Yea… It is basically everywhere.
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It is, but the concentration of kids with money, little adult supervision, and the culture of abuse at private boarding schools make it even worse than many day schools.
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And see, I had the opposite experience. I took a gap between college and law school, and it made me truly appreciate being back in school. I felt more motivated because I was in school for something I wanted - not because it was expected of me. I think I would be have benefitted from a gap year before college for the same reason. I did far, far better in grad school and I did in undergrad (and grad school was a lot harder). And I saw that pattern a lot, where people with real world experiences seemed to be more invested in their education and value it more.
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I am curious as to what Grier’s admission/FA process is since decisions have come out at most independent schools at this time. It is unusual to me to hear of a school that will offer additional scholarship money for the upcoming year after already admitting a student on scholarship. It is especially unusual since those financial aid dollars determine how many students the school can admit - so offering more after the acceptances seems different to me.
OP, are you an 8th grader looking for 9-12? This is a big process to undertake and I am impressed with how you have handled it!
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Is financial aid in play for private secondary schools?
Always! Schools only make about 50-60% of what they need yearly from tuition, the rest they need to raise from donors. So offering more financial aid means they have to raise more money. The more full pay students they can accept, the better. Unless you had an endowment of over $100M or multi million dollar donors to unrestricted funds every year, it is in the school’s best interest to accept a majority of full-pay students. Therefore, if you match up to another student but they are full pay and you are not, the chances of you getting accepted are much less.
Additionally, secondary schools that offer riding don’t often allow students to pay to board a horse if they are on scholarship (that’s a loss of over $10,000+ that the school could have had in tuition that the barn then got) so I find that unusual as well.
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Very much so - tuition was about $28k/year at my school when I was there (over a decade ago now, yikes lol) and the school covered something like 90% of mine every year because of my parents’ income. A classmate of mine from a rough part of town ended up with full tuition coverage plus coverage of room and board halfway through the year after he got himself beaten up trying to get a woman’s stolen purse back when we were freshmen. He only lived about 20 minutes from campus and ended up as a day student again when we were seniors but he boarded for a while after that happened.
(I only know this because we sat next to each other in history every day as freshmen. Our school’s endowment was also about $50M at the time so they could afford to pull another $10k-ish out of thin air on short notice.)
As for drug use, sadly super common at prep schools. I wish I could say it was as unremarkable as weed and nothing else but my brother came in to talk to our head of school about heroin use amongst certain parts of the student body when I was a senior because he heard so much about it from his friends’ younger siblings. Things happen with kids whose parents have a lot of money and aren’t around much to actually know what’s going on in their children’s lives.
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Oh ok this is financial aid doled out by the school not federal student loans & grants.
As far as drugs. Rich kids can certainly run wild as much as anyone, but often with fewer immediate consequences and more support than less privileged kids.
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I’m returning to this thread not to throw cold water on anyone’s dreams, but to say that even if you have all the elements of a career as a professional, it doesn’t always work out for a variety of reasons.
This rider had money, parental support, experience riding at an Olympic level, her own facility in Europe, you name it, all the advantages.
Then gave it all up for an education followed by life of public interest work.
So interesting that this is where she ended up.
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That was unexpected. Thanks for posting the link.
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Only on COTH would such an impressive educational background and job be described as giving something all up 
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how cool is she! and wicked smart
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I’m reading this and thinking what a loss to the world it would have been if Reed Kessler had remained “just” a rider and/or trainer. As good as she is in the saddle, her life and career now can have real impact.
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Did she ever have the desire though? I don’t mean that as a snide comment. But there are plenty of very, very talented junior and amateurs who have no desire to make it their career. If it isn’t what she wanted, the rest doesn’t really matter.
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I know there was press coverage of the farm she bought in the Netherlands, I believe, so I think she was trying to make a go of it. She had several syndicate-owned horses.
From 2015
https://www.chronofhorse.com/article/ringside-chat-reed-kessler-putting-down-roots-europe/
Maybe someone with more knowledge can chime in.
It kind of looks to me like she did a reset after realizing she wanted a different kind of life. She went back to school in 2018, so age 23.
https://www.sipa.columbia.edu/admissions-blog/second-acts-its-never-too-late-to-go-back-to-school
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Ah, that makes sense!
Thanks for the context. So happy for her she’s found her calling!
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It just occurred to me how very, very proud her parents must be of her. It takes an immense amount of moral character and a pretty high level of maturity for someone - esp. a young person - to give up a life of “playing with horses” and the kind of accolades she was used to, to instead pursue a high level of education and then dedicate their life to serving mankind via working in public policy. Kudos to her.
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Ummm color me shocked that a billionaire’s daughter would go to work for a conservative think tank. Don’t get me wrong, good for her for finding a career for herself. But I wouldn’t exactly rush to applaud her “real impact.” I guess like the rest of America, I’m still waiting on the benefits of all that “real impact” to “trickle down.”
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Yeppppppp. Glad I’m not the only one who clocked that.
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