme non-academic pressures) that were either routine or trivial for him due to having four years of experience under his belt. He was genuinely surprised at some of the struggles around him and was constantly reminded of the many benefits his high school education afforded him. In an odd twist, one of his Plebe roommates was the valedictorian of the LPS he would have attended had he stayed home. Our son heavily tutored this boy his first two years at the academy, and that boy’s mother has thanked him more than once for keeping her son from academic separation as he was within whiskers of a board review on several occasions. Also, USMA uses a form of Harkness as the primary teaching method. Needless to say, ChoatieKid slipped into that effortlessly.
But, I do agree that we all have our anecdotes and biases, no BS is perfect, BS is not for everyone, and the majority of kids do just fine in college and life without the BS experience or education. It’s a family decision with no one-size-fits-all answer.
(On an unrelated note, one unexpected benefit of attending BS far from home was airline status and becoming an early travel pro. By sophomore year, kiddo was booking his own flights; by senior year, he was getting upgrades and serious points. He continued to use that airline throughout his college years and now enjoys the benefits of the status he began to build during his BS years.)
With independence, just like with physical maturity, pretty much all kids end up at the same place, but their paths to get there can vary widely.
There is a huge laundry list of skills to develop, some get there naturally, some need a push, some get there early and some late. BS was the right time and delivery system for my kiddo to move toward independence. For someone else, it might be everything all at once in college.
Kiddo’s dorm is WAY cleaner than our house. And the food is usually better, too. He probably has more direction on adulting right now - so many parents! - than he does at home.
I am going to turn the conversation away from independence for a bit and share with you what I saw in my peers (several decades ago) and what I see in the kids now who attend BS; They have developed confidence in themselves at a younger age or sooner than most kids back home. By this I mean confidence in themselves because I believe that it is nurtured by the BS experience, Also, you must have some confidence to succeed there and this will develop with each term you complete. I also find that many kids have an arsenal of resiliency that arose from their experience living away from home, navigating novel situations, taking chances in a safe environment, being able to take risks (perhaps fail) and recover.
There are a unique skills developed at BS, in part, because you can’t “leave” at the end of the day (unless you are a day student). You are living there, also. So you learn to navigate many different social situations.
I agree with @one1ofeach that part of the reason boqrding school is such a great experience for so many students is that schools are actively trying on the front end to select students who will thrive there. They also have no compunction about jettisoning students who cause serious problems. That leaves a population of students who (in general) want to be there and want to learn, who contribute to the community, who abide by the rules; in other words, who put in what they need to in order to derive the expected benefit. Not all teenagers are willing or able to do this, and that is fine and normal.
On a point of detail: I think it is a failure of an individual school if students are living like pigs. The school should enforce a reasonable standard of neatness and cleanliness.
Yes - there is an element of “self selection”…I read a couple of years ago that Putney actually has some students on their admissions committee - it would be interesting to hear their perspective on this topic @twinsmama - to your point @ reasonable neatness…we toured a couple of schools with newer dorms that had “mud rooms” for your coats, boots, etc…one had vented lockers so you didn’t have to trudge upstairs or through halls with your wet jacket. Kids have so much more stuff today than when we were in HS or college dorms. Is it my imagination, or do these kids have more stuff and more clothes?
Schools definitely are looking for kids who can thrive in a community and also are resilient. Those aren’t common qualities at 13/14 years old. Somehow the schools do seem to know who will fit. I think many kids have some skills and develop others at BS.
I have never heard of rooms being really messy or dirty. Honestly, many schools have staff who live on campus or visit the dorms often so I am not sure why that isn’t being addressed.
I have found very few teens to be even semi-independent these days. Many of our family and friends have kids who do next to nothing. And many parents who seem to think it’s ok to do everything for kids until they leave for college. One cannot helicopter parent via BS. That’s a big difference too. For some parents, letting their kids go to BS is needed and helps the kid and the parent get to where they need to be.
Agree with the comments above. To answer the OP’s question for this thread - “Is the Elite boarding school experience all it is cracked up to be?”. For the OP and for prospective parents/students, I would recommend that you be mindful of your expectations & MANAGE your expectations. As a parent, your expectations might be very different than your student’s expectations. Take stock of what you read on CC - also with a grain of salt. However, be realistic abut your expectations for your child and for yourself. That way, you will “tee yourself up” for a better experience*.
please excuse my golf reference, but it’s a habit?
@1ofeach , I love your honesty about your ambiguity. This is not a straightforward path, even when it’s the right one.
As I have said before, while I loved my kid’s school for so many reasons, and especially who he became while he was there, there were a number of things that were far from perfect. And at the time, a each managed to be front and center for a time. Managing expectations is indeed key.
It is one of the reasons I became part of CC (as well as talking to our school about a need for better parent communication.) For me, at least, it was often hard to know what to expect!
I also think that the adjustment to boarding school may be more of a struggle for parents than for kids. My kids both slipped right into their new schools with no problem. The things that annoy me, annoy ME for the most part, not so much my kids. They take a bad teacher in stride whereas I calculate in my head how much I am paying for that one bad teacher (sorry I can’t help it, my brain just works that way). They have a maturity beyond their years in the perspective they have on highschool that I would not have expected. I think it must come from their dad. LOL
For example, both were the absolute top student in their old schools. All A’s kind of kids. I thought that the first B for both of them (super high powered in their own ways) would be devastating and it was a complete non issue.
