How to Select an All-Girls Private High School
Even as many previously single-gender private high schools have embraced coeducation during the past few decades, some private high schools have reaffirmed their commitment to single-sex education. Factors that make an all-female high school environment work well for some students vary from school to school and student to student.
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Instructions
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Identify all-girls private high schools in your area and gather helpful information on them by using the search tools on Peterson's Private Schools and Boarding Schools Search website (see Resources below). The tools and icons let you search for all-girls schools within a specified radius of any location. You can request information from a prospective school with a single click.
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Select an all-girls private high school with a strong record of college preparation if your reasons for preferring a single-gender environment reflect your desire to eliminate gender-biased management of student expectations. For instance, the Emma Willard School in Troy, New York in recent years has marketed its ability to empower girls as students, athletes, friends and citizens apart from the distractions of boys.
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Choose a school with a strong commitment to girls' athletics if your reasons for preferring an all-girls private high school reflect your desire to prepare for a career in women's sports. A school such as Boston's Winsor School is well known for its excellence in sports, such as cross-country and track, and it hires women as the coaches for most athletic teams.
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Consider the percentage and credentials of women in faculty positions and other school leadership positions if you want to select a school that will provide strong female role models.
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Evaluate the structure of school social life, the exposure to inter-school coeducational activities and the degree to which such activities are chaperoned and monitored if your reasons for selection of an all-girls high school reflect your desire to protect the student's social environment.
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Tips & Warnings
Depending on your purposes in selecting an all-girls private high school, you may find that one way to temper the experience is to structure in some coeducational experiences during the high school years. Two common examples are summer camp or summer school college-prep, programs such as those that occur on some college and private high school campuses.
