It is comparable to those on the list, but I guess that they're not quite as expensive.

I went to a boarding school (not one of these listed) for a couple of years back in the eighties. It was the best time of my life. I loved it, and it actually *helped* the family dynamics when we were together at breaks. If I hadn't gone away to school I would almost certainly have killed myself or run away to a life of dog knows what. It is sometimes a very good solution.

I went to one not on this list too, and it was excellent. It's not here because the endowment is huge.

It also saved my family a lot of problems.

Our journey to the East coast was great. Not sure I would want to send my kid if we lived there but fortunately we had good choices here for him.

As one of the commenters said, it was much tougher than college academically. Some if those teachers are still a part of me.

Imagine how our whole society would transform if all of our kids had an education like that found at Andover and Punahou?

non sibi...

...these are, in almost all cases, Boarding Student fees which include room, board, surpervisory and custodial care.

I am on the Board of Trustees of a school in Europe that isn't far off (approx $44,300, taking into account the Euro exchange rate) of which $16,000 is the Boarding cost.

Didn't get in. Went to a "second tier" boarding school for a short while. Lots of factors played into my laundry trip to town, which was really a trip to catch the Greyhound bus out of town.

I've often wondered how things would have gone otherwise.

More than making connections my child is working hard, doing sports, performing musically, volunteering for boys/girls club, doing model U.N. and has taken up several Liberal causes. To do all of this local to us is impossible. Some people see this as our shirking our responsibility as parents, however, for our child nothing is further from the truth. We visit every few weeks, skype and text, parents weekend was interesting, we got to see exactly which parents showed up and which ones did not, that tells me more than making a broad brushed statement about all boarding students, They are not all like the Romney's.

Even at the school I got into the student roster included a long list of famous surnames. Business, politics, etc. If I had stuck it out, I may have found some opportunities otherwise unavailable to me.

Yet outside of some demanding, really good classes in math, history and languages, much of it was a prep to take a place in the business management world. i.e. I had a public speaking class which focused on addressing a committee. How to sell a committee. Stuff like that.

Going so far as neuroscience, which is what our child wants to go into. The academics these days are so diverse, whether it be photography, politics or sciences, we were really amazed when we toured schools and saw the curriculums.

Having said that each school had it's own culture, elitist schools came off as elitist and came off our list.

I was on an academic scholarship. Even though the cost back then was less than 10% of what it is today, I came from a middle class family and there's no way my parents could have afforded the tuition.

Except for a handful of other scholarship students, I'd guess that most of the students were children of the 0.1%, at least. I spent 4 years in the midst of people who really don't live in the same world we do.

And I did make friends in spite of the class differences and the fact that I'm pretty much a loner. I also got bullied quite a bit my freshman year, but unfortunately that would have happened in public school as well.

I used to earn spending money by doing things some of the students didn't feel like doing. For example, every student was supposed to take a turn waiting a table at dinnertime. I'd do it for 50¢ a day (remember this was 40 years ago).

I quickly lost touch with my classmates after I graduated, so I didn't get any networking benefit from rubbing elbows with the uber rich. The experience definitely shaped me, both for better and worse.

Jackson Jr., Seattle Mariners pitcher Danny Hultzen, Harold Ford Jr., former Governor of Connecticut John Davis Lodge, Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins and Space Shuttle Commander Frederick "Rick" Hauck, former, NFL All-Pro and Baltimore Raven Jonathan Ogden, Emmy and Tony Award-winning actor Jeffrey Wright, journalists David Ignatius, David Plotz, Ian Urbina, former Washington Post publisher and CEO, and current CSPAN executive Bo Jones, former Washington Post chairman Donald Graham, Fox News host Brit Hume.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Albans_School_%28Washington,_D.C.%29

also gore vidal, timothy shriver (son of sargeant), luke russert, mark & kermit roosevelt IV (g-g'sons of teddy), justin & jd rockefeller III (g-g'sona of jd), jw marriot jr (hotels), ed kennedy jr, tom kean (NJ), eli whitney debevoise II ( pres world bank) etc.

g-g-grandson of eli whitney, btw. who says wealth isn't dynastic?

eli whitney made a mint, but not from the cotton gin. it was government arms contracts. marrying into a politically connected family (Edwards-Dwight) didn't hurt either. Little-known fact: Eli Whitney was a close relative of george bush ancestor (judge) samuel prescott phillips fay.

That's what it costs at St. Paul's (NH). When I attended there in the early '70s, the cost was $3,000/year -- and the administration was apologizing to parents for having to raise it from the $2,800 they had been charging for years.

BTW, SPS was quite a hotbed of liberalism in right-wing New Hampshire back then. Recent graduates included John Kerry and Garry Trudeau. Sheldon Whitehouse was in the class ahead of mine. And alum Archibald Cox was a hero to students for his role in bringing down Nixon over Watergate.

I thought they were more rare than this in the US, and this list is just the most expensive ones.

or used to.

She loves it.

She attended Catholic and Public schools in Oakland, CA. She took it upon herself to apply for scholarships to a number of boarding schools.

Her parents are no where near wealthy. About half of the text books are on iPad, My wife and I are buying all other text books, school supplies, and helping out with other fees her scholarship doesn't cover.

away to live at school. AND pay WAY more than my son's college tuition/room/board per year to do so. But whatever, to each his or her own.

Why? Because I liked the school, thought it offered opportunities in the arts I wasn't going to get anywhere else, wanted a school with (intellectually-oriented) religion classes (since I was planning for a vocation as a cleric in the Episcopal Church -- that never panned out), was close friends with the guidance counselor and his family and, above all, wanted to get the hell away from the football-team-with-a-high-school-attached that served the upper-middle-class Boston suburb where my family lived.

Right here in the Traverse City area, middle of nowhere!

We have a lot of excellent music and theater arts teachers, classes and enjoy much rich culture for such a seemingly remote area.



Julie