The Webb Schools - Review #17

The sense of community on campus is unparallelled to any other high school I've come across. Students stay friends for a long time, and Webb offers a network that is easily accessible to alums. The location of the campus is also unique. When most people think of boarding school, they think of New England Prep Schools. Webb's location in Southern California certainly gives it its own flavor and personality. Students spend a lot of their time outside, in between classes, and after school, and classes take trips and retreats to the beaches and mountains and deserts nearby.

I think my experiences at Webb made me an extremely confident and capable student. I arrived at college prepared, and while some of my college classmates had trouble adjusting to the workload and environment, I was ready to dive right in.

It's high school, and a new school, you're going to make some mistakes. Just don't freak out. Also, it's not the end of the world if you don't get all As.

My friends. I can't remember all the day to day details about Webb, but I made great friends that I see all the time still.

Webb is a fun school, but only if you want to be there. It's a very particular environment, and not at all the high school that you see on TV. It's hard to enjoy a place that you're set on disliking, and every year, there are inevitably students that don't want to be there, or don't give it a chance. I would recommend that you really think about if boarding school is the right fit for you, if you're ready to leave home, if you're ready to go to a prep school with a focus on academics and college. But if you're open to it, give it a shot! It's a great place.

As a student, if you figure out how to manage your time well with Webb courses, you will be more than prepared for the college-level work load at whatever institution you attend. There are plenty of honors and AP classes offered, and after freshman year, students have options regarding the difficulty level of most courses they want to take. Though students took classes and especially their grades/gpa seriously, I didn't feel that students were constantly competing with one another. Rather, it was a personal competition, and students pushed themselves to take harder classes and achieve more.

It's mandatory to do an after school activity at Webb, and joining a sports team counts as an activity. Different teams vary in their competitiveness, when I was at Webb the track teams and tennis teams were pretty good. And in recent years I've heard that the aquatics programs have been strong.Even though Webb is a small school, sports teams and after school activities help to mix up the student body so that you are spending time with students in other grades or not in your classes. Also, they balance out the day, and regular exercise never hurt anyone.

I was part of the school's orchestra, which was offered as a class rather than an after school activity. The orchestra was great, and the music program put on several school-wide concerts throughout the year. My favorite was the annual holiday concert held up in the school's chapel, which was also coordinated with the choir.

Webb is a kind of bubble, and most organizations/ extra curricular activities that I remember revolved around the Webb campus. It was very hard to spend time on things outside of the Webb campus, at least in my experience. This was both a good and bad thing. Good, because hopefully you felt a real sense of connection to the school and to the people on campus. Bad, because with such a narrow focus, it's easy to lose perspective that there are other things more important than high school.

I was a day student, but spent a fair bit of time on campus and around the dorms. Webb tires very hard to make dorm life enjoyable and I think for the most part succeeds. There are, of course, a lot of rules which I'm sure seem pretty onerous to 12-18 year olds.

The dining hall is open for three meals a day, and has snack foods out when it's not open. I can't really remember much about the food itself, I think there was a salad bar usually, hot food options, and a lot of cereal. While I'm sure there were enough choices to put together a balanced and nutritional meal, I think I ate a lot of pizza, and I distinctly remember meals where I only ate churros.The dining hall itself is beautiful and one of the several very memorable places on campus. It's adorned with flags from all the different countries that Webb students have come from.

Claremont is a college town, and has a nice selection of restaurants and shops clustered near the "village." When I left Webb with friends to go into Claremont it was either to go to the movies, or get food. We very rarely ventured too far from campus, but maybe other students went to the beach or into LA (about a 45 minute drive).

Webb is a high school, and similar to the the social life of any high school (or college for that matter) the social life revolves around the weekend, and going out and and spending time with you friends.