Midland School

Set on 2,860 acres of ranch land in Santa Barbara County, California.

76,000

Need-based

English, Social Studies, Mathematics, Science, Spanish Language, Horse & Ranch, Farm & Garden, Outdoor Leadership, Arts

College preparatory & experiential

Students are asked to bring a Chromebook

Competitive sports: Soccer, Volleyball, Cross-Country, Basketball

Horsemanship, Farm & Garden, Outdoor Leadership, FRSH (Fitness - Running - Surfing -Hiking), Maintenance, Circus, Writers' Group, Student Council, Midland Mirror (school newspaper)

Louis Reichardt - Mountaineer & Neurosurgeon
Billy Childs - Jazz Pianist & 5-time Grammy winner
Charles Webb - Author of The Graduate
Brian Goggin - Installation Artist
Neagha Leonard - Conservationist
Megan McGrath - Winemaker
Justene Hill Edwards - Professor of African American Studies at UVA, author, Carnegie Fellow
Maya Jochim Johansson - Founder & CEO of the Well Center in San Francisco
Frank Anderson - FIFA pro refereree

Boarding school, not applicable

No uniform

Midland uses the Standard Application Online and is test-optional. Applicants and their parents/guardians complete a variety of essays and creative responses. Transcripts and recommendation letters required. International students must submit TOEFL scores.

Midland School provides a unique college preparatory boarding school experience to a diverse student body. Through study and work, it teaches the value of a lifetime of learning, self-reliance, simplicity, responsibility to community and the environment, and a love for the outdoors.

Midland School is a community of students, teachers and families in pursuit of academic excellence and moral lives. We are guided by the following principles:

1. The essential ingredients of learning are a student, a teacher and an idea.
2. A high-quality college preparatory education should be accessible to families of all economic means.
3. A simple, self-reliant lifestyle, close to nature, teaches us to develop our inner resources, to distinguish between needs and wants and to appreciate life’s fundamental joys and challenges.
4. A school community entrusting students with authentic leadership roles, emphasizing individual and collective responsibility and relying on its own work to meet its basic needs, prepares students to take care of themselves and to serve others.
5. Connection to the environment, through academic education and everyday example, teaches students to be good stewards of the earth.

Founded in 1932

In the nine decades since our founding, Midland has grown and evolved in a myriad of ways, adding campus infrastructure, admitting young women in the early 1970s, and honing our curriculum to become increasingly place-based as an experiential learning boarding school. Yet our founding principles and values are the root from which we continue to grow and thrive: simplicity; evaluating our needs and wants; environmental stewardship; meaningful connections between students, teachers and the ideas they study; and accessibility to families of all financial means.

Step onto Midland's farm and garden to learn about genetic variation or soil chemistry in Biology. Walk into the hills to study the jewelflower in Field Ecology or down to the Pacific Ocean to learn about the intertidal zone in Marine Biology. Spend sunny days weaving grasses together, stacking rounded stones from the creek or layering brilliant leaves to create harmonious natural masterpieces in Foundations Art.