Parents beware! The bullying at this school is unbelievable…read more I have a bright, but shy and artistic daughter. From the start, she had a hard time fitting in as the majority of the student body seems to be comprised of typical vanilla teenage girls with hard opinions about what's acceptable and few hobbies outside of sports, mainstream fashion and dating. Two girls targeted her, picked on her daily and nearly drove my daughter to suicide. Teachers ignored the problem even when these problem students physically and verbally assaulted my daughter in front of her classmates. Some even went so far as to blame my daughter for the disruptions the bullies were causing while hurting her. The bullies were never punished due to the donor status of their wealthy parents and it was an easy decision to transfer my daughter out of that vipers nest. A sisterhood Stone Ridge is not. It's a place where only the rich and privileged thrive, protected from consequences by the administration. I've safely transferred my daughter to a better school where she's finally happy, but parents be warned. This school tolerates and encourages bullying.

Overall, a truly excellent educational institution. I attended all four years of high school, and…read morecan confirm that the upper school has rigorous and intellectually stimulating academics, competitive arts and athletics programs, and well-educated teachers who are largely engaged with the students and who clearly care about what they teach. The school is rich with opportunities for volunteering and community engagement, and even short programs abroad. I formed close relationships with teachers there, and am still in contact with some of them. I absolutely would not have the skills I have today without Stone Ridge, and I wouldn't trade my education there for anything. I do, however, have a couple of reservations that keep me from giving the school five stars; the downside of the educational rigor is that the place can be a real pressure cooker, and I knew lots of students who suffered from mental health issues like anxiety, depression, and eating disorders during my time there. It is worth noting that I came of age during the Covid-19 pandemic and during a time with unprecedented access to the rest of the world through social media, which undoubtedly affected these numbers; but the observation is perhaps still worth taking into account if your student is especially susceptible to mental illness. While I was there, the upper school was staffed with two well-qualified and empathetic counselors, but it seemed to me that (through no fault of their own) they were floundering, doing damage control rather than prevention in an environment that placed enormous weight on academic and extracurricular achievement. Socially, SR was a toss-up; in my experience, most students eventually found tight-knit, supportive groups of friends, but this could be more difficult if you were one of the kids who "stuck out" more than the others. For all its attention to ensuring diversity and inclusion (and to its credit, it is clear that the school has and continues to make an effort to grow in this area), Stone Ridge is still a PWI, and the social scene favors extraverted young women with shared tastes in fashion and extracurriculars, whose families are often (though not always) upper-class. This isn't to suggest that these girls deliberately ostracize their peers-- in fact, I found that most of them were quite kind-- but that, maybe unsurprisingly, sticking to conventional social scripts tends to lend itself to popularity more easily than difference. The admin also skews more conservative than much of the student body and faculty, which can lead to some grumbling when one wonders if the school is prioritizing the feelings of a handful of parents and donors more than the teachers' and students'. However, I believe that the school has made huge strides over the past few years, and I hope the progress will continue. Having said all this, my experience there was (to apply a perhaps overused term) life-changing, and I look back on much of my time there (Covid excepted) quite fondly. I remember the Five Goals of Sacred Heart education, and I keep my class ring carefully cushioned in its little box. As a Stone Ridge girl, I was challenged academically and morally, and I genuinely feel that in many ways the school taught me to think for myself. Stone Ridge is not perfect, but I have yet to encounter its equal. Go gators!