School Fit
Decide whether a boarding school fits your student
Look past selectivity to the daily life of four years away from home, and to what is changing in the dorms in 2027.
Checked against Deerfield's published admissions pages on November 4, 2026.
School fit
Is Deerfield a fit?
- Placement
- New students take a math placement test before they arrive. Students who want to continue a language they have studied also take a placement test.
- Advisors
- Every student gets a faculty advisor by late summer before school starts, and faculty eat lunch with their advisees every Tuesday.
- Study abroad and library
- Study abroad is available in 10th through 12th grade. The Boyden Library holds over 50,000 books.
- Weekly rhythm
- Deerfield does not hold academic classes on Saturdays and has an academic dress code.
- 01
Ask your student whether they want to be away from home for four years, and let them answer honestly.
- 02
Book a campus visit or an interview and ask what a typical week looks like.
Boarding life
Living on campus.
Here is what Deerfield publishes about the dorms.
- Residential life
- Residential life is meant to let students live independently from their families with structure, accountability and fun.
- Ninth and tenth grade
- Ninth graders all live together in the 9th Grade Village, girls in Johnson and boys in Doubleday. Tenth graders all have single rooms.
- Support in the dorms
- There is a faculty resident on each hall as well as a faculty associate. Senior proctors serve in the 9th and 10th grade dorms, and there are 16 Peer Counselors, juniors and seniors who are scattered through the dorms.
- Faculty in the dorms
- Deerfield describes an ideal 10:1 faculty-to-student ratio in its dormitories, and says the new West Campus Dormitory will offer every student access to a home on campus.
- West Campus Dorm
- The West Campus Dorm is described as opening in fall 2027 with 38 student rooms. It lets Deerfield expand its boarding population and welcome local students into residential life, and Deerfield will then be a fully boarding school.
- Enrollment
- A boarding and day school in Deerfield, Massachusetts. It plans to become fully boarding when its West Campus Dorm opens in fall 2027.
- 01
Talk through roommates, shared spaces and distance from home with your student before applying.
- 02
Ask the admission office what the change to full boarding means for the grade your student is entering.