Boarding High School in California

The Thacher School, Ventura County:
The Thacher School is a coeducational boarding high school for grades 9-12 located in Ojai, 85 miles northwest of Los Angeles in Ventura County, CA. The school serves academically talented students who will benefit from a rigorous college preparatory experience with ACT, SAT and AP courses.

- Thacher wants to enroll the most talented students we can find. We look for students from a variety of backgrounds who share a passion for doing their best, for respecting each other's interests and talents, and for enjoying an energetic intellectual life.

- We want to enroll students of the highest moral character who have an interest not only in receiving a top-notch academic education, but who also will contribute to andparticipate in the life of the School.

- Many graduates attribute their excellent preparation to qualities cultivated outside the classroom: the resourcefulness developed while camping and riding; the integrity that comes from living by an Honor Code; the sense of purpose found in holding leadership positions; and the willingness to lend a hand that is expected in this close-knit community.

The mission of the school today remains essentially unchanged from that of its modest beginnings over one hundred years ago.

While remaining true to its traditional task of preparing students for admission to college and equipping them with the contemporary knowledge and tools for a successful course of higher education, Thacher continues to train young men and women in the art of living for their own greatest good and for the greatest good of their fellow citizens in the increasingly diverse society of a complex world.

To these ends, a scholarly and able faculty encourages and expects:

- Exemplary levels of performance and sportsmanship on the playing fields and courts
- High standards of conduct in all relationships and activities
- Civil courtesy throughout the School’s daily round
- Excellence of students in the School’s classrooms, laboratories, and studios
- A lifelong love of truth and learning

- Co-educational Upper School Programs
- Advanced Placement Courses
- College Preparation Courses SAT and ACT
- Study Abroad Program
- Outdoor Program
- Horseriding Program
- International Students welcome

College Preparatory Curriculum:
- English
- Math
- Science
- History
- Fine Arts
- Modern Languages

High College Acceptance Rate:
Our seniors matriculate at the most competitive colleges and universities in the U.S. In the past five years, we have sent the most students to the following colleges and universities: Stanford, Dartmouth, George Washington, Colorado College, Wesleyan, Bowdoin, Middlebury, and USC.

- Dormitory life is a rich blend of studying, relaxing, sleeping, and enjoying with friends and prefects. In each dorm, senior prefects help administer rules and serve as role models for other students. Faculty members are also an integral part of dorm life, as most live in apartments attached to the dormitories. During the course of four years students and faculty become close and develop friendships that last well beyond teenage years.

- While every dorm room is furnished with a bed, desk, closet, dresser, and direct connection to the Internet, students quickly decorate their rooms to reflect their own personalities and preferences.

- Each student creates his or her own little haven. Of course, living in shared space comes with challenges—from sharing the laundry facilities to tolerating a roommate's choice of music—but rising to these challenges lays the foundation for meaningful and lifelong friendships.

- Dormitories are arranged by grade and gender for ninth, tenth, and eleventh graders. Due to the various leadership roles that seniors hold, they are housed across campus in the various dormitories. All ninth graders have single rooms; because we feel that life at boarding school is challenging in these first months away from home, we like students to have a place that is entirely theirs, and to which they can retreat for a bit of privacy.