GREAT BOARDING SCHOOLS: A CONSORTIUM OF ELITE NORTH AMERICAN PREPARATORY SCHOOLS

The Great Boarding Schools (GBS) organisation is a consortium of excellent, highly-rated and highly-selective boarding schools across the Northeastern United States and Eastern Canada. The consortium pool their resources to develop a common approach to admissions and marketing, including collective admissions fairs and visits to feeder schools. The consortium exists to raise awareness of its member schools and to make the case for boarding schools as a preferred option for prospective families.

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ABOUT

The organisation was first established in 2011, acting as a voice for a select group of New England college-preparatory boarding schools that were afforded less attention in admissions discussions than some of their more famous peers in the Group of Seven or St. Grottlesex schools. At that time a number of schools came together to act as a single voice for their schools and to ensure that they remained in contention as a choice for families looking for boarding options. These schools included: Brooks, Dana Hall, Gould, Governor’s, Holderness, Kimball Union, Milton, Northfield Mount Hermon, Proctor, Pomfret, St. Mark’s, Salisbury, Tabor and Taft. These schools have a long history and have been historically considered to be amongst the best academic schools in the country and the more socially acceptable choices amongst American high society. These schools consider themselves to be peers of one another and are regarded as peer schools to their peers in the Eight Schools Association (ESA) and Ten Schools Admission Organization (TSAO).

The organisation has changed over the years, with its second and current incarnation extending from being regionally focused to welcoming schools from across North America and including middle schools that have junior boarding programs, for example Cardigan Mountain (which is also a member of the Junior Boarding School Association). This has allowed for GBS schools to better demonstrate a boarding pathway from completion of elementary school through high school. These schools work closely together and with other regional and national boarding schools and their respective consortia (such as The Boarding School Consortium and the Mid-Atlantic Boarding School Group). All of the schools must be approved as peers by the existing membership, indicating a benchmark of quality and status for member schools.

The organisation is one of a number of boarding schools consortia established across the United States and, particularly, in the Northeastern United States where a number of established schools compete with one another to attract the highest calibre of students. Many of these schools informally cooperated in admissions associations which shared common approaches to selections and presented a united front for marketing purposes (particularly with respect to the hosting of and attendance of admissions fairs). Through the 1980s and 1990s, a collection of some of the most exclusive boarding schools in the United States collaborated informally as a group, including Milton, Northfield Mount Hermon and Taft who would found the Great Boarding Schools coalition. Other schools in this group included Andover, Cate, Choate, Deerfield, Exeter, Hill, Hotchkiss, Lawrenceville, Loomis Chaffee, Thacher, St. Andrew’s and St. Paul’s. The so-called Group of Seven cohort would formally establish their own admissions groups in the Eight Schools Association (of which Northfield Mount Hermon is also a member) and the Ten Schools Admission Organization (of which Hill, Loomis Chaffee and Taft are members). This prompted the founding of the Great Boarding Schools organisation and, unlike similar organisations, would include co-educational, boys’-only and girls’-only schools.

The members of the Great Boarding Schools coalition (sometimes called the Great Boarding Schools Admission Organization) are amongst the most selective and most prestigious schools in Canada and the United States, with many having an international reputation. They regularly feature in lists of schools with the highest number of offers to Ivy League and similar colleges and universities. As a consequence, these schools attract a large number of pupils from across North America and overseas. These schools have significant endowments and are heavily supported by targeted scholarship schemes to ensure that pupils from disadvantaged and/or minority backgrounds are able to study at these renowned institutions, once considered bastions of wealth and privilege but now better reflecting America’s diversity. As a consequence, these schools are highly-selective with competition for places being fiercely intense.

The Great Boarding Schools are all accredited in their respective jurisdictions and have had their boarding programmes accredited by The Association of Boarding Schools (TABS). They are all members of the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS). Many of the GBS schools are also members of prestigious national and international associations of top-ranked, leading-edge schools associations.

To find out more about the Great Boarding Schools coalition or to learn about an upcoming admissions fair, please get in touch with your preferred school listed below.

If you or somebody you know attended one of these schools or have recently visited a GBS admissions event, our community would be grateful for any insights or anecdotes that your might be able to share with us.

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MEMBERS

CHOOSE LIST VIEW FOR A SIMPLE LIST OF ALL LISTED SCHOOLS. ALTERNATIVELY, YOU CAN SELECT SCHOOLS USING THE MAP BELOW.

FORMER OR LAPSED MEMBERS AND ASSOCIATES

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