I wonder if people could chime in on their views of the “optimal” size for a school. If your child chose a small school, how has that been? What about a large school? How did size affect your choice of your list? Like the optimal distance question I know there is no “right” answer but I am curious as to people’s gut feelings. . (Our is to go small for our son–he come from a cozy elementary school where everyone has known him since birth . . he has no problem making friends of any type and I think he will benefit from the intimacy and a small faculty that knows all the students pretty well).
Our son didn’t consider size as a factor when looking at schools and was very happy at his 850-student school. He felt he knew everyone he needed to know (and knew everyone enough to say “hi”), class sizes were small (some as few as six or seven), and he felt well-known on campus. The setup at large and small schools is much the same with small class sizes, personal advisors, caring teachers, dorm parents, etc. At a larger school, there are just more of those intimate circles to go around. All of “his” faculty knew him well and there was very much a feel of cozy intimacy in every one of his dorm/house setups over the years. It would be very hard to fall through the cracks at Choate though it is one of the larger schools.
DS goes to NMH, a 650-student school. It’s exactly the same size high school as his K-12 school which DS would have attended if he stayed home. The class size is over 30 at home though.
Like Choate, NMH is big enough to offer many activities, sports teams and symphony orchestra, etc but feels small enough. A couple of smaller schools of ~300 students we didn’t consider didn’t have orchestra (not enough number of musicians I guess) nor some programs of our interest.
Other people on this board mentioned that it’s easier to make varsity in smaller schools and easier to participate in several sports.
My kids came from a small private day school with about 25-30 kids per grade. They had both been there since age 4, so very much a place where they were known by every teacher and administrator at the school. When we looked at boarding schools, both times around we looked mostly at schools in the 400-600 student size. One of the main reasons that we wanted our kids to look at other schools for high school (they could have stayed where they were, as it goes through 12th grade) was to give them a broader range of choices for sports, extracurriculars, and elective classes. As we looked at the schools, it did seem to me that schools on the smaller end of our range had fewer of those kinds of opportunities, on average, as compared to schools on the higher end. Our kids are now both at a school with 600 total students, and I think it’s a great size for them. As ChoatieMom says, all the schools still have intimate circles of faculty, advisors, dorms where your kid will form tight bonds and have a real “home.” When it comes to that kind of issue, to me, what’s more important than the literal size of the school is it’s sense of community. A larger school with a strong sense of community will feel “smaller” than a large school where a lot of kids go their own way.
My kids looked at schools that ranged from 150 to 1,000+ students. One chose a school in the 500-600 range and the other chose the 150 range. Neither can understand the other’s choice. 
I was really concerned about the tiny school until I did a spreadsheet that lay out the academic requirements and sports choices at all of the schools. Turned out that the tiny school offered more opportunities (based on my kid’s interests) than the bigger schools. Long way of saying that “it depends”. My kid who chose the bigger school wishes he was at an even bigger school. He likes tons of choices. The one at the smaller school is really happy and loves that he knows everyone. Bigger school kid practically breaks out in hives when he hears about small school kids experience. They are totally different types of kids and if we flip flopped their schools, they would both be miserable.
I second what CindyLWho said about the smaller school. We were looking at schools in the 300-500 range and several people along the way suggested a much smaller school as a good fit for her. 200 students-- too small, we thought. We ended up looking at the last minute (day before deadline) because a family friend who teaches at what was her “dream school” also suggested the small school as a good fit for her, program-wise. She says she knew the minute she walked in the door that she had found the perfect fit. Unlike what I expected, it didn’t feel too small at all! She has friends across the grades, knows everyone, and is not at all lacking for programs, activities, or opportunities. It was a real eye-opener for me… I was sure that “small school” meant “small experience.” Not so.
One thing that happens at boarding schools, and it could be particularly prevalent at the smaller schools, is having the same faculty member wearing many hats in your child’s life. It’s not unusual for a child to have a teacher who is also a coach and who might also live or serve as faculty connected to their dorm. This is probably less likely to happen in a bigger school.
It can be great if everything is rosy and the two form a strong bond, especially helpful when it comes time for college recs and that person truly knows many sides of your child and also for the “in loco parentis” aspect of the teacher’s job.
It can be a negative if things aren’t clicking between the child and the faculty member in one or more aspects of their relationship or, as we had once, the faculty member seems to be going through some kind of midlife funk or job burnout.
There aren’t any boarding schools that are large by general high school standards, and there are only a few that are large enough to begin to become impersonal on an institutional level. As a parent, I like a smaller school where everyone knows my kids and some people know me (or at least know whose mother I am when I show up). For my own kids, I’m not sure it matters too much how many people are at a school. What matters is that they find some with whom they connect. (And they’ve tried all sizes - especially my daughter, who went from a high school of well over 3000 students to one of just 440.)
From a practical standpoint, however, a smaller school offers more opportunities for underclassmen and inexperienced students to take part in various activities. For example, my son made the JV squash team in 9th grade without ever having played squash. I really doubt that would have happened at a larger school. Yes, there are more activities and organizations at a larger school, but not enough more to accommodate the greater number of students. There are more class choices, but even a small school offers many more classes than any student can possibly take.
This so depends on the kid. My DS applied to only large schools after visiting some medium sized schools and not feeling that fit at all. Since the local high school is 3000, all the boarding schools seemed small. He wanted more of everything – more teams, more events, more music, more classes, more people to meet. He thinks the benefit of bigger is that it is very easy to find a group of kids to do anything – form a club, write a musical, attend a conference. There are more math geeks and more theatre kids and more poets and more lacrosse players. The opportunities are totally overwhelming and no one can take advantage of them all, but they are completely unlimited. It is easier for a large school to offer college level academics in most subjects because there are more kids with those specific interests trying to get 6th year Mandarin or organic chemistry or second or third-year physics.
The negative of the large school is as twinsmama says above – it is harder to break in to a variety of ECs and competition is fierce. It’s harder to make the sports teams, harder to make various music ensembles, or theatre casts, or the school paper staff. It’s possible to really care about something and just get shut out of it. A first-year student is rarely near the top of any group since the seniors are just as talented, just as dedicated, and three years older. There can always be exceptions and there are freshman on varsity sports, but it’s rare. It’s also harder to break into something you find interesting but have limited experience at doing.
Doschicos – DS thinks that wearing many hats and having a variety of roles at the school impacting a specific kid seems to happen often at a large school. Maybe it’s less common, but it still happens – for both the benefits and the risks of those interactions. DS finds it incongruous and something he’s adjusting to as he tries to learn that his “teachers” are also counselors and club leaders and coaches and house parents. He mentions it frequently as something quite strange to him after being used to teachers who teach and that’s it.
DS would be correct. For that matter, I’m not sure that there are many, if any cases, where this is not the case. I do know that at my former school that there have been many discussions about how to attract/retain/motivate faculty who wear so many hats.
For me, coming from a school with 100 students per grade, I was looking for something less intimate. 600+ would have been ideal for me; anything less would have been “more of the same.”
The market has spoken and ~600 +/-50 students is the ideal size. Or not, but see all the schools which have grown to that size. Or Northfield Mount Hermon. Only the two most famous boarding schools have been willing and able to maintain the thousand plus students size. I’m sure a few of the smaller schools would love some more students if they had the resources to attract them and to support them. (Lawrenceville and Choate are the outliers, hanging out at 850ish students with a relatively small endowment per student.) Day students are in some ways free, especially full-pays, but if you dilute your boarding culture too much, it is often seen as a negative, and schools like Loomis Chaffee work toward a slightly smaller school by chopping the number of day students. Unless you are a local day student family, you probably see that sort of thing as a positive. Regardless, any prospective students are probably looking at the 600ish on down for most of the schools to which they will apply.
Choate used to have 1,000 students. Over his 25-year tenure, Headmaster Shanahan brought the school down to around 850. Headmaster Curtis plans to pare it further.
A Choate AO said the same thing last year that they want to reduce the number and maintain the small school feel.
We found that size didn’t end up being a deciding factor for us. DD started off wanting only big schools, but when we broadened our search a bit, she liked plenty of small schools too. Since she’s not a recruited athlete looking for a specific sport or a high-level math student, the reality was that most of the schools that we looked at would have suited her needs, regardless of size. It was more about the culture of the school, and her interaction with students & teachers, which swayed her. I’m happy that we looked at a range of sizes, rather than sticking to our original list of only the larger schools.
Larger schools can and do offer admission to a range of more specialized students, 8th grade prodigies who will occupy elite positions almost immediately in sports, arts and academics. It’s tougher, some say, for the non-prodigy at a big school, who may enjoy playing the violin or want to try football etc, to get much past a middling layer.
The admissions teams can afford to look at their mission differently. The larger school can afford to say “yes” to the oboe prodigy who might be a little short in other areas because the overall outcome is still a school of glitterati, opportunity and great college results. The smaller school has a bigger burden to elevate well roundedness as the primary admissions criterion since a smaller place requires each kid to be more heavily engaged in all of the school’s daily activities and community. Also, it’s more likely that a kid in a smaller school has a real opportunity to go from novice to varsity than in a school like Exeter for example.
Both large and small schools offer different but equally fantastic outcomes and the decision is 150% personal. There is only an “optimal” number for a specific kid and family.
We looked at a variety of schools for DS1 from 140 student day schools to medium sized boarding schools to the two big ones. Size was not our driving factor. DS is at one of the big ones and thriving. The choices of classes and activities is great for him. DS2 is looking at smaller day schools (60-350). No interest in a large boarding school. Optimum size can depend on this kid.
Very helpful comments. Thank you.
This discussion has been very helpful. While all of the schools on my son’s list are “small” I feel reassured that the ones that are a little larger (>500) could be fine as well. I really like the idea that it is not tough to participate at a smaller school. I attended a “first tier” high school where in order to participate in the newspaper or the theater for example you had to be ready to commit and arrive with skills on a quasi-professional level. Forget about sports–even the JV squad was viewed by the coaches as the training grounds for varsity. I love that boarding schools have thirds teams. I feel that at this age (14-15) it will be nice to be able to try out some activities that are new to you. I am a little concerned that some schools only have limited sports (for example no wrestling) but that is understandable. On another issue, the comment that you will have an intimate circle within a larger population resonated. Thank you.
I haven’t been here long, so maybe I’m speaking too soon, but I don’t feel like Groton is that small. Rumors spread quickly, but it’s not like I know everybody.
One of the main reasons our DS looked at boarding schools was to attend a school with a larger population than the elite day schools in our area. He is currently a freshman at Lawrenceville and while he is not a prodigy at any particular thing he is very strong in lots of areas and loves the fact that there are a lot more kids to choose from when forging relationships etc. He was admitted to several other prestigious schools as well but ultimately definitely wanted to be at the larger, and in his opinion, more diverse school/student body.