School Fit
Decide whether Taft fits your student
Look past selectivity to the daily life of a boarding and day school.
Checked against Taft's published admissions pages on November 5, 2026.
School fit
Is Taft a fit?
- The school
- The Taft School is a boarding and day school in Watertown, Connecticut, with 592 students on a 226-acre campus.
- Culture
- The school's motto is "Not to be served but to serve."
- Students
- Taft lists 592 students: 495 boarding and 97 day.
- Where students come from
- Taft lists students from 56 countries and 29 states.
- Class size
- Classes average 11 students.
- Courses
- Taft offers more than 200 one-unit courses in each of its two academic-year semesters, and the graduation requirement is 36 units.
- 01
Ask your student what kind of classroom they want, and let them answer honestly.
- 02
Visit or ask for an online interview, and ask what a typical week looks like.
Boarding life
What boarding and day life ask of a student.
- Dorms
- Girls live in five houses. Boys live on the upper levels of Charles Phelps Taft and Horace Dutton Taft Halls and in ISP.
- Dorm staff
- Residential life is staffed by resident faculty, deans and dormitory monitors, who are student leaders that guide and mentor others in dorm life.
- The schedule
- Each class meets three times a week for seventy minutes. The schedule includes community gathering times at least three days a week, a late start on Thursdays and Saturdays, and variable Wednesday and Saturday programs.
- Boarding and day students
- Taft lists 592 students: 495 boarding and 97 day.
- 01
Talk through the routines your student manages without reminders, such as sleep, study and laundry.
- 02
Decide how you will handle distance, weekends and check-ins, then ask the school how it handles them.
- 03
Ask the admission office whether your student can switch between boarding and day later, since Taft's pages we reviewed do not say.