<p>Grejuni - maybe it is the website. I know Bucks County is beautiful. When I am visiting my sister next month in nearby Chester County I might very well go over and take a look! Didn't mean to offend!</p>
<p>No offense at all! I have no particular reason to promote the school, it's just one of a small handful that I have seen. </p>
<p>I'm glad parents (and students) can be frank about schools on this site. Less stressful than talking to Admissions offices, eh?</p>
<p>Hey Sadie, your D sounds like she is in the same situation as I was. I live in VA and my parents weren't going to let me go very far. I was really interested in an all girls school also. I do eventing so that really narrowed the possibilities but some good riding schools around here are Garrison Forest, Foxcroft, Madeira, Oldfields, and Chatam Hall. I wouldn't recommend Oldfields because I think it is having financial problems right now and really isn't in a FA giving mood. I visited a few, got accepted and FA at multiple, go to one, and have a friend at another. None of them are really top flight eduacationally but they are all much better than the public school that was my other option. Garrison has a special science and engineering parternship with Johns Hopkins though. PM me if you like.</p>
<p>Oh, and Chester County has some lovely horse farms, just to highjack this thread a little. I like the ride up Route 82 through Upper Marlboro. past the Hmnhmnhm Ranch. Such nice views!</p>
<p>np55 - my daughter is an excellent rider and well able to work off lessons at top barns around us by helping out the less experienced. What I would really like is for her to have the opportunity to get out of the ring ( Stoneleigh), go Fox hunting ( Foxcroft ) and just keep involved. She does not need a $ 200,000 horse to go to indoor shows. Walker's, Stoneleigh and Foxcroft are all schools I would like to know more about re FA & quality of academics - hard to tell the latter from the websites. College matriculation does not prove everything either. Also, I know at least one person who went to another (not mentioned) riding bs which was the three r's - ridin', readin' & rithmetic. Easy nice lifestyle - for those who will never have to work.</p>
<p>Hank - thanks - I will pm you</p>
<p>Grejuni - thanks for not taking offense. Yes, it is great we can share all this great information! This is a great website - wish I'd known about it five years ago when I was looking for my son!</p>
<p>Asheville</a> School has an equestrian program. The web site says that they offer horses for those who don't have their own and will stable horses for an additional fee. Plus the program is open to beginners. I don't know...but these things suggest to me that the program isn't closed to FA recipients.</p>
<p>Also, I had a friend whose daughter was a boarder at the Darlington</a> School in Rome, GA and she is an accomplished rider...but the school is 37% boarders (which is why she won't be graduating from Darlington) and I know that she had her horse with her at school, but I didn't see anything on the web site about riding.</p>
<p>Maybe she just boarded her horse separately and tried to keep up with riding outside of school.</p>
<p>I strongly disagree with the fact that some people made about people who have horses have enough money to pay for boarding school. Take it from me, my family has horses and we are no where near being able to pay for BS. The horses actually take up most of the extra money.</p>
<p>Sullivan, you are so right. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, most of the non - riding public don't see it that way. Many, many people who have horses are horse - poor; but surely we can not expect sympathy because this thing we do is a choice !
As someone said ( its been attributed to Winston Churchill) " No hour of life is wasted that is spent in the saddle." I couldn't agree more, as well as my other favorite - "equus makus brokus" :) Which is why my D needs to go to school - to study Latin ! :)</p>
<p>hahaha i agree. Most people I know are broke from having horses but there are some that fit the stereo type of being extremely wealthy and sending their kids to top schools without a thought, finacially speaking. This is kind of off topic but..what barn does your daughter ride at?</p>
<p>PM me if you want info about Stoneleigh. The riding there is great and it has the nicest facilities and a really great director of riding. Other riding schools...Garrison Forest is good, they won the interscholastic national finals this year, Ethel Walker (though I haven't heard nice things about the girls that go to school there), Dana Hall has good riding, Madeira, Foxcroft, Miss Porter's has a riding program but from what I can tell it's pretty small and they don't ride on campus. I think Kent has a barn on campus. Most "riding schools" are all girls.</p>
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<p>What would be the rationale behind this? Can kids on FA play ice hockey? Or football? Or are FA students limited to low cost, low equipment ECs like basketball and air guitar?</p>
<p>I think you should look again at Thacher. They have matriculations equal to that of any NE boarding school. Their horse program is one of a kind in that they believe that taking care of an animal builds character. I believe that you can do both Eastern or Western riding. With plane rides today, it is as fast and sometimes cheaper than driving. </p>
<p>That being said, I liked the school but my daughter did not want responsibility of the horse.</p>
<p>Kent School, Kent, CT</p>
<p>Princess Dad- You could be right. I have to say I was impressed by the website. They believe in horses hugely and as a horse person that is something I can relate too. Still...</p>
<p>Funisfun - Kent will not allow FA's to ride. To start, the cost of keeping a horse is roughly equal to the cost of keeping a human. It's like saying can two come for free? Even with riding a school horse, one has to figure the poor horse has to earn a living, giving free rides doesn't pay the hay man.</p>
<p>Dyer maker - yes air guitar. Thats the ticket.
Or maybe she could start a model horse club at BS.
:(</p>
<p>At the risk of having more bricks thrown my way...</p>
<p>I'll start by stating that I pharased my original post in this thread poorly and I apologize if I offended anyone. It was a bit presumptive about the horse riding population at boarding schools and based upon a small sample that I know from my D's school. </p>
<p>And horse riding (outside of flying at Culver) is the most expensive to provide (ask anyone with a horse) ECs at any boarding school. Hockey is probably the 2nd most expensive (per participant) EC. Those horses must be feed and cared for year-round, while the hockey rink is frozen for about 4 months and with some of the barns (goaliegirl plays in one of those), that happens without much help from the electric grid. </p>
<p>Why FA for hockey players and not for riders??? Look at the history of the 2 "sports". In New England, historically, hockey (or at least pond hockey) used to be a winter sport of a broad spectrum of the population as (in the old days) equipment wasn't as expensive and people played on the pond where ice was free. It has only been in the last 40 or so years that the sport moved indoors for most participants. Many prep schools had outdoor barns 40 years ago and since then have enclosed and often rebuilt their rinks to bring them up to the standards of today.</p>
<p>The riding sports offered at boarding schools (we're not talking rodeo or other more pedestrian events here folks) have more typically been the sport of the traditional prep school class. Providing stables was just another thing that was deemed necessary to bring in the traditional clientele. It has always been a fairly expensive operation (horses haven't changed much).</p>
<p>When the elite boarding schools started opening up to a more diverse population, offering their services at a subsidized rate to a less affluent crowd, the thought of blowing even more money into their equestrian program (the variable cost (additional horses and equipment) for riding is a higher percentage than for hockey where the fixed cost (the rink) is 95% of total cost) for more horses and staff to manage probably led to the restriction on riding for FA applicants. Riding for most NE prep schools has never been a core offering, so they didn't feel it necessary to expand it to these new populations. Hockey along the way meanwhile, seems to have become a core winter sport for some reason.</p>
<p>Hockey on the other hand was already paid for (rink was there) so adding a few FA kids and a 2nd team (or even a girls team) didn't add significantly to the overall expense.</p>
<p>Not that I agree with the whole idea of having in effect 2nd class students (no horses for you poor boy), but it is their school, their money and they can choose to provide these opportunities or not to at their discretion.</p>
<p>My apologies again if I offended. Hopefully the comments above haven't offended anyone else here.</p>
<p>Putting on my hard hat and body armor in anticipation of more bricks...</p>
<p>Goalie Dad, you haven't offended me in the least. What you say makes a lot of sense.
My daughter is a rider, and is also an excellent student. I simply wish her to have the most and best opportunities possible, like any other parent. There is sometimes more than one way to skin a cat, so I opened this thread.</p>