Students Pay Nearly $40,000 a Semester to Chop Wood, Clean Toilets and Give Up Their Phones

At a boarding school tucked into the hills of rural Vermont, some of America’s high-achieving students are paying nearly $40,000 for a semester that includes chopping firewood, washing dishes, tending livestock and cleaning bathrooms — while largely giving up their smartphones.

The Mountain School of Milton Academy in Vershire charges $39,750 per semester for its residential program, which places students on a 418-acre working farm and combines college-preparatory academics with agricultural work, outdoor education and shared responsibility for maintaining the campus. About 45 students typically attend each semester, primarily high school juniors from schools around the country.

The unusual program has drawn new attention following a Sept. 15 Wall Street Journal report examining why families are willing to pay private-school tuition for an experience that, on the surface, includes many of the jobs teenagers might normally try to avoid. Students harvest vegetables, herd sheep, care for cattle, split wood, clean classrooms and work dish duty as part of daily life at the school.

An unconventional path in an increasingly competitive college race

For some students, the appeal extends beyond learning how to run a farm. The Mountain School has developed a reputation among ambitious families as an unusual addition to a college application at a time when strong grades and extracurricular activities may no longer be enough to distinguish applicants to highly selective universities.

Estela Whitney, a student from Buenos Aires who hopes to attend college in the United States, told The Wall Street Journal why the program appealed to her. “I have good enough grades to get into a good college, but I want something that’ll make me stand out,” she said.

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The school itself emphasizes that its program is academically demanding rather than simply an outdoor retreat. Students take required honors courses in English, Environmental Science and Food Systems Studies and can choose subjects including history, languages, chemistry, physics and Calculus AB or BC. Classes are combined with field studies and experiential work around the farm and surrounding forest.

The Mountain School’s 2025-26 profile reported an average class size of nine and a student-to-full-time-faculty ratio of 7-to-1. It also said students spent an average of 14.5 hours each week on co-curricular programs, including farm work, wood cutting, trail maintenance, food preparation, dish crews and outdoor training. Nearly 30 percent of students received financial aid, with an average award of about $21,000.

There is some evidence that the type of student attracted to such programs also appeals to selective universities. In a 2017 interview with The Brown Daily Herald, Brown University Dean of Admission Logan Powell said students willing to leave their normal schools for the Mountain School can demonstrate “a willingness to take academic risks.” Powell stressed, however, that Brown had no special admissions relationship with the school.

College admissions consultant Adam Nguyen offered another warning against treating an expensive semester program as an admissions trick. “Admissions officers don’t reward expensive randomness,” he told The Wall Street Journal, arguing that the experience needs to connect meaningfully with a student’s interests or development.

The Mountain School nevertheless has a long institutional pedigree. Founded as a semester program in 1984 and affiliated with elite Massachusetts boarding school Milton Academy, it describes itself as the first recognized semester-school program of its kind in the United States.

Farm chores, fewer screens and learning to live independently

Beyond college applications, the program is built around a more basic idea: teenagers should understand how much work is required to sustain everyday life.

Students rotate through jobs involving the farm, kitchen, woods and campus. Depending on the season, they may plant vegetables, harvest crops, bottle-feed lambs, tap maple trees, split firewood, maintain trails or prepare food grown on the property. The school describes its philosophy plainly: “Daily farm work isn’t just a chore; it’s the foundation of our community and learning.”

That responsibility can carry immediate consequences. The Wall Street Journal reported that Whitney was once several hours late feeding piglets and arrived to find the animals hungry. The experience apparently made an impression: she said she would be far more careful about allowing it to happen again. Other students have been assigned everything from washing dishes to maintaining composting toilets.

Technology is deliberately limited as well. According to the Journal, students hand over their phones at the beginning of the semester, laptop use is largely restricted to academic work, dormitories do not have internet access and Wi-Fi in the school’s main buildings is switched off each night. Students also complete a four-day, three-night wilderness solo designed to put them outside their normal routines and distractions. The school’s own academic profile confirms that the wilderness solo is a standard part of the program.

That low-tech environment is increasingly unusual for American teenagers, and the school presents it as a chance to build independence rather than simply impose restrictions. Its stated mission is to create an “interdependent community” in which students learn about a place, help care for it and share responsibility for the people around them.

Students reflecting on the Spring 2026 semester described the experience as affecting both their education and their relationship with everyday life. One student said the small classes and engaged teachers had changed the way they viewed school: “I’ve learned the most I’ve ever learned here, and actually enjoyed my classes.”

Another student said farm work and living closely with others had made ordinary experiences easier to appreciate, writing that before arriving it had been easy to “overlook life” and move through routines without noticing what was around them. The student credited farm work, animals and the school community with changing that perspective.