AIGLON COLLEGE RANKING
“Quality is a very subjective matter, especially in something as intangible as education. And using a simple measure to rank thousands of schools certainly cannot capture the relative quality of schools or indicate which are better than others.”
To the best of our knowledge, there are no credible academic rankings for Swiss schools. If there were, the formula used for indexing would be gamed, and it would be comparing apples to oranges anyway, since some schools prepare students for American universities (e.g., The Leysin American School and TASIS in Lugano) while others prepare their students for European universities. Having said that, it is perhaps noteworthy that Aiglon is the only Swiss school currently ranked as a “Global Top 50 IB [International Baccalaureate®] School” (based on the 2019 scores of over 5,000 schools in 50 countries). Education Advisers Ltd, an “education consultancy” that operates seven separate websites concerning private education in the UK and worldwide, ranks it the number one IB school in Switzerland based, we presume, on published scores. If you’re not familiar with the IB you should look it up.
As for the most expensive schools in Switzerland, that list is in constant flux, but most high-school-age boarders pay between US$/€100,000 and 150,000 per year (plus certain additional costs). Fees for young day students can be significantly less.
If it’s hard to nail down the rapidly rising costs of Swiss schools, it’s certainly safe to say that none, including Aiglon, is exactly a bargain compared to boarding schools in Britain and the United States. But when considering the four main pillars of a robust secondary education (instruction, facilities, experiences [including service projects], and peer group) Aiglon is, without question, world-class. Of course, you can find excellent instruction and facilities at thousands of independent schools all over the world—increasingly, private school teachers have postgraduate degrees, and there’s been a high school facilities “arms race” going on for decades.
But it’s in those “experiences” and “peer group” categories that Aiglon (and a few other Swiss schools) stand apart. In fact, you can make the argument that, for youngsters who aren’t academically or athletically gifted (i.e., unlikely to secure a place at an elite university through either the front or side door), it may be more important for life outcomes where they go to high school than where they go to college. That undoubtedly is one reason so many parents pay a premium.
Aiglon takes all three planks of its educational platform—mind, body, and spirit—very seriously. It always has. It is an original member of the Round Square, an international association of independent schools founded by Kurt Hahn (also the founder of Outward Bound) that includes Hotchkiss in the U.S. and Gordonstoun, in Scotland (where King Charles and his father went to school). Round Square schools stress “expeditionary learning,” combining challenging outdoor activities with excellent instruction to build character and self-esteem as well as achieve strong academic results. They subscribe to the Hahnian theory that outdoor adventure elevates emotional intelligence, an essential complement to intellectual formation.
“Outdoor expeditions—hiking, climbing, skiing, cycling—have always been Aiglon’s secret sauce. The self-esteem that flows from real accomplishment is life changing. Climb a mountain and, as you internalize the strenuous effort expended, you’ll find your outlook on life transformed. The exhaustion ceases to matter. You did it. You can do anything! Interestingly, there’s evidence that rigorous outdoor challenges can dramatically improve academic outcomes, because they have such a dramatic impact on motivation and self-confidence.”
Here’s a short video, posted recently by the school, that explains why expeditionary learning remains central to the school’s ethos.
In years past, Aiglon prepared all its students to take the British GCE Ordinary and Advanced Level exams. Today, the emphasis is shifting to the International Baccalaureate®. That means students leave with qualifications more familiar to U.S. college admission committees. According to the Winter/Spring 2020 alumni magazine, 20 per cent of Aiglon students taking the exam in 2019 scored 40 out of a possible 45 and two students scored “full marks,” not too shabby when you consider that 1) a fair number of Aiglonians don’t speak English (the school’s language of instruction) natively, and 2) many are at the school for only 2–3 years, if not just one. A score of 40 puts students in contention for admission to elite U.S. universities, including Ivy League schools. Or it did.
On the athletics side, every student is required to go on several hiking expeditions through the surrounding mountains every year as well as participate in various sports. Several alumni have gone on to ski competitively, and some have represented their countries on Olympic teams. In fact, Aiglon’s 2018–2019 Year In Review reported that two recent students had been selected to compete on their national teams. But then you might expect that from a school situated in a ski resort. A few years ago, an Aiglon alumnus was the co-captain of the Harvard men’s ski team. In the 1976 Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria, Aiglonian Bill Koch became the first American ever to medal (silver) in cross-country skiing. And while we don’t know of any Aiglonians presently playing professional football or basketball, Aiglon alumna Heidi Ueberroth was once considered the most powerful woman in professional sports (female team owners perhaps notwithstanding). As the former president of global marketing partnerships and international business operations at the National Basketball Association (NBA), she was for several years the league's top dealmaker. In 2023, Aiglon raised some eyebrows when it announced new collaborations with Manchester City (football) and Olympic gold-medal skier Lindsey Vonn, both deals intended to demonstrate a serious commitment to the sports.
Spiritual development was a priority of founding headmaster John Corlette (1911–1977). The school’s spectacular Alpine setting is certainly a feast for the soul. Its challenging outdoor expeditions and many service projects around the world nurture students’ “Emotional IQs.” And Aiglon continues to hold its hallmark early-morning meditations. It’s worth noting that Corlette considered morning meditation the cornerstone of an Aiglon education. He once said that were he ever pressured to jettison any part of the school’s mind-body-spirit ethos he would opt instead to shut the place down.
Then there’s peer group. Children don’t just learn from their teachers; they learn from each other. For example, at Aiglon, if your roommate is, say, Austrian, chances are you’ll learn to speak some German. In any event, you’ll feel some peer pressure to raise the bar at a school where almost everybody is bi- if not multilingual. It is in fact remarkable how much Aiglonians learn from their classmates. They all acquire a unique international perspective that doesn’t register on standardized tests.
An impressive peer group also translates into an impressive “old-boy network.” The school’s alumni association is amazingly active considering how dispersed it is. Reunions and meet-ups are held annually around the world, and Aiglon social media pages light up several times every day. On the alumni WhatsApp page, people continuously share international news and offer their perspectives on current events. It’s not at all unusual for alums to hear about breaking international news from other Aiglonians before it makes headlines in the mainstream press.
And, as you can imagine, that network sometimes opens doors to remarkable professional opportunities, and not just as some sort of premium LinkedIn®. For example, just one post to a forum on an alumni page or site can elicit the advice, contacts and, in some cases, capital that alums need to expand their entrepreneurial endeavors internationally. What’s that worth? In some cases, a lot more than the vertiginous tuition. In fact, some parents will see the school’s fees as just part of the “start-up costs” for their children’s future business ventures.
“There’s no nationality for an Aiglonian: You learn to respect your identity while becoming part of something that makes you even bigger. I [...] made amazing friends to whom I owe the world.”
Suffice it to say, Swiss international schools like Aiglon operate in their own special educational ecosystems, focusing on the individual needs of their students. And they don’t need or want outside influencers telling them what they ought to be doing, passing judgment on their various “eccentricities,” and then assigning them some mysterious, subjective rank. While Aiglon’s recent communications appear somewhat solicitous to burnish politically sensitive “street cred,” the school is able generally to follow its own lights and fly above much of the turbulence roiling schools elsewhere.
* And one more thing—while people can have differing opinions about the merits of one school over another, it’s hard to argue that Aiglon’s neighborhood isn’t one of the most spectacular in Europe. Or anywhere. Take a look:
The Swiss canton of Vaud—spectacular beauty as well as endless possibilities for cultural discovery and winter sports fun