These videos do a great job of showing what makes Thacher Thacher.
Alika’s is especially good. He is the current head prefect for freshmen boys. (Prefects are the seniors who live with and mentor the younger students.
https://www.thacher.org/explore/films-about-thacher#video/838678
This one’s a little longer, but definitely worth the time if you are considering Thacher
https://www.thacher.org/explore/films-about-thacher#video/858246
This one is for families who live far from Thacher: https://youtu.be/-MYRrja-4YA
We are just back from Fall Family Weekend at Thacher and at the risk of jinxing ourselves, we were truly overwhelmed by the Thacher community, and are grateful our son chose it for his high school. For any parents/children considering Thacher please feel free to reach out with any questions. Best of luck to everyone applying to high school this year.
I was just saying to another Thacher parent how much I miss those weekends. You realize what a blessing that environment is, and how rare an experience it is to be a part of it.
You are so right! Thacher was our son’s idea, certainly not ours, but we are converts and were just saying how much we wish we could visit every couple of weeks. The new dining hall is spectacular!
@janehoya Did you make it to Open House at the head of school’s home? It was the highlight of the weekend for us now that we don’t have a rider… maybe tied with the service at the spectacular outdoor chapel on Sunday morning.
@CaliMex We didn’t attend Open House.
I was on BoardingSchoolReview earlier today because I’m helping friends narrow down the list of boarding schools to which they will apply next year. Couldn’t help noticing how many of the student reviews of Thacher mention the absence of drugs and alcohol on campus…
@CaliMex Thank you for sharing all the great information about Thacher. We are an ABC family from the east coast and were invited to attend a California Boarding School Webinar last month. There were several schools in attendance but Thacher really stood out. AJ Yates was the representative and he did such a great job that we fell in love with the place just from the webinar. The other school we liked from the webinar was the Cate School. We were strongly encouraged to attend the webinar, even though I thought I would never consider a cross country boarding school. My daughter loved those two schools and said she would consider attending but possibly as a sophomore or junior. My question to you is whether you looked at east coast boarding schools and how Thacher compares. On the usual ABC list are Choate, Loomis Chafee, Ethel Walker, Miss Porters, Hotchkiss, Westminster, Taft and Westover. Any insights would be appreciated, and especially when it pertains to diversity as it relates to students of color and ABC students on campus.
@janehoya hello - hoping you still read this thread, how is your son doing at Thacher? Any regrets not choosing an east coast BS in the end?
@nan415, our son loves Thacher. Pre-covid no regrets choosing the west coast over the east coast, but now that his friends are back on campus (back east) while he sits home till February (Cate kids are home till early March) the regrets are creeping in. I will say that for the right child–and many don’t fit into that category–the horse program is transformative.
Did he look at any east coast BS before choosing Thacher? Would love to hear what stood out for east coast. We are debating if given the choice.
For those that attend now, applied in the past and/or are applying now - do you remember how much communication you received from Thacher? We received one nice email from the AO several weeks after the interview, but other than that it has been silent. This is the only school we’ve applied to that has been this non-communicative. It is actually a very stark difference to the rest of the schools to which DD applied.
I’m just curious if this is just how they are for admissions, yet for students/parents attending, they become very communicative.
That sounds about right though we may have received a holiday card but certainly no more than that.
Thank you! Every school is different, so it is nice to know what the particular school’s norm is!
Very little here as well.
@CaliMex Hi! I got waitlisted at Thacher for this upcoming school year and have been told I am “one of the applicants they will strongly reconsider” and an “incredibly impressive candidate”. Do you honestly think I’ll get off the waitlist or am I just being told that so I apply again next year? Also interested in how many people who are at Thacher currently got accepted immediately or were pulled off the waitlist.
My son was admitted off the waitlist back in 2004. There were two that year, one boy and one girl. My guess is that it’s never more than 3-4 in a year. The school’s yield has historically been in the mid to high 80’s. I don’t have a clue how COVID will affect this year’s yield and subsequent reliance on the wait pool. If you were put on the waitlist, they DO believe you would be happy and successful there. In our case, my son had been admitted to a number of superb East Coast schools, but wanted Thacher if it was possible. So we wrote a note to our Thacher Admission’s Officer, short and sweet, that said we would wait until the last possible moment to accept a different Offer but that if Thacher admitted him before that point in time, we would fully commit to attending. No idea if that made a difference, but that’s what we did. We got a call the last week of March offering him a spot.
I do not put any stock in sweet words from Admission’s teams at any school. But maybe I’m too jaded as a person lol.
Thank you for the hope! We plan to meet with our Admissions Officer and let them know the same thing, that I am very interested in the school and will wait until whenever they can offer a spot. The interview went incredibly well for me, but my EC’s were probably lacking. I’ve heard that Thacher is much more interested in the student’s character and willingness to try, so I hope my personality came through enough in my application. Thacher is my dream school and I’m hoping I get the spot!