They are the questions we get asked the most: Why take a semester away? And why just one semester?
After 30 years of OA semesters with nearly 1400 alumni around the world, we’re confident that a semester is the perfect length of time for you to grow your independence, communication, leadership, college readiness, and myriad skills from blacksmithing to camping!
All the Boarding School Benefits in Just One Semester
Some students choose to attend all of high school away from home in a boarding setting. However, you don’t need four years to feel all the benefits of boarding school. By studying away for a semester, teens build the skills and independence that you need to live away from home. By living and learning in a new environment, students meet people with many different backgrounds and gain wider perspectives. Then, they’re able to return home and apply these skills in their life back at home, whether it’s taking charge of dishes or time management on school work. This ability to apply everything they learned when they return home is the lasting power of the semester away.
Break Up High School Burnout
Semester school is the perfect antidote to the dreaded “sophomore slump.” The Outdoor Academy is primarily for 10th and 11th graders by design. By having students come in the middle of their high school experience, they get situated at their sending school, then take a semester here where their love of learning is tested and reinvigorated, and finally return home ready to take on the rest of high school and beyond.
While at OA, the days and weeks are varied, punctuated by field trips, craft classes, and multi-night outdoor adventures. Students are safely pushed out of their routines and comfort zones, which allows for growth and reignites that innate love of learning.
An Indescribable High School Experience
Many OA alumni describe their semester as “indescribable,” because it feels so different from any other semester of their lives. Not only are the content and skills students learn different, but the way they learn them is different too. OA is fast-paced yet intentional, full of challenges yet supportive, adventurous yet grounded. Where else will you not only take pre-calculus with your math teacher, but also go camping and learn crochet from her? Or plan an entire backpacking trip, from meals to routes? Or learn the skills to live in an intentional community amongst your 20 best friends? These are a few essential parts of the OA experience, but leaving home for a semester away can present a variety of new, special experiences.
“My daughter got more out of four months than she has in a year and a half of ‘regular’ school. Plus, she is part of this amazing and caring community for the rest of her life.”
– Sam, Spring 2025 Parent (Providence, RI)
See the Impact: Outcomes of A Semester Away
Everyone experiences a semester away differently, but this 2018 study in the Journal of Transformative Education showed that growth in the ten areas displayed in this chart seems to be almost universal across students attending schools in the Semester Schools Network. Growth around social-emotional learning takes the fast track at The Outdoor Academy and our peer schools, from identity, to empathy, to self-confidence. But students also value their outcomes in college and career preparedness. Read more about how OA prepares students for college and beyond on our OA and College page.
As the article concludes: “In sum, the most-valued outcome that semester schools foster, then, is that students have a deeper understanding of themselves and they are able to use that understanding to help them to achieve future objectives in college, career, and life.”
“She seemed to have aged 10 years in maturity in four short months; she is now teaching US about how to be better communicators and how to solve problems more kindly and empathetically.”
– Megan, Fall 2024 Parent (Hamilton, MA)