<p>This was my dream school back in the Age. Just visited the website and wondering if anyone visiting CC has anything to add.</p>
<p>Ummm, well, I applied and got accepted this year. I was REALLY into the school for a while. I liked how small, artsy, and just liberal it was…but then I realized it was a little WAY too liberal. If you get into trouble, they set up a student court, so the students determine your punishment. And, they have only about two or three sports (I believe they offer cross country, can’t remember the other two). And the location kind of sucks. The school is 500 acres or so, but most of it is just woods in the middle of Vermont. Also, there college matriculation stats as well as SAT average are a little…upsetting.</p>
<p>They have basketball, cross country, cross country skiiing, lacrosse, rowing, and soccer.</p>
<p>Other schools have student courts that recommend punishment to the Headmaster &/or whatever adults actually mete out the discipline. Putney isn’t for everyone, and they don’t have a lot of FA, but for some kids it would be a great school. A lot of Hollywood kids have gone there, I hear. (Carlton Cuse/Lost kid goes/went there…)</p>
<p>Well I think if we didn’t need substantial FA I would take my D to visit. Then again, she might not like it. Mustn’t mix her up with me :)</p>
<p>Oooh, I applied here. I really liked it, but it was way too small for me.</p>
<p>Sorry this is a little late. I graduated from Putney in June and had a wonderful experience. If anyone has questions ask away. </p>
<p>Also the court (standards) consists of three elected students and two teachers. They make a recommendation for punishment but the director has final say. Not too unreasonable.</p>
<p>Putney is one of a very small handful school’s adhering to a philosophy of progressive education. There is a strong emphasis on providing the context for individual students to discover their own strengths through direct engagement with practical problems, both in the classroom, and within the community. </p>
<p>The location is fantastic, on a beautiful little hill with views in all directions, within walking distance of Putney Village, as well as a large “pick your own” apple orchard. A working farm is on the campus, and contributes a significant amount of the food served at the “KDU”. Work on the farm is a requirement for graduation. The farm is also integrated into the science and art curricula in various creative ways.</p>
<p>The work program (school wide, not just on the farm) greatly diminishes the sense of entitlement one often finds at other prep schools, and Putney students are more apt to focus on what they are contributing to the school than on what they are “buying”. </p>
<p>Yes, there is less focus on conventional measures of achievement such as standardized tests and exams, which are replaced at Putney by independent individual or team Project Weeks. I have seen the results of these projects: the diversity and pure creativity are incredibly inspiring to witness. </p>
<p>One admissions director at a top college confided in me that Putney applications always “jump from the pile”, and that he remembers Putney applicants as poised and confident.</p>
<p>No school is right for every child, obviously, but Putney is worth a close look for any prospective student looking for the chance to explore ideas and experiences in an atmosphere of tolerance and freedom. I write as a Putney parent, with a daughter who is happy and thriving at the school. I would welcome the chance to answer any questions, from a parent’s perspective.</p>
<p>I second Gramedia’s post. I, too, have a daughter at Putney who has blossomed in the school’s atmosphere of respect and free intellectual inquiry. She came to Putney from a New York City private school which offered a wider variety of classes (particularly foreign languages), but whose social atmosphere was highly competitive and backbiting.</p>
<p>Putney is the opposite of that type of school. At the beginning of the year, the director urged new students to bring all of themselves to the school–not just the aspects of themselves that they thought were suitable for the school, but their skeptical, loud, obsessive, tentative, and all other aspects as well, except for behaviors destructive to themselves and others. And she meant it. This attitude of acceptance works wonders, very quickly. On the Long Fall outdoors adventure in September, designed for students to get to know each other and find others of like mind, they could choose a 20-mile hike through stunning mountain terrain or, if they weren’t athletic types, opt for a music or writing retreat at a state park, sleeping in lean-tos. The work assignments each student does to keep the school going (baking, dishwashing, caring for young children, working on the farm, walking the cows in from the fields in the evening) gives them a visceral sense of the community as a whole and a sense of themselves as competent workers (something absolutely unavailable at New York City schools). Right now, they are all at work on a biannual two-week Independent Projects session, in which they choose to learn or create whatever interests them, as long as it’s approved by a teacher. My daughter is thrilled to have the chance to co-write, direct and record a radio play–something she’s wanted to do for years. Others are assembling cow bones into an entire skeleton, documenting Putney student life with photographs, composing their music, building a hydroelectric generator, etc. </p>
<p>The result of all this is that in the single trimester my daughter has been there so far, the hunched shoulders of the past–a response to the status-fixated world of her previous school–have straightened. When she comes home to the city and we attend a play, her voice sings as she reels off a post-curtain analysis with new confidence and passion. Most astonishingly of all, when I ask her to wash the dishes she does so instantly without objection–having learned through her work assignment that as a team we get things done together.</p>
<p>Boarding as a freshman is a little difficult. If I had it to do again, I would rather wait until a child’s sophomore year. To help her fend off homesickness, I’ve learned that driving up for an occasional weekend visit works very well. Vacation are long, though. Putney students have nearly the entire month of March off, during which they can go on school-sponsored trips overseas if they like.</p>
<p>Three more things: the teachers are excellent–dedicated, knowledgeable, and incredibly hardworking. The campus is stunning–500 acres of forested hilltop. And the school’s relations with the surrounding community seems to be excellent as well. There is no student-townie conflict that I’ve seen, probably because the students do much of their own work, rather than hiring people, and because the town is often invited up to the hill to participate in Putney’s Harvest Festival and, sometimes, in their wonderful weekly sings.</p>