You mentioned higher up on the thread that a summer working student position isn’t an option because your parents work and couldn’t relocate for an opportunity like that. Just putting it out there that it would be far cheaper for them to put you up somewhere for a summer than to spend $75k on tuition. It wouldn’t be all that different from boarding school—just no school, and more emphasis on the aspects of the school you care about.
The only way I see this working is if you suspect this is just like “the gauntlet” your parents have thrown down to challenge you to demonstrate your commitment, and then they will foot the rest of the bill and the other bills you’re bound to rack up trying to board and show with the school. If that’s the case—and you know it really isn’t a question of if they can afford it, or if it’s a choice between this and financing your college education—then by all means, go for it. Earn as much as you can to put a dent in the tuition bill and impress the hell out of your parents. But if you’re really going to a school you can barely afford, it’s going to be a rough experience, and an unwise investment of your time, energy, and money.
No 13 year old owns a private jet. Or even a car. Or indeed, legally, owns a horse when you come down to it. Their parents do.
As the discussion progresses, I should add that my assumption has been that this school is not something that your parents can comfortably afford. In order to comfortably afford it, they basically have to be in the top 1 per cent, or close to it.
Obviously you shouldn’t be answering our nosy questions about your family’s total wealth. But I suspect you don’t even know yourself. I didn’t, at your age. My father was in sales, boom and bust. Sometimes there was money for anything and sometimes there wasn’t, but I never knew if that was because there really wasn’t money in the bank or if he was just anxious about spending savings in a dry spell. I don’t think he was the best about investing, and he definitely played mind control games with my mother, who definitely played mind control games with us kids. Our net worth and annual income was a mystery to me, and possibly to my mother. My father did get awards for top sales from his company which was a bit of a clue.
With my mother, I never knew if she didn’t approve of buying something or if she was just anxious about the bank balance or if she was just playing control games.
I got out of there and mostly paid my own way through university.
Anyhow, my point is that as a teenager you may not actually know what your parents can and can’t afford, and your parents may not want you to know for various reasons.
So the situation is a bit different if they can’t easily afford it versus if they can easily afford it but don’t think it’s a good idea. Neither makes it easy for you of course.
@LilahEquestrian, how much have you earned and saved in the last week during this discussion?
What have you done in the last week to show your parents how dedicated and hard working you are, how much you are willing to do to work for your desires/goals?
This is the key for OP, disregarding the topic drift.
If her parents just aren’t quite on board but are willing and able to pay for high school at this rate, then it may just be a matter of OP showing them how committed she is.
If her parents cannot afford such a school and just didn’t want to outright say that (or maybe OP didn’t hear “we can’t afford that” in the “you’ll have to pay for it yourself” conversation), then this is all moot anyway because she CANNOT pay for this herself, in any way.
It is impossible to raise that kind of cash that fast. It is unlikely her horse will sell for $50k, or whatever she ultimately needs to pay for all of HS. Moreso, if this is the same mare with the hind end issue over fences and the severe spooking/can’t canter a course without a counterbend problem, she’s not going to lease that horse out for $20k++, unless something has changed dramatically. (Separately, I do hope OP has overcome those problems with the mare and has a happy willing partner!).
Just to add to this point - I can’t name any place or person that allows non-owners/non-leasees to jump horses above the 3’ mark. No riding academy’s, lesson barns, show barns, or even universities near me allow riders to take the lesson horses above 3’ (not even the University I attended that received Reed Kesslers older GP horse + 2 other 1.30m+ horses - all of the horses show at 1.0m or the 3’ mark).
The kids riding several horses at higher levels own/ lease the horses or work for the barn/ trainer, IME.
I appreciate the additional perspective! Can I ask roughly when you attended? I ask because the above about direct mail makes me wonder if your experience was different than that of more recent graduates (apologies if this is off base). I can totally see what you are saying about not knowing about this whole other world that exists outside of your (g) own bubble, especially when during the teen years. However, I think that is less (perhaps much less) an issue with the prevalence of social media. I have pretty much no love for social media, but have learned several things from it about other “worlds” that I would have never experienced in my regular (non internet) life. Add to that the accessibility of information if one goes looking, I don’t see as much of a need for a (in this case VERY expensive) school to teach things such as how to dress, interact professionally, etc. Disclaimer that not all info online is quality info but the counterpoint is that some is, such as much of the information here within the forums
I’m a parent of similar aged kids. If one of them approached me and my DH with this idea, here is how we would talk through it with our kid…
DH & I: “So kiddo, you are telling us that you are frustrated with your current school because they are limiting your academic opportunities, they play favorites with other kids, and it’s small and rural and you just don’t like a lot of the kids there, because they are small town small minded jerks a lot of the time?”
Kiddo: “Yes”
DH & I: “And you are also telling us that you are frustrated with where we live, because you are hours away from great hunter jumper trainers, and can only take lessons a few times a year, and only do A shows a few times a year?”
Kiddo: “Yes”
DH & I: And you are telling us you have dreams about what you want to do with your life once you reach adulthood that involve attending Texas A&M, getting an equine science degree, competing on a collegiate riding team, and then graduating and becoming a top level equine professional in the hunter jumper industry?
Kiddo: “Yes”
DH & I: So tell us again how all of this fits together, and what school and lifestyle changes you want to make in order to achieve these dreams?
Kiddo: “Well. I found a boarding school with a riding program. It is expensive. But the riding program has great horses and goes to all the shows I really want to go to. It would cost $75,000 a year to attend, and we might need to pay another $10,000 to $15,000 to attend all the shows I want to do each year. But if I went there, I would have more academic opportunities, get me out of this small rural Texas school district with kids I don’t relate to, it would very likely set me up to get into Texas A&M and probably get on their riding team, and it would help me make connections so that eventually I would be in a great position to be a top level professional in the hunter jumper industry.”
DH & I: “So that sounds like an investment of $85,000 to $90,000 per year, for 4 years. So somewhere around $350,000 total. All so you can go to a public university that is in state?
Kiddo: “Yes”
DH & I: “Why can’t you work hard at your academics at the small rural school you currently attend, do some extra classes on your own, and get in to Texas A&M like any other kid, without spending $350,000 on private school?
Kiddo: “Well, it’s also about participating on the Texas A&M riding team for 4 years while I go to college there.”
DH & I: “What if we saved over $100,000 for the next few years, and spent it on a really nice horse for you, and then supported you horse showing independently during college, if you don’t make it onto the actual Texas A&M riding team? Would that work? It would be far less expensive than the boarding school you want us to pay for.”
Kiddo: “Well… I really want to go to the boarding school, because one girl who went there and was on their varsity riding team eventually got a job working for Laura Kraut.”
DH & I: “How much does Laura Kraut pay this girl for that position? How much do top hunter jumper professionals typically make once they get established in their careers?”
Kiddo: Well… I don’t really know. I know a lot of people who work for top professionals get a position that involves having their living expenses and board for one horse covered, and they get a small stipend. But they also get free lessons and ride horses all day and go to all the coolest shows.
DH & I: “That sounds great. But it’s not something someone can do indefinitely. Only for a year or two or three while you are young. What do people make when they are professionals?”
Kiddo: “I don’t really know. It’s apparently very hard. A few people who are the best, and have wealthy clients and sponsors seem to have great lifestyles. But many other people work 7 days a week, 12 hours a day, and barely get by. Horses are very expensive and the sport is very expensive.”
DH & I: “Hmmm. We are not so sure it is wise for us to spend $350,000 for you to go to an elite private boarding school just so that you can attend an in state public university for 4 years, and go on to get a degree that doesn’t have much in the way of cross industry utility. Especially if the end goal is to go work for an elite athlete for a few years, but essentially get paid next to nothing, all so that you can enter a profession where it is VERY hard to make a living, and there is an incredibly high rate of failure. This represents a terrible ROI on an investment of $350,000 in your education.
We think we need to talk more about how we can improve your immediate situation at school, and what we can do to help you reach some of your goals with horses over the longer term, so that you have things to look forward to and strive for.”
Last thing…
DH & I: We insist that if you want to get an Equine Science degree, you do a double major and also get a more practical and useful degree so that you have a fall back plan. Business Administration or Accounting or something related to Computer Science are all acceptable. We know this will involve lots of extra studying and be hard, and you aren’t interested in these things, but as your parents, we think it’s important for you to have some sort of marketable degree that you can actually use to help you earn a living when you graduate from college. Horses are great, but the rate of bankruptcy and failure when it comes to horse professionals is very high. You should have a good fall back plan before entering this profession.
Same question here as someone who also attended a top-tier southern university. Except Bear Stearns et al tanked in the middle of my freshman year, followed by the financial crisis. Paid internships were Never A Thing. Interning for free was absolutely the expectation and even then you needed fairly tight personal connections to get one. Many people I graduated with in 2011 with minimal professional experience found that their options were either low-wage work we were “overqualified” for or going directly to graduate school.
I have a good parent friend who has a child who is currently a junior at UVA. The student is a Comp Sci major, and specializing in something competitive - I can’t remember if it is AI or machine learning.
There are still lucrative paid internship opportunities for students following that program of study, as a result of the program and the market for that sort of specialization, and the UVA network (which is very specific and excellent). But… apparently there is considerable concern about hiring for the tech industry softening in a major way for recent grads. My friend’s kid is definitely going straight for their master’s as are his two younger kids (who are set to attend Virginia Tech next fall and do Comp Sci and Engineering programs)…
I don’t know what internship opportunities in Finance for business graduates are like these days, or if they ever really recovered following the Great Recession.
I graduated in 2013. So, it’s been a while. But we still had social media and the internet. Even today, I fully believe there’s a powerful (if intangible) benefit to attending a good school. For example, the internet might tell you the pre-reqs you need for med school. But it won’t tell you that the clever kids are saving weed-out classes like o-chem for January or summer terms when the syllabus is compressed and the grading skews easier. The internet might tell you about scholarships and internships you’d like to apply for, but you might underestimate your competition if you aren’t surrounded by peers whose resumes are motivation for you to dredge up some accolades of your own. Being surrounded by high-achievers sucks at times, but it also normalizes a certain level of achievement that you might never find the self-motivation or self-belief to reach otherwise. It makes you take a certain level of achievement for granted—like, “oh, XYZ thing isn’t all that impressive.” When in fact, if you weren’t surrounded by people already doing XYZ thing and beyond, you’d be intimidated by it or never believe yourself capable of it. Maybe people can create that community for themselves online these days? But I still think it’s got to be a leg-up to be in a good school. The whole “good will hunting” thing does exist—I don’t doubt that—but it relies on you being exceptional and self-motivated in ways I think a lot of us fall short of.
They did. I made $24/h as an intern, which wouldn’t get you far in NYC these days, but was enough for me to afford $900 rent with roommates for the summer. And that wasn’t even finance. I’ll have to ask my husband what he made as an intern, though I doubt he remembers.
This. OP, please take this and other advice given here to heart, as much as it may sound harsh. Many of us are parents of kids just like you who have talent and passion and desire but not quite enough money to make it to the top (or, most of us, not nearly enough).
The sad reality in this sport is that it’s pay to play, and while a boarding school with all the bright and pretty things available looks like it will put you on equal footing as those who are at the elite levels, it will not.
There was a post recently that broke down the number of shows, horses ridden, classes competed in, etc. by those kids who had been accepted onto D1 riding teams. The numbers were mind-blowing. Think kids riding ten different horses at shows like WEF, showing nearly every week of the year. That is what it takes to get to ride on a good D1 team. If the kids from this boarding school are going D1, it’s because they are leaving school every weekend and going to shows with their own trainers, riding the string of junior hunters, jumpers and EQ horses that they own themselves.
Also please understand that working for a big rider, as you mentioned, is not always what insta will have you believe. I don’t know LK, but know many kids who have gone to work for FEI riders and here’s what they don’t do: ride. They muck stalls, do night checks at all hours, clean the barn, drag rings, and every so often they get a brief lesson.
As many have stated, the best way to ride competitively is to keep your expenses low through college so you have minimal loans, major in business or finance or another area of study that has broad application in life, and work really, really hard. One of my children graduated from state school with a business degree and is making very high five figures less than a year after graduating. Why? Because they worked hard to get there and continue to do so to prove themselves. This kid will likely be able to afford horses if desired.
*Steps down from soap box, removes readers, needs to sit for a moment.
My niece is graduating this spring from a state flagship university in New England. Not a particularly prestigious school. But… she double majored in comp sci (machine learning) and biomedical engineering. She had paid internship opportunities two summers in a row and was able to do them remotely while living at home. She’s banked a serious nest egg in the process, and will be able to complete her masters debt free, so she’s going straight for that upon graduation.
In her case, it was her really specific program of study that got her the internships. Her school is good, but not in the same league as UVA or an Ivy. But… she’s graduating debt free, and is really happy about that.
Bingo. My parents were big hardasses when it came to me affording my horse habit. I ironed clothes for $0.25 per article, worked after school every single day, and then picked up chores and stuff around the house on the weekend when they were willing to pay me.
If in the end I was short, after busting my buns as hard as I could - they would often cave and make up the difference, knowing I gave it everything I had.
If in the end it still doesn’t work out, you’ll have saved some good $$ to afford housing, to go be a working student for a bigger name farm (if they’ll take you!). Or $$ for a standard college education. Or a car. Or whatever.
I went to an undergraduate college with an equestrian program and this was the exact same message from my parents. Started off as a dual equine science and biology major with the though of vet school. I soon realized that I would never actually need the equine degree to do what I wanted to do horse wise so I dropped it a few weeks into that first semester and switched to an environmental science major. I still took lessons through the equine school every semester for the 4 years I was there which was a perfect meet in the middle for me.
I don’t mean to sound harsh. The OP is very well spoken for her age, has dealt with this thread graciously, and has expressed ambitious goals and dreams. And that’s all excellent. She also sounds like a talented young rider. And her frustrations with her current school, and the fact that they seem to have blocked her from placing into Algebra 1 even though she wants to do it? I think that’s a very legitimate frustration.
I’m sure the boarding school is a truly idyllic situation for horse loving young people.
But it sounds prohibitively expensive.
Given what the OP has shared on this thread, and how well spoken she is, I think there are other ways she can be successful in terms of showing, make it to Texas A&M for college, and maybe spend some time riding with really elite people and learning a lot, and having amazing experiences at big shows while she is still an athletic teen or young adult. It’s possible for sure, with some hard work, and careful planning. I just think that this particular boarding school isn’t the best way to achieve all this. Even though it sounds pretty amazing.
Anyway… keep your eyes up and on the horizon OP. You will figure things out and it sounds like you are capable of doing great things with your riding, and again… you have come across as a very bright and well spoken kid on this thread. I hope you have another sit down with your parents and talk to them, and come up with a good plan that makes you feel better about the current situation with your school and riding.
If the OP is still reading, is the real strategy to go to the elite horsey boarding school, or to get into Texas A&M?
Those may be two different paths. I’m re-posting this here, from another thread.
If the true goal is to attend TAMU, then the strategy is to be officially a TX resident in the top 10% of whatever high school you graduate from. If that is a smaller rural school, it is likely to be much more attainable.
It will be important to supplement the available courses to target the major of first choice. Some people add a year or two of junior college to do that. Blinn College (locations near TAMU) has been designated by TAMU for that purpose.
TAMU has a reputation of being a very, very, very tough school to get into if you aren’t in the top 10% of your TX high school class. Even legacies are given no favors. Even at 60k enrollment, TX is a large state, so there are many applicants.
So, make sure that whatever high school you attend will make you eligible for admission based on being in the top 10% of the graduating class. Especially if it is out of state. I think it is still eligible as long as you are officially a TX resident (even if living out of state), but only the university can say for sure.
More than 40,000 students applicants have applied for the opportunity to attend the College Station campus in each of the past six admissions cycles; back in the year 2000, fewer than 17,000 applied. The Texas A&M acceptance rate has remained steadily under 65%, but this is not a particularly strong indicator of just how selective A&M is in 2023.
There are five factors that Texas A&M ranks as being “very important” to their admissions process: rigor of secondary school record, class rank, GPA, extracurricular activities, and talent/ability. Essays, first-generation status, geographical residence, state residency, volunteer work, and work experience are rated as “important”.
(For the applicant, the depth of the high school course background absolutely counts to get into the major of choice, as well as admission if you aren’t in the top 10% of your graduating HS class.)
Due to a policy that grants Texas residents who finish in the top 10% of their high school class automatic admission [because TAMU is a state school], roughly two-thirds of attendees hail from the top decile. As a result, competition for the remaining spots tends to be fierce.
The middle-50% SAT scores for the Class of 2026 were 1160-1380; the math range was 580-700. SATs were submitted by 76% of applicants. ACTs were submitted by 24% of applicants and the middle-50% ACT Composite score was 25-31. The median ACT Composite score was 28 and the median SAT score was 1270. An impressive 61% of those attending placed in the top 10% of their high school class while 88% were in the top quartile.
In the admissions office’s own words: “If you do not qualify for top 10%, but meet the State of Texas Uniform Admission Policy, your application file, which includes all factors you noted, will be reviewed in a holistic manner. Academic factors include all high school courses attempted and grades earned, rigor of coursework, GPA and class rank. Non-academic factors include involvement in extracurricular activities, community service, leadership, employment and summer activities as well as extraordinary opportunities, challenges and hardships experienced during high school career.”
[I wish they wouldn’t always use that ridiculous photo of the water tower! TAMU has some gorgeous, elegant buildings constructed in the late 1870’s when it was founded, that photograph beautifully. ]
Throwing this out there, but if the op parents thought she wasn’t getting a good education, in her hometown, would they not be proactive in finding a better situation? We don’t know the whole story to this here.
My guess is that this is how it all started. Note the in the first post she said she had already applied to the ideal boarding school, and I think others as well. That happens only with the help of the parents.
I won’t say that boarding school is ‘common’ for TX high school parents, but it is not exactly uncommon, either, among parents who can afford it and who have aspirations for their kids.
Getting the $25k grant is a big deal. Hopefully there are grants from other schools as well. And that at least one is enough to finance a larger % of the total bill.
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