Student Life

7:30 a.m. to 8:10 a.m. Breakfast in the dining hall.

8:15 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. Students are in class.

3:15 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. This time is for tutoring or spending time with day students before the buses leave.

4:00 p.m. to 6:15 p.m. Many students participate in extracurricular activities or get a head start on their schoolwork for the evening.

6:15 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. Dinner brings boarders and campus families together for a meal in the dining hall.

7:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. Study hall takes place in dorm rooms. Faculty on duty, houseparents, and R-L senior leaders are scheduled daily to supervise and maintain a quiet atmosphere. A faculty member and peer tutors are also scheduled each evening to provide additional academic support. 

9:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. Activities depend on the night and what is available on campus. Students participate in open gym, activities with campus parents, snack times, and movie nights, among many other things.

10:30 p.m. Students are required to return to their respective dorm buildings so that the dorm parents can lock the doors and set the alarms.

This schedule can also change according to a student's personal interests, such as play rehearsal, peer tutoring, watching or performing in a band concert, working a campus job, or babysitting for a campus family. Life never ceases to be busy for boarders.

Traditions and celebrations spice up campus life and create lasting memories for members of the campus community.

Community Dinners: Every Monday evening, boarders dine with campus residents and their families in Paterakis Dining Hall. After community announcements, birthday celebrations, and a moment of gratitude, tables engage in thoughtful and inclusive conversation based on suggested topics.

Campus Parents: Throughout the year, boarders visit the homes of campus residents on Thursday evenings from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. for a late-night snack, activity, game, or show. This is the highlight of everyone’s week. Popular entertainment includes painting pumpkins, building gingerbread houses, decorating cookies, making slime, playing Catch Phrase, Scattergories, or Empire with an NFL, college basketball, or Orioles game on the TV.

Pre-Holiday Dinners: The dining hall prepares a banquet-style feast for the boarders and campus families. Students dress up and eat together in a "fancy" but comfortable atmosphere, reminding each other to be grateful for the opportunities they have been given.

Halloween: Boarders and younger campus residents dress up in costume for the annual Halloween costume contest at the boarder dinner in Paterakis Dining Hall. Afterward, everyone goes trick-or-treating in the campus neighborhoods.

Winter: Students can choose to take part in a variety of festive activities, like making gingerbread houses, drinking cocoa with their campus families, watching holiday movies in the lounge, making cards for their secret elf, and much more.

Snow Days: The dorms are a great place to be on snow days. Students spend time sledding with the campus residents on McDonogh's sloping hills, watching movies in the Klein Lyceum, and participating in other fun activities.

Evenings at the Head of School's House: Every couple of months, the Head of School and his family open their home to the boarders for a relaxing evening of good food and camaraderie. Students spread throughout the living areas and enjoy the company of their peers. 

Coed Events: Dorm faculty and student leaders plan a couple of events each term to give residents of the girls' and boys' dorms the opportunity to interact. Past activities have included bonfires complete with s'mores on the spacious Dorm Patio, volleyball games, trivia night, BINGO night, movie night, corn hole tournaments, snowball fights, and flashlight tag. Off-campus trips include Orioles games, bowling, Field of Screams, visits to local restaurants for a quick bite or sweet treat, and a trip to the Hampden neighborhood in Baltimore to view holiday lights.

Boarder Birthdays: Every boarder with a birthday during the school year knows that part of the day's festivities will be a rousing rendition of "Happy Birthday" during boarder dinner in the dining hall. Often, friends will buy a cake and start a small birthday party that will grow to include the whole dorm and the dorm faculty, starting after study hall and running until bedtime.

Seniors’ Last Night: On their last night in the dorms, the seniors gather with campus faculty in the dorm quad for a bonfire with their friends. A crab feast, music and s'mores accompany the reminiscing as the soon-to-be graduates prepare themselves to leave McDonogh. It is a beautiful way to bring an end to a year spent in the community they have grown to love as a second home.

Associate Head of School Kate Mueller and Head of Upper School Merritt Livermore have overall responsibility for the boarding program. Three dorm faculty in Jane Bay (the female dorm) and four in Rollins Hall (the male dorm) are responsible for supervising the boarding students on a daily basis. Dorm faculty live in apartments in the dorm buildings.

Faculty and staff who live on campus enjoy the opportunity to form new friendships with boarders during breakfast or dinner in the dining hall, during weekly dorm duty, or on other occasions when hosting students in their homes or chaperoning events. 

A select group of seniors within the boarding community are the Rollins-Luetkemeyer (R-L) Leaders. After applying, 12 students are selected to live in the dorms during their senior year and participate in a leadership training program. With guidance from program advisors, the R-L Leaders learn how to apply leadership skills in their community.

Before the school year begins, the R-L's participate in a leadership retreat so that by the time classes start they are a close-knit group. Their peers look to them as role models and the faculty look to them as representatives of the student body. With their boarding expenses paid, these students are expected to take an active role in boarding life, planning events for their dorm-mates and finding ways to enhance dorm life. 

To qualify for boarding, a student’s primary residence must be within 90 miles of the McDonogh School campus in Owings Mills, Maryland. Exemptions may be made if the applicant has a relative (by blood or marriage) within the 90-mile radius and that family member agrees to serve as a local host family on weekends and in cases of emergency. Due to the nature of our five-day boarding program, students must return home on weekends, and sometimes more frequently due to holidays, weather events, or illness. To learn more about the exemption application process, please contact the Director of Enrollment Management.

Download the application.