This is my first post so sorry if this has been covered before. We have not been able to visit any of the schools during the boarding school tours but have some time at the end of August to take a drive around. Does anyone have any experience of just driving into any of the GLADCHEMMS schools and being able to see the campus superficially from the car, without taking a tour? Or if anyone had the experience of showing up, but not being able to drive within the campus.
We will probably just drive around to see which campuses we can see, but would prefer not to spend the time driving to one if we know it won’t let us in for sure!
We showed some people around Lawrenceville the other day, but we may only have been let in because we had a school tag on our car (edit: I just remembered that we entered through a non-guarded gate, so that isn’t the case; it may be worth trying).
Either way, until August 20, Lawrenceville is offering in-person, student lead tours, so it may be worth looking into those: Campus Visits - The Lawrenceville School
Schools like Andover and Exeter have open campuses, so you will not be stopped from driving (or even walking) through them. I’m fairly sure there are a few others one that list with open campuses, but I don’t know them off the top of my head. Schools like Hotchkiss are going to be far more closed off, so you might want to email someone there before showing up to see if you’ll be allowed to enter. Good luck!
Thank you everyone for the replies! It’s good to know that some of the schools have open campuses and allow you to drive/walk through them.
@confusedaboutFA would have loved to go visit during the summer in-person tour at Lawrenceville but unfortunately, we won’t be in the area until the first week of Sept.
Choate has an open campus and considers the portion of the town of Wallingford that surrounds it to be part of campus. You can certainly drive, park, and walk around.
We had exactly this issue last year. Between my husband and I with kiddo, we toured a handful of GLADCHEMMS. We felt like we got a reasonable feel for the campuses without going into any buildings, and mostly without getting out of the car. If you have time, I think that it’s worth it, especially since it gives you a feel of how remote or close to a town it is.
Luckily we did manage to sneak in a few official tours in 2019 when kiddo was in 7th grade, so we got the tour real deal for a few too.
Andover campus is open with a large road running through the middle, The campus is huge and we drove up and around quite a few dorm clusters and academic buildings, the new sports facilities are impressive and we peeked through the windows. I’m glad that we had a car. I cannot imagine kid having practice on Siberia fields and then having to walk back to dorms in Abbot.
Deerfield is relatively open, there is a (quiet) road separating some of the dorms and the main buildings/sports facilities. The campus is compact so there aren’t many roads through the rest of campus. I think that you could drive onto Albany Road and pretty much see all the main buildings from your car.
Kid said that HK was closed so they didn’t drive right onto campus but could see plenty of the school from the outside. Kid thought that that they could have walked on the paths but there was nowhere easy/not obvious to park and it was peak covid and didn’t want to break the HK covid bubble.
You can likely schedule a real tour when you are there in September. Lville should be scheduling Fall tours/interviews soon. I can’t remember when they usually start the tour program, but if they post the schedule and it doesn’t work with your dates, I would definitely call and see what they say. At the very least, I’m 99% certain you can drive through on your own. While there is a guard at the gatehouse at all times, we’ve never actually been stopped and asked who we were when visiting.
For Hotchkiss, St Paul’s, and Groton, drive throughs should also be relatively easy (we were never stopped when we drove through them with kiddo1). Same for Choate and Deerfield as they public have roads running through the campus.
I know several schools also have virtual drive through tours set up as well. The only thing I would be cautious of is doing a drive through during move in days (pre season included). The campuses are packed and chaotic as is and you a) won’t get a great feel for things and b)don’t want to add to the chaos.
One caveat….sometimes, especially over summer break, campuses are closed for events or construction. So while I think you’re likely to gain access to most campuses, there is definitely a chance you’ll show up to find the entrance(a) closed. But as others have said, even driving around outside of campus, and not through campus, can give you a good feel. For example if the Hotchkiss entrance is closed you can still get close to the field house (which is across the street) and see a majority of the buildings from the road.
