Secondary School Guidance & Placement

graduates Thrive at the finest boarding and day schools in the country.

The secondary school counseling process at Far Hills Country Day School is guided by the beliefs and values of the school. Working in partnership with parents and students, our mission is to identify the right fit for our students and their families. We work together to find a secondary school that will continue to provide an intellectual challenge for our alums and encourage and support them in their high school years. Our comprehensive counseling process accounts for the student's strengths, talents, and interests and helps them select complementary secondary schools based on those passions.

The process begins in the spring term of the sixth-grade year with a series of informational meetings for parents. It continues in the fall of seventh grade when students and their parents attend our Secondary School Fair. Seventh graders take their first SSAT (Secondary School Admission Test) later that fall or early winter to aid in planning and preparation for the academic years to follow. In the spring, parents meet individually with the Director of Secondary School Counseling to begin to assemble a list of potential secondary schools. In the months that follow, families work in partnership with the Director of Enrollment & Placement to refine their list of schools while gathering information about each. The process goes into "full swing" in the fall of the eighth-grade year, with interviews, campus visits, applications, and standardized test preparation targeted to the schools that our graduates have chosen to attend.

Choosing a secondary school is a rewarding task for a student and their family and a great benefit to the Preschool–Grade 8 model of education. Students learn how to make decisions about their futures at an early age, making the eventual selection and transition process from high school to college a more comfortable and more meaningful process.

Our graduates are some of the best and brightest young people at day and boarding schools across the country, but what stands out more than anything are their abilities to relate to their fellow classmates, advocate for themselves and exhibit strong leadership in all areas of the secondary school experience—from the classroom to the fields to the stage. Far Hills students are known for their upstanding character and ethics above all, hallmarks and leading goals of our program. We are exceptionally proud to call these students Far Hills alums."

Ed Thompson, Director of Operations and Secondary School Placement

Read more from Our secondary school placement directors