About Boarding Schools

By Barbara Kennedy, Director of External Affairs, Baylor School

Choosing a boarding school is a major decision, and prospective families often have similar questions about affordability, student life, athletics, and selecting the right school. The questions below reflect some of the most common concerns families have when exploring boarding schools. The answers have been updated where appropriate to reflect current information for 2026 while preserving the original guidance.

Question 1

Boarding school seems expensive. My parents' combined income is less than $90,000 a year. I am the oldest of three children. I have had a GPA of 3.9 through middle school and 9th grade. I play intramural soccer, had the lead in the spring musical last year, and want to be a physicist. Should I even consider going to a boarding school?

Paying for a boarding school education does require some planning, but it can be manageable, and the investment is invaluable. When considering the cost of boarding school, it is essential to know that need-based financial aid based on a family's income and assets is available at most schools. Many boarding schools have significantly expanded their financial aid budgets in recent years to make their programs accessible to talented students from a wide range of economic backgrounds. Other schools, including Baylor, offer merit scholarships as well. Most schools offer monthly payment plans (administered by the school or an outside agency), allowing families to spread their tuition payments over eight to ten months.

This brief video explains how

The media loves to focus on things like elitism and how boarding schools are just for troubled kids. Let's look at the truth.

Boarding Schools Are Just for Rich Kids

False. Since about 2000, private schools have been very proactive in seeking out qualified applicants, regardless of their economic circumstances. Basically, if you qualify academically and have good recommendations, you can get in.

Furthermore, most schools offer financial aid packages. These vary from school to school, as each school is a standalone corporate entity with its own policies and procedures regarding financial aid. Several schools now offer a tuition-free education where family incomes fall below a specific threshold, typically between $75,000 and $100,000 annually. In 2026, some highly endowed boarding schools have expanded those thresholds even further because of increased accessibility initiatives.

Many families are surprised to learn how extensive aid programs have become at leading institutions such as Phillips Academy Andover and Phillips Exeter Academy.

If affordability is one of your main concerns, you may also want to read Financial Aid for Boarding Schools: 2026 Guide.

Boarding Schools Don't Let You Have a Life

False. While it is true that boarding schools will supervise your whereabouts at all times, the idea that you won't have a life is simply false.

In fact, there will be so much to do at boarding school that there will be times when you will wonder how you will be able to fit it all

Boarding or residential schools occupy a unique niche in the K-12educational world. Here are some facts to help you understand how these schools work and who they serve.

1. There are over 300 boarding schools in the U.S.

Most boarding schools prepare their students for college-level work. Hence the name "college prep" or "prep," which you will see in many school names. Most boarding schools are coeducational. But there are about a hundred schools that are single-sex schools. They accept and teach only boys or girls.

There are several types of boarding schools. Alternative and therapeutic schools serve specific needs, such as emotional and disciplinary issues. Still, other schools offer programs for students with special needs such as dyslexia, ADD/ADHD, and other learning differences. They have the skilled, highly credentialed staff to ensure the best possible outcome for your child. They focus on college preparation as well. Military schools combine academics and the military training many young people and their parents demand. As you review the boarding school profiles on this site, you will discover that there is a school for every need and requirement.

Boarding schools today are poles apart from their stereotypical Hollywood images, as havens for children of privilege or refuges for troubled teens. Research proves that contemporary boarding schools serve a diverse body of motivated students who study and live in supportive, inclusive academic communities where they learn about independence and responsibility – values that help them achieve success at higher

10 Top Reasons to Go to Boarding School

Why should you consider sending your child to boarding school? Wouldn't she do just as well at day school?

• This is a common question for parents to ponder as they review their private school options.
• You have made the decision to send him to a private school in principle.
• Now it is just a matter of working out the details.

There are many reasons to go to boarding school. Academics, athletics, and extracurricular activities are just a few of the considerations. But there's more. Much more.

Here are the 10 top reasons why you should go to boarding school.

10. You will get great teachers who love to teach.

• Boarding schools traditionally hire teachers with degrees in their subjects.
• A large number of these experienced teachers also have advanced degrees in their field.
• Typically, all are passionate about their subject and love to teach it to young people.

Because discipline is rarely a problem in boarding schools, these talented teachers get to teach without having to be traffic cops or paper pushers like their public school counterparts.

9. You will have great sports and sports facilities.

• Most boarding schools have amazing sports facilities.
• The range of sports and teams is mind-boggling.
• You will find everything from squash to crew, hockey to basketball. Natatoria are common. So are equestrian facilities.
• Many boarding school fitness facilities make commercial fitness

What are boarding schools really like anyway?

Even if you're just starting your boarding school research, there's a good chance you already have an impression of what boarding schools are like. Perhaps you have read The Catcher in the Rye or A Separate Peace. Or maybe you saw Dead Poets Society or School Ties.

These stories, while entertaining, take place in boarding school settings which are quite different from what you will actually find today. An excerpt from an article about college-preparatory boarding schools in The New York Times summarizes these differences well:

"To generations of students whose syllabuses include J.D. Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye," boarding school represents the winter of their adolescent discontent; a cold, distant place where parents threaten to send their children if they don't measure up. Parents dropped their children off in September, picked them up again in June and let the schoolmasters worry about what went on in between.

If Holden Caulfield were to return to school for Alumni Day 2001, he would find that the world of proctors and prefects, dorm teas and Mr. Chips has undergone a millennial thaw. Most of the approximately 36,000 students at boarding schools packed their bags willingly and are in daily e-mail contact with mom and dad. The ivy is no longer one shade of green. Students are as likely to room with a real prince of Thailand as with the fresh prince of Bel Air, as