Westminster School

[EduCativ]

Westminster School, in Simsbury, Connecticut, enjoys a reputation as one of the finest college-preparatory schools and certainly one of the very top small boarding schools in the country. The challenging academic program, grounded in the liberal arts tradition, prepares boys and girls in grades 9-12 and postgraduate for academic success and the rigors of college while cultivating in them a love of learning that becomes a lifelong habit.

Westminster School is a diverse, close-knit community of 95 faculty and 390 students (70% boarding, 30% day students) from across the country and worldwide. Nearly one-third of the students receive financial aid from the $5.1 million awarded each year.

Westminster School, on its 200-acre north-central Connecticut campus, is a place where scholarship, citizenship, sportsmanship, and leadership thrive. Set in a small New England town north of Hartford, Westminster is walking distance from Simsbury's vibrant town center. It is convenient to both New York City and Boston and is just twenty minutes from Bradley International Airport.

Since its founding in 1888, Westminster School has been committed to a challenging, college-preparatory experience. Our core values - community, character, balance, involvement - and our commitment to excellence are the school's lifeblood. Our motto – virtute et numine – by grit and grace – defines and distinguishes the experience, our community, and our alumni.

Our Core Values

• Westminster is a small, caring, cohesive, residential community firmly committed to the "common good."
• In addition to prizing intellect, Westminster insists upon and fosters integrity, high ethical standards, leadership, mutual respect, tolerance, and teamwork.
• Westminster maintains, through high expectations and a structured environment, a balance among challenging academic, athletic, artistic, and extracurricular programs.
• Westminster believes that students learn best through active participation in all aspects of school life.

As an independent, coeducational secondary school, we demand high academic standards, participation in the arts and athletics, and a strong commitment to service for others. The unique combination of grit and grace is what makes Westminster people successful, on the Hill and beyond.

When you spend time with our students, faculty, alumni, staff, or current or past parents, uniformly, they highlight the defining personal qualities of our school motto of Grit & Grace and our core values of community, character, balance, and involvement. Westminster School makes a difference because the people who comprise our school community — including students from across this country and around the world — continue to make a difference in their endeavors well after graduation. The best schools create an environment that encourages students to flourish. In this respect, at just 390 students, our school size offers a considerable advantage over many of our peer schools because our students and faculty know each other. A student who enjoys a relationship with an algebra teacher that extends beyond the classroom, perhaps to the lacrosse field, to the dormitory corridor, or even to the family-style lunch table, is more likely to find the comfort and the accompanying resolve to follow up with that teacher on a complicated mathematics problem. Similarly, a student considering a controversial concept in a history class might find the opportunity to return to that classroom debate with friends over a meal.

Our shared dedication to the people who comprise our school community defines us. As a sensitive, caring, tolerant, and nurturing community, we encourage young people to take risks and, in the process, to grow. At Westminster, we aspire to an extraordinarily ambitious commitment to education, a commitment that rests on the goodwill and enthusiastic participation of our entire school community. What better setting could a student find to pursue a passion for living a meaningful and rewarding life?

The Westminster community inspires young men and women of promise to cultivate a passion for learning, explore and develop diverse talents in a balanced program, reach well beyond the ordinary, live with intelligence and character, and commit to a life of service beyond self.

Derived from our motto virtute et numine, "grit and grace" encapsulates in one phrase our culture, our promise, a commitment to ourselves and others. Westminster students and faculty strive for excellence – and humility, personal success – and service to others, lofty goals – and common human decency. Blending the ethics of grace with grit's competition and effort, Westminster encourages its students to test the boundaries of their abilities, try something new, and win and lose with grace.

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