COLORADO ROCKY MOUNTAIN SCHOOL
Carbondale, Colorado
www.crms.org
Grades 9-12
Tuition, Room & Board for 1 Year: $29,500
Acceptance Rate: 80%
Average SAT scores: Verbal 566 Math 570

Auspicious Alums:
-Susan Meiselas, photojournalist and MacArthur Fellow.
-Conrad Anker, world-class mountaineer known for breakthrough first ascents from the Himalayas to Antarctica and Patagonia, author of The Lost Explorer.
-Tamim Ansary, author of West of Kabul, East of New York,  post- 9/11 spokesperson for the plight of the Afghanis.

For adventurous teens only, the 51-year-old Colorado Rocky Mountain School (CRMS) integrates outdoor education with traditional classroom activities. Nestled at the base of a 13,000-foot mountain at the intersection of two rivers, CRMS requires students to participate in either a work or outdoor program four afternoons each week.

The former may include carpentry work on school buildings, fixing electrical problems or helping with the recycling. True, this component of the curriculum may appeal more to parents than to students at the outset. “I don’t get kids who say, ‘gosh I can’t wait to enroll here, because it’s going to be great to scrub that toilet,’” admits headmaster Andrew Menke, but he has discovered, as the year wears on, that many of the students voice pride in their contributions to the school’s legacy.

The outdoor program entails full immersion in the wilderness at the school’s doorstep. Mandatory outings include a 10-day orientation trip for new students, as well as biannual extended trips to locations like Moab, Utah and Crested Butte, Colo. Recent trips have combined geological study with rock climbing, kayaking with aquatic studies, and the study of environmental literature with camping.

Miller, who was a student leader on one such expedition, recalls the learning experience that occurred during the middle of the trip, when she had to escort a student who had broken her ankle back home. The path they had taken was too long, so Miller grabbed a topographical map and calculated a new route out, through a backcountry thick with vegetation. “There’s a level of accountability that’s expected which is not common in many schools,” she notes.

BREWSTER ACADEMY
Wolfeboro, New Hampshire
www.brewsteracademy.org
Grades 9-12 plus a postgraduate year
Tuition, Room & Board for 1 Year: $32,130
Acceptance Rate: 55%
Average SAT score: n/a

Auspicious Alums:
-Patrick Demsey, former member of the Brewster varsity boys’ ice hockey team, who portrays team captain Mike Eruzione in the new movie Miracle about the 1980 Men’s Olympic Ice Hockey Team
-Nina Assimakopoulos, flutist who has performed at Carnegie Hall and has just released her second CD

Known in some educational consultant circles as “the laptop school,” Brewster Academy does not simply distribute computers, it integrates them into every aspect of the curriculum. Headmaster Dr. Michael Cooper argues that technology aids with learning activities that may sound attractive in theory, but are often hard to implement. One example is collaborative learning, where students jointly tackle projects under the close supervision of a teacher. Special multi-sided group desks, each with high-speed Ethernet connections, allow students to sit and learn together. In most classes, each student studies a portion of an assignment, which he or she must then share with others in the group. Special software enables teachers to create and distribute handouts and other customized teaching materials that incorporate online readings. A handful of teachers work together to supervise groups of about 50 students.

COLLABORATIVE LEARNING at Brewster

Jeff Higgs, a senior, says he regularly uses the school’s instant messaging program to get feedback at night from teachers. He also likes the fact that teachers e-mail papers and distribute in-class handouts online. “I’m a pretty unorganized person in terms of binders and stuff and if the teacher gives me a handout a lot of times I’ll lose it,” Higgs says.

Some parents fear that ubiquitous Web access means wasted time and student forays into parts of the Internet better left unvisited, but Brewster deploys a watchful content-filtering program that pulls restricted site lists from multiple sources. It also limits access to the Web to certain parts of the day, preventing, as the school’s Web site puts it, the modern equivalent of “reading a book under the covers with a flashlight.”

FOXCROFT SCHOOL
Middleburg, Virginia
www.foxcroft.org
Grades 9-12
Tuition, Room & Board for 1 Year: $34,000
Acceptance Rate: n/a
Average SAT scores: n/a

Auspicious Alums:
-Anne Legendre Armstrong, first woman appointed U.S. ambassador to Great Britain
-Frances Fitzgerald, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam.
-Stephanie Zimbalist, actress.

Charlotte Haxall Noland, Foxcroft’s founder and longtime headmistress (from 1914 to 1961) encouraged her students to fox hunt and was herself Master of the renowned Middleburg Hunt. John and Penny Denegre, who, as it happens, indirectly succeeded Ms. Noland as Joint Master of the Middleburg Hunt, found Foxcroft the ideal school for their daughter Alden, who grew up around horses on the family farm. Students can either ride one of the school’s horses or board their own in a campus stable. Facilities at this all-girl institution include a 200-foot by 100-foot indoor arena as well as outdoor sand and grass arenas. Cross-country courses are available for both novices and those riding competitively.

THE FOXCROFT School’s riding program fosters a cooperative, as much as a competitive, spirit.

Even more important than providing Alden a chance to ride, the Denegres say Foxcroft has given their daughter a community that values cooperation as much as it honors competition. Even in the school’s annual lead line competition—where riders circle an arena and are judged on criteria like horsemanship and posture—the Denegres say they are impressed with the helpful way veteran riders aid rookies. Many schools say they instill students with a sense of civility and compassion, John Denegre notes. “At Foxcroft those really are a reality,” he adds.

Admission Director Becky Gilmore cites the school’s decision 15 years ago to hire separate teaching and residential faculties as another key strength. This helps eliminate what is known among boarding school faculty as the “triple threat” (teaching, coaching and dorm duties), and enables each group to focus its energies on what it does best. Academically, the decision appears to be paying off. Almost half of Foxcroft students take more than four years worth of science and math classes, a figure far above the average for all-girl schools.

INTERLOCHEN ARTS ACADEMY
Interlochen, Michigan
www.interlochen.org
Grades 9-12 plus a postgraduate year
Tuition, Room & Board for 1 Year:$30,350
Acceptance Rate: 56%
Average SAT scores: Verbal 607 Math 568

Auspicious Alums:
-Peter Erskine, jazz drummer
-Tom Hulce, actor
-Linda Hunt, actress
-Judith Shulevitz, New York Times columnist.

The downside to being the parent of an artistically gifted child is the fear that he or she will end up waiting tables for a living, but Interlochen, where students focus on music, dance, theater, visual arts or creative writing along with traditional academic subjects, offers a track record of notable successes. A recent survey found that about 50 percent of its graduates have established careers as working artists. The school estimates that Interlochen alumni occupy more than 10 percent of the seats in the nation’s major symphony orchestras, while upwards of 20 percent of the student body at the Julliard School comes from Interlochen in any given year.

YOUNG VIRTUOSOS at Interlochen

School president Jeffrey Kimpton says for many students, coming to Interlochen is the first time they are in a place surrounded by like-minded peers. His favorite memory is watching a student, alone on a stage, practicing a monologue in which he kept switching from a Shakespearean soliloquy to improvisation. The school makes an effort to infuse its traditional college prep curriculum with the kind of artistic flavoring that will appeal to its unique students. Physics students, for example, recently completed a course in which they constructed musical instruments entirely of their own design.

Still, artful discouragement can steer a not-quite-virtuoso student away from a life of heartbreak. John Yaskin, Interlochen class of 1978 and currently senior vice president of sales and marketing at Caesars Palace, was a highly talented violinist who, by his own admission, saw that he lacked the level of genius to make it professionally. “I realized I needed to branch out,” he says. He did so by, among other things, becoming student class president and creating and managing a weekly coffee house featuring student talent.
 

MAHARISHI SCHOOL OF THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT
Fairfield, Iowa
www.maharishischooliowa.org
Grades 9-12
Tuition, Room & Board for 1 Year: $24,810
Acceptance Rate: 100%
Average SAT Scores: Verbal 580 Math 570

Auspicious Alums:
-Tyler Cleveland, Big Ten Tennis Player of the Year in 2000 and 2001, University of Iowa Athlete of the Year in 2000

“The name is kind of a mouthful,” notes Nelina Loiselle, currently a senior at Maharishi. Otherwise she is content with almost everything about her life at the school, which integrates the use of transcendental meditation (TM) into daily activities.

The school’s philosophy is centered upon a belief that twice daily meditation helps students think more clearly and creatively. Dr. Ashley Deans, head of the school, says the benefits are apparent in almost every measurable area of student performance, including test scores and athletics. Since 1999, the number of National Merit Scholar finalists has outpaced the national average by a factor of 10, and Maharishi has won more state tennis championships than any other school in Iowa history. Apart from the meditation sessions, the coursework is comparable to that at a traditional school. Approximately 95 percent of its graduates go on to four-year colleges.

Equally important, according to Deans, is that students at Maharishi exhibit lower stress levels and have more energy than their counterparts at other schools. Drug and alcohol use are almost nonexistent, says Loiselle, who thinks TM will serve her well when it comes time to go to college. “I think having that rest and clarity of mind is actually an edge,” she says.

PROCTOR ACADEMY
Andover, New Hampshire
www.proctoracademy.org
Grades 9-12
Tuition, Room & Board for 1 Year: $32,000
Acceptance Rate: 33%
Average SAT scores: Verbal 550 Math 555

Auspicious Alums:
-James Dunbar, chairman Dunbar Armored Cars
-Matt Nathanson, singer, songwriter, guitarist, whose music has been featured on the TV series Dawson’s Creek and in the movie American Wedding

Teenagers with wanderlust choose Proctor for its required semester of learning on the open road. The school currently offers four different semester-long trips, primarily to juniors and seniors: to France, to Spain, on a ship down the East coast, and in a van traveling cross-country.

Known as the “Ocean Classroom” the trip to sea puts 20 students aboard a 130-foot schooner and requires them, among other duties, to cycle through four-hour watches—all while sailing south towards their eventual destination, the island of Hispaniola. Along the way students take a full course load, weaving in study of each of 14 ports of call as well as covering topics such as the mathematics of navigation and the literature of the sea.

PROCTOR'S ADVENTURERS.

Last year Amy Coughlin, 17, took part in the road trip, known as the “Mountain Classroom,” traveling with nine fellow students and two teachers in a minibus. In Lake Winnibigoshish, Minn., they studied the history of the fur trade, and in the state’s open hills they went dog sledding. In Rio Grande, Texas they canoed while studying desert ecology and water resource management. As much as she liked it though, Coughlin says that perhaps her biggest lesson came in realizing that a peripatetic life “is not the best working environment for me because it showed me how much structure I crave.”

That kind of honesty is a central part of the Proctor culture. Earlier this semester at a daily assembly where all are invited to express what is on their minds, one student got up and shared his beef: “We talk a lot about trust here, but I’m missing six CDs from a book bag I left in the Student Center. I want them back!” Later that day the CDs were returned.

THE PUTNEY SCHOOL
Putney, Vermont
www.putney.com
Grades 9-12
Tuition, Room & Board for 1 Year: $32,200
Acceptance Rate: does not track
Average SAT Scores: Verbal 620 Math 550

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.”

RANDOLPH-MACON ACADEMY
Front Royal, Virginia
www.rma.edu
Grades 6-12, plus a postgraduate year
Tuition, Room & Board for 1 Year: $22,675 (9-12 and post-grad), $21,740 (6-8)
Acceptance Rate: n/a
Average SAT Scores: does not track

Auspicious Alums:
-General Walter E. Boomer, U.S. Marine Corps: Commanding General, and First Marine Expeditionary Force during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Now chairman and CEO of Rogers Corporation in Rogers, CT.
-Harlan Crow, chairman of Crow Holdings, a commercial development company based in Dallas, Texas.

Major General Henry Hobgood, president of the Randolph-Macon Academy, likes to tell a story about “the power of an extracurricular activity.” The activity in this case is the flight program at his school, which is the only coed military academy to offer an Air Force Junior ROTC program. Hobgood’s favorite example is of a boy who, about 10 years ago, arrived as “a classic 14 year-old, bumpy-faced kid. He had attention deficit disorder and not very high self-esteem.” Though he desperately wanted to be a flyer—the ultimate status symbol at the school—he was ineligible because he was taking Ritalin. Following some careful consultation, he went off the medication. “He became a star here,” says Hobgood. The formerly awkward boy is now training to be a commercial airline pilot.

Paul Rice has been impressed with the way his son Jordan, 16, has learned responsibility at Randolph-Macon. As the highest-ranking cadet in his junior class, Jordan is responsible for everything from cadet attendance at parades to conducting room inspections. He even assists in making room assignments for fellow students.

AT THE Randolph-Macon Academy, students, and their aspirations, take flight.

Most important, says Hobgood, is the fact that the school has created a positive environment in which rewards, such as flying privileges, rather than the threat of punishment, are what motivates most students. “We are not interested in a boot-camp style approach to the military program,” he says. For those parents and students looking to be part of a military school, Randolph-Macon differs in other ways too. Back in 1978, it was a pioneer in bringing women into its ranks, and today more than 25 percent of the student body is female.

The school keeps three planes and two full-time pilots on staff at a nearby community airport. The program teaches everything from basic orientation to obtaining a pilot’s license. On days when students are going to fly, they wear their flight suit on campus all day. “People know that they’re pretty special,” says Hobgood.