Not sure how many New Englanders will read this, but we’ve been pelted by rain for the past couple of weeks and the dreary weather is tiring.

With the hope that things turn for the better before the 4th, I thought I’d brighten things up with a rainbow shot from The Thacher School.

Thacher is a is a coeducational boarding high school in Ojai, CA, a mere 85 miles from Los Angeles.

Enjoy the 4th everyone.

Photo credit: ZakVTA

Summer Reading
Do it and take notes.  Write down short summaries and your thinking about each book- even if not required.

Read Ahead
Find out what your upcoming grade level reads and read as many of those works as well- time permitting.

Physical/Medical Forms
Make a doctor’s appointment for your physical exam and completion of your school medical forms.

Fill Out Paper Work Timely & Honestly
You’re accepted; good, honest answers on roommate questionnaires and academic choice sheets help the school create the best situations possible for students.

Take Placement Tests
Usually in math & foreign languages- check with the academic office.

You can read and print our full article, by visiting: Going to a Boarding School?

Photo credit: ernstl

Have a nice weekend everyone.

The 25 acres campus “includes 223 hotel rooms, an auditorium, conference rooms, a laundry room, a cafeteria, a fitness room and a swimming pool.” (Eastern promise: Chinese company opens American education base in Marlborough, Metro Daily News)

A Chinese ISP, Cernet is already in partnership with UMass in providing online credit to students in China; UMass will partner in the new venture preparing Chinese students for entry into American colleges and universities.

Top Chinese universities are over subscribed and admission hinges on a single test. UMass China Institute Executive Director Allan Guo explained to  WBUR’s Deborah Becker:

“The national exam is sudden death game. You go in there two days, yes or no. If you get sick, didn’t sleep, they’re gonna fail…Is it difficult for a student from China where the focus is on memorizing. We have to memorize a whole book, Deborah.”

The more well rounded American approach to college admission will provide a borader array of college options. The program will cost about $35,000 a year with the first class of 60-80 students arriving this fall.

Almost no kid comes across well when trying to make sense of the world. Why should anyone listen to a 17 year old’s explanation of his place in the world and how the world works when his understanding is patently parochial and just plain wrong? Kids simply haven’t fully developed perspective, experience, understanding and nuance.

Watching the “NYC Prep” preview, every cast member betrays their lack of experience and perspective. You’d think their navels, New York City, and the upper east side are the centers of the universe. From inane conversations to obsession over material items that figure small in the grand scheme, the kids in “NYC Prep” don’t recognize their lack of experience and there’s no reason the adults in their lives should have put it on display. The absolute lack of perspective and insight is mind numbing.

Nothing makes this series interesting- save the underlying questions, “why didn’t the adults stop this before it started?” and “is the judgment of the adults in the kids lives really this poor?”

We attend school and grow-up with unconditional support of our parents and families so that we can safely develop perspective, experience, understanding and nuance. Bravo has produced an entire series dedicated to exposing kids who can afford more self absorption than most adults.

Watching some else’s indulgence is deadly dull. Watching the indulgence of spoiled children is painful. Where are the adults?

Read The New York Times review: “Rich Kids, Don’t Look Now, but Your Teenage Angst Is Showing“

For those not familiar with the Sims phenom (and that included me, until only recently), it is strangely addictive game. You create households of people, assign them their own identities, aspirations, goals, and physical features, then watch them interact.  InformationWeek says Electronic Arts sold a record 1.4 million copies of this “recession-defying” game in the first week of its release. But as an independent school mom, administrator, and observer, I found one feature of the old version, Sims 2, absolutely intriguing: the ability to move a child from the regular Sims public school to a private school. Details on the site ehow.com “How to Get a Child or Teen into Private School in Sims 2” offer a “why” that could come straight from NAIS: “A Sim child or teen who is in private school is happier and has a greater chance of skill rewards from good school performance.”

The logic is impeccable. However, as we all know from real life, getting your children into private school is not so easy. “Is there an admissions interview?” I asked my daughter. “A test that the Sims child has to take, like the SSAT or the ERBs? Do they have to play a sport really well?” No, she replied, nothing like that. You simply invite the headmaster over for dinner. “See, mom, if he likes the dinner your Sims cook, and the children behave, and the house you’ve created seems nice, then he lets the child in to the school.”

There is so much wrong with this picture I don’t know where to start: the implication that this is how private school admissions are done? The lack of an admissions director anywhere in the process? The snarky looking headmaster with his rep tie and pompous attitude? Instructions on ehow offer these gems: “Interact with the Headmaster. The more fun he has and the more his relationship score improves with the Sims in the house, the more points he will award for “schmoozing.”… Rack up extra points by serving coffee, serving drinks from the bar or getting the Headmaster into the hot tub… Score 100 points within the time allotted and you have won the scenario. Your Sim will be told by the Headmaster that his offspring have been accepted into private school.”

Unfortunately (?) this charming feature of the last release of Sims appears to be missing from the new version. How do the Sims in the new version give their children a boost into the cognitive elite? We’re downloading the new program this morning, so I’ll let you know. Just Let’s just hope it doesn’t involve a headmaster in a hot tub.

While we’re not quite ready to officially announce the entire team, I can report that this talented group includes students, parents, admission directors, teachers and administrators. Their angles and perspectives will add richness and nuance to onBoarding Schools.

Today I’m thrilled to introduce you to our first blogger, Carolyn Hines. Carolyn is and independent school loyalist, boarding school mom (The Madeira School, 2010), and Director of Advancement and Communication at Aspen Country Day School. Earlier in her tenure at Aspen Country Day she worked in admission and boarding school placement. Not new to writing, her first career included writing and editing at USA Today, the Rocky Mountain News and Aspen Magazine.

Carolyn, welcome to onBoarding Schools.

Next-up, California boarding schools; we need comments and input from those who live-in, work, and know CA boarding schools from the inside out.

Help us present the spectrum of boarding school opportunities in the California. We’re interested in any ideas, angles, stories, insights or topics that might interest you (our audience) regarding CA boarding schools.

Do any themes or common approaches bind California schools?

Are there any opportunities or approaches special to California schools?

What makes CA schools distinct from schools in other regions?

Why should a family explore California boarding schools?

Disclaimer, we will work to focus on AdmissionsQuest member schools.

Join the conversation if you’ve got an angle or insight that might make a good topic for a general article on California boarding schools. Send your thoughts and ideas to info@admisionsquest.com or leave a comment below.

Bae and her teammates recently participated in their first international tournament.

Bae, a lacrosse convert, arrived at Saint James School & then The Lawerenceville School a tennis player before switching to lacrosse. Upon returning to Korea after her sophomore year, she joined the nascent Korea Lacrosse Association.

Hearteningly, most cuts have little to do with teaching and academic work.

Straight-up, some of the cost saving methods used by colleges aren’t applicable to boarding schools- hiring students for some campus jobs. And, in some cost saving areas, boarding schools might be ahead of college efforts- tray free dinging halls that reduce food consumption and energy and water conservation through reduced cleaning. We haven’t been on a boarding school campus this year that still uses trays. Many boarding Schools participate in the Green Cup Challenge already working to reduce energy and curb resource use.

Reducing bills by controlling consumption provides the easiest and most direct areas to cut bills:

Our favorite:  Many colleges are reducing their use of paper by putting admissions brochures, course catalogs and phone directories online instead of on paper.

“…Oberlin College in Ohio saved $22,300 by scaling back on window washing, and Pitzer College in Claremont, Calif., is power washing its sidewalks and windows once a year instead of twice. Carleton College in Northfield, Minn., is having office trash picked up weekly instead of daily, a change that eliminated three custodian jobs…

Colleges are also installing low-flow shower heads and energy-saving light bulbs and holding contests to see which dorm can most reduce its electricity costs…

At Susquehanna University in Selinsgrove, Pa., the contest resulted in almost $3,000 saved as students competed in turning off lights and unplugging chargers and printers. Students in participating dorms got 25 percent of the savings, $730, for pizza parties and other programs.

Davidson saved more than $10,000 by switching from bottled water to tap at most college events….Dickinson, for example, is saving $150,000 by cutting back on free laundry service for students and an additional $75,000 by eliminating free ESPN and HBO in student rooms.” (NYT)

Do we need cable television in every dorm common room? Cable television on one or two televisions in an all-school common area is probably enough. Heck, how about no cable TV?

After reading Lewin’s article my mind jumped to The Headmaster, John McPhee’s boarding school classic portrait of long-time Deerfield School head Frank Boyden and the shape that his work and thinking gave Deerfield. Finding and thumbing through my copy, I quickly found two situations in which Boyden is still relevant and was ahead of his time.

Boyden thought critically about printed catalogs even before the Internet. McPhee explains Boyden’s refusal to print a Deerfield catalog:

“Deerfield is probably the only prep school that has never published a catalog. ‘We offer all the courses required by any college or university,’ the headmaster explains. ‘A catalog is expensive. I’d rather give the money to a scholarship boy or two. I’ve never been able to write a catalog anyway. Those that have been prepared for me I could never live up to. They’re idealistic- a sales argument. I don’t think we need a sales argument. My successor will publish a catalog- I’m sure of that.’” (The Headmaster)

Describing a new student’s immersion into Deerfiled life McPhee writes:

“A new boy at Deerfield cannot have been there very long before the idea is impress upon him that he is a part of something that won’t work unless he does his share.” (The Headmaster)

The common good, work, and frugality were common sense for Boyden and we might be able to simplify and shed waste if we give our lenses a Boyden tint.

While boarding schools can’t directly employ students like The College of Wooster summer job program, the fact is, we (boarding schools) can all structure our days so that we can include small jobs that do two things- one, demonstrate our ties to each other through communal service and two, reduce costs. As a culture, we’ve become lazy and gotten away from practicing the little responsibilities- of which we’re all capable- that make our communities work- helping out.

We let “hire someone to it” become a way of life.

Lets reclaim helping and contribution through labor. We can find time in our days to take out trash, run the vacuum, sweep, clean, turn off the television, and, in New England, shovel snow.

This is where small schools- having never enjoyed big budgets and well practiced in living on communal labor and efforts- have much to teach their larger brethren. Simply put, small schools are used to living with their means and teaching students how to contribute to the community through work.

Beyond possible, it’s extraordinarily healthy to involve students and faculty in the small day-to-day labor that makes a school run. I’ve been lucky to have been part of such practical communal responsibility while I was dean of students at the Dublin School. At Dublin, each student had a daily job responsibility- cleaning or kitchen help that made the school run. Then, each Saturday morning, during Work Gang, the entire school spends the morning working on larger jobs- maintenance projects, deep cleaning, grounds keeping, or their community service work.

At Dublin we demonstrated to everyone, and anyone interested, that work and our connections to each other through work are paramount simply by creating scheduled time for our labor.

We understood that the answer to “Am I my brother’s keeper?” is “yes.”

Photo credit: James. C. C.