Yeah - you have to walk to get a sense…I’m just looking at acreage of Denison after the fact.
3 Likes
My S24 similarly became interested in adding Middlebury to his list at the last minute - we have not had a chance to visit. Neither his counselor nor I quite see how Middlebury adds anything new to his already fairly extensive list of LACs. But it is his call, especially given that the application is easy.
Same, but on the other hand since we didn’t visit we never really gave it a chance.
I was curious so I looked back to collect the “statistics” from our 14 visits (we have applied to 2 so far without visits). It worked out like this:
Up: 5 (one rated Same at time, but was really Up in retrospect)
Same (applying): 2
Same (maybe applying): 3
Same (not applying): 2
Down: 2
So right at half Same, half some sort of change, but of the ones that changed a clear majority (5/7) were Up.
To me this suggests we probably could have gotten some more good possibilities with more visits. Of course at a certain point, enough is enough. But I think in cases like Middlebury, where we definitely could have reasonably visited, but we just ran out of capacity given S24’s limited availability, it certainly could have been an Up. Or not, but maybe.
OK, so if he wants to put one or two of those on the list, possibly over a couple of the current Same (maybe) schools? Not crazy to me to think that way, because there probably is a chance–not a large one, but not a trivial one–the planets align behind one of those in the end.
1 Like
You gotta walk to work off the beer.
I never had a car at college (not that there was anywhere to park one once you got to campus) and I always just walk everywhere. Of course I lived on the wrong end of campus for my classes (near engineering and business and I was a humanities major). Oh well, good for the calf muscles.
4 Likes
Wait - there are high schools with acreage! Is that a boarding school thing? The only acreage our city high school has is the football field and the parking lot. 
1 Like
St. Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire sits on 2,000 acres and Lawrenceville in New Jersey has a campus of about 750 acres.
SPS is 100% boarding school while Lawrenceville is primarily boarding, but does admit some day students.
Are those boarding schools?
yes
Even some day, or mostly day, schools can have substantial campuses.
I think that’s the point that @dfbdfb was making above. There is size…and then there’s size.
Lawrenceville is primarily a cluster of buildings not far from the main road through the middle of town (RT 206). Those buildings are all within a 2-3 minute walk of one another and include the student houses.
That central area is surrounded by fields, a lake, (a lot of) housing for teachers and staff, a hockey rink…and a golf course. It can take a while to get to some of the fields and outlying areas…but the “main” campus is a very manageable size… that feels smaller than some might assume on a 750-acre campus.
3 Likes
My rural public high school back many years ago had an undeveloped forest behind it, from which wild turkeys, deer, and alligators occasionally wandered on campus. The campus included a farm (run by the Future Farmers of America kids, and the ag co-op program), livestock, a barn, a practice field for our rodeo team. It had roads driving through the campus. A football stadium with its own parking area, a baseball field, a band practice field, a driver’s ed driving range… a bunch of buildings with courtyards and walking paths between them. I have no idea how many acres the high school was, but it was huge. And my impression was that it was not unusual in our rural area.
3 Likes
We’re a small boarding school (180 students) and sit on 200 acres with a lake and lots of forest.
1 Like
Our small boarding school (215 students) has 450 acres–lots of forest, trails, meadows and fields (and a ski hill iwth multiple runs, multiple jumps and a snowboard park).
What - your boarding school is in Vail ? 
There are boarding schools in most of the ski towns (although certainly not 400 acres, more like the size of a motel 6). My niece was selected for one near Steamboat years ago. She actually lived closer to the mountain than the boarding school was and in the end decided to stay at home and go to Steamboat High. Alas, she is not a professional skier and did not go to the Olympics.
1 Like
Must be nice to go to that boarding school - or I think it’s Aspen High that has its own mountain access.
Color me jealous !!
Almost all the ski town high schools have some kind of access to the mountains. In Winter Park, the schools only have classes Tue- Fri so everyone can ski on Mondays. In Steamboat, most of the kids are doing some kind of training at HOwlson hill (racing, jumping, cross country) several days per week. All 5th graders in the state get free ski passes.
3 Likes
That would be cool!
There is also an issue that natural areas, and to some extent sports fields, can add to acreage without increasing the functional size/density of the built part. The extreme example is Berry College, which has over 27,000 acres of land.
4 Likes
With all this talk of acres, I looked up two of the prep schools near me (not boarding schools). I was very surprised. The first which is k-12 has only 75. I’ve been there several times and I thought it was pretty big with separate buildings for the lower school, a few athletic fields (no football, but soccer and lacrosse). I was also suprised that the other, grades 6-12, has 200 acres. Several soccer, lacrosse, baseball fields, but just wide lawns before you even see the school buildings from the road. It is in an area that contained (and still has) ‘horse’ properties. It was south of the city but other urban areas have grown up around it. It’s quite beautiful and if you have $35k per year, your kids can go there too, horse or no horse.
Berry College is the largest, but small conservative college.
4 Likes