Not Your Average Dude Ranch

By James Willwerth/Ojai

Dawn in Ojai, Calif. As the sun rises over rugged peaks, more than 80 young men and women are busy shoveling horse droppings at the elite Thacher School, a 425-acre sprawl of corrals and classrooms that combines New England-style prep-school life with the ethos of Western ranching. As part of their regimen, students must feed the horses and muck out their stalls before breakfast. Some students grumble about the early-morning chores, but most of them ultimately embrace the school's central belief that a connection exists between caring for a horse and conquering calculus. "Before I came here, it never clicked with me that I'd have to clean out a stall," grimaces Hope Kyle, 14. "But it did give me a more responsible attitude toward school and work."

Combining studies with horsemanship was the idea of Sherman Thacher, a Yale law graduate who accompanied his ailing brother West and started the school in 1889. "There's something about the outside of a horse," he maintained, "that's good for the inside of a boy." Though it began as a school for boys who carried six-guns, read Kipling and mostly went on to Yale, Thacher has evolved into a modern, co-ed institution whose students enroll at colleges all over the country. Of this year's 62 seniors, 28 are headed for Ivy League schools, one for the University of Chicago, two for Stanford and others to various University of California campuses.

"Our primary objective," says headmaster Willard G. Wyman, a former Stanford dean who favors blue jeans and cowboy boots over business suits, "is making teenagers feel good about themselves." The key to doing that, Wyman believes, is horses. "A horse is big, strong, timid and stupid," explains % Jack Huyler, 69, a retired director of the horse program. "A kid has a constant crisis until he learns that you control the horse by controlling yourself."

Horsemanship alone won't get you into Harvard, of course. To do that, the school offers a 7-to-1 student-teacher ratio and a high-powered academic program that includes four years of English, three of mathematics and foreign language, and two of science, history and fine arts. "We teach people how to think critically," says Marvin Shagam, a popular instructor who studied at Oxford and is trained in judo. "We don't coach for the SATs." The fees for all this are steep: tuition next year will be $16,000, although 44 of the school's 227 students currently receive financial aid.

Belying Thacher's image as a country club for rich white kids, the student body is diverse (27% are minority, mostly Asian), and ethnic relations are remarkably smooth. "Everything's so homogenized here," admits alumnus Derrick Perry, 24. "It's like I didn't realize I was black until I went to Dartmouth." Sexism is probably the most divisive issue. Women, including faculty members, complain that the school remains encumbered with "old boy" history. Yet if Thacher continues to thrive, it is probably because of its throwback traditions. "If there is any single quality we look for," says admissions director Joy Sawyer-Mulligan, "it is a willingness to try something that is not vanilla."