We help students get more out of high school.

“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”

Aristotle was a pretty smart guy, don’t you think? He is, of course, the one who said this, and it’s this same philosophy that governs what we do here at Oli. We believe that school isn’t just about learning how to do things — it’s about discovering how you learn, how you communicate, and ultimately, who you are.

To that end, our motto is pretty straightforward: Find yourself, find your people, and find your purpose. Here’s what that means at Oli:

Find Yourself

For many of today’s teens, high school has everything to do with fitting in. I wish I was popular like him. I wish I was good at sports like her. But all that time spent wishing to be like someone else takes up crucial emotional real estate at a time when teenagers could be learning more about themselves. What makes me tick? What am I good at? What motivates me?

Most of our students don’t do things the way everyone else does because they’re just not wired that way. In the long run, this serves them well: they become entrepreneurs, professional designers, artists, and innovators. But during adolescence, it’s difficult to be different, which is why we work to create a safe space that’s supportive, that feels like a family, and where kids are safe to experiment with different ways of being. We create room for kids to find what works for them and create healthy relationships with themselves.

Find Your People

Our students live together in community. They eat together, play together, and learn together. Our student life department helps facilitate these activities, enabling our students to understand who they are as social creatures. We want our students to interact with others from a place of introspection: understanding how they connect with others and the countless different ways to develop healthy friendships.

Find Your Purpose

The academic standard of our curriculum is college preparatory — but the path to that standard is different for each student. We want our kids to develop competencies that empower them to choose any professional path. As such, we have an almost 1:1 student-faculty ratio and our classes are an average size of just seven students. Our faculty has the bandwidth to nurture every student’s academic progress as they develop the skills to be successful.

We also want our students to find and pursue passions that are meaningful to them. Our brilliant, intellectually curious teachers expose our students to a wide range of topics, ideas, and fields of study, enabling them to explore various interests and discover the point of convergence of their strengths and interests.

The Oliverian Path

These three things — find yourself, find your people, find your purpose — help our students find their place in the world wherever they are. And that’s our ultimate goal: that our students leave Oliverian and are able to feel at home wherever they go because they are comfortable with themselves.