The usual morning of an SIS student: a long, sleepy commute to school. The begrudging walk toward the building towering over the students to usher them into another day of intense competition and testing. Students struggle to devote equal time and effort to their school activities and their external responsibilities, not to mention factoring in the time it takes to transport from home to school, school to academies, then back home. In an environment with such cutthroat standards, what measures could be taken to make every second count? What environment could provide many of the resources and support necessary to help these students feel more productive?
Despite the variety of international schools across many regions of South Korea, international boarding schools are scarce. Boarding schools hold many benefits, both practical and personal. Practically, they provide a consistent, structured learning environment that enables each student to acquire time management and prioritization skills independently, which are vital and better learned earlier in life. Additionally, being away from their loved ones, they grow independence and resilience in overcoming day-to-day challenges. This is specifically relevant and impactful to SIS students, as most grow up dependent on their parent’s financial support for more resources than the regular student. This prepares them not only for higher education, but for life beyond.
In the spectrum of benefits, how might SIS specifically benefit from a boarding school system?
Despite SIS being an international school, 98 percent of its student body is composed of Korean students. This leads to a lack of cultural and ethnic diversity within the school community, risking monotonous viewpoints of the standard mindset of most students. Boarding schools, on the other hand, attract students from various cultural and geographic backgrounds due to housing students within the school. Therefore, if SIS were a boarding school, it would foster the school into a truly inclusive community by attracting many more students from more diverse backgrounds.
Another benefit of boarding schools is that, because of the distance most of the students have from their local resources, such as hagwons, tutors, and more, much of the process of college admissions and preparing for students’ applications is much more robust with its extensive alumni networks and counseling services. In SIS, because of the pressure many students and their families place on attending a prestigious university, having the proper resources for the admissions process is crucial. Instead of having to pay both the costly tuition for attending the school as well as money spent on external resources to bolster students’ chances of acceptance to prestigious institutions, it would be more economical for SIS to provide those resources in one place. However, there may be some arguments made that just because SIS will be a boarding school, it doesn’t entail immediate personalized college admissions processes, as illustrated by the fact that many students in boarding schools tend to attend hagwons or personalized consulting programs over break.
Speaking of an academically rigorous environment, while it is inevitable that one’s classmates are seen as competition for grades, executive positions, and more, if SIS were a boarding school, with students and faculty living on campus, it could foster closer relationships and a stronger sense of community. Living in boarding school implies living in a shared space, with most daily amenities being communal—kitchens, living rooms, bathrooms, and most times one’s own room comes with a year-long roomate. Although constant social interactions can be tiring and even lead to more frequent arguments, resolving such conflicts fosters maturity in managing human relationships and also forms closer bonds.
Despite some limitations that can come from attending boarding school, immediate access to family or personalized resources, a boarding school system can offer experiences unique to its communal environment. Ultimately, transforming SIS into a boarding school would improve students’ and parents’ lives holistically.
