Auspicious Alums:
-Errol Morris, film director, winner of best documentary feature Oscar for The Fog of War
-Bill Koch, Olympic cross-country skiing silver medalist in 1976 and World Cup Winner in 1982
-Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, former Lieutenant Governor of Maryland

Everyone works hard at the Putney School. Situated on a 500-acre farm in Vermont, the school requires that all students participate in a six-day work program that can involve everything from janitorial work to milking one of the 50 cows, a job that requires being in the barn by 5:30 each morning. Students put in bids for jobs they would like to perform, and school administrators rotate the assignments throughout the year.

Putney’s unique approach extends to the way it doles out grades and gives final exams. Students and parents receive regular progress reports but do not see actual grades until the end of the junior year—a nod to the realities of applying to college. In lieu of final exams, each semester culminates in something called Project Week, where students produce a work that reflects what they have studied. One student, for example, recently built an abacus for his math class.

Amelia Silver likes the way physical labor has shaped her daughter Caroline, now a senior. In contrast to other schools “where you’re prepared for Princeton or for Wall Street and then prepared to take over the World Bank,” she says, kids come out more wellrounded and “prepared for real life in all of its different facets.”