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What We Seek

What We Seek

We look for driven, creative students who want to take advantage of their intellectual freedom and autonomy both in the classroom and across their experience of our school. Putney is all about students chasing their intellectual curiosities, forging connections, and working with adults to help this place run and evolve.

If Putney didn’t already exist, we want students who would invent it for themselves.

What Success Looks Like

Putney teachers describe their most successful students as those with an appetite for learning, more than for accolades and class rankings. Students who thrive are eager to seize responsibility for their own education. Putney works best for learners who are excited by their own curiosity and who aren’t afraid of their own intellectual momentum.

Putney students regularly devise questions, challenge assumptions, and propose new directions to pursue. And we believe that’s the way it should be.

Who We Are

We value the idea that education is something to be actively pursued rather than passively received, and that when students learn by doing rather than being told, they develop confidence, deeper understanding, and resolve.

We are both creative and grounded, visionary and practical.

We are a community of people who think for themselves, invent, design, experiment, compose, write, build, and chase down new ideas. At the same time we work on the land, take care of ourselves and each other, and know what it takes to make a community run.

We are progressive.

We value experiential education, the idea that people learn best by doing, rather than by being told. Students here view their education as something they are pursuing, rather than something being done to them. We value collaboration more than competition, and regard education as the creation of intelligence rather than the transmission of information.

We believe that teenagers are capable and trustworthy.

Students play an active role in running the community. Students are part of every decision making body of the school, including the board of trustees. Our school council debates the real issues of the community, from the grading policy and graduation requirements to cell phones and community service. Students run the entire work program, which runs the farm, cooks, cleans, and maintains the campus.

We are both academically rigorous and culturally informal.

We take our intellectual tradition seriously, but do not wrap it up in formalities. Here you will work harder than you have ever worked, but the work will be yours and you can have fun doing it.

What We Seek

If Putney didn’t already exist, we want students who would invent it for themselves.

What Success Looks Like

Putney students regularly devise questions, challenge assumptions, and propose new directions to pursue. And we believe that’s the way it should be.

Who We Are

We are both creative and grounded, visionary and practical.

We are progressive.

We believe that teenagers are capable and trustworthy.

We are both academically rigorous and culturally informal.

Putney At A Glance

Fundamental Beliefs

Applying to
Putney

Our Viewbook

If Putney didn’t already exist, we want students who would invent it for themselves.

What Success Looks Like

Putney students regularly devise questions, challenge assumptions, and propose new directions to pursue. And we believe that’s the way it should be.

Who We Are

We are both creative and grounded, visionary and practical.

We are progressive.

We believe that teenagers are capable and trustworthy.

We are both academically rigorous and culturally informal.

Keep Exploring

Putney At A Glance

Fundamental Beliefs

Applying to Putney

Our Viewbook

Applying to
Putney