TikTokers who went to elite boarding schools are gaining millions of views dispelling misconceptions about their lavish student lives

• The hashtag #BoardingSchool currently has over 1.4 billion views on TikTok.
• Many former students offer a behind-the-scenes look at the lavish lifestyle.

TikTokers who went to boarding schools are sharing their experiences at the elite institutions — often going viral as a result.

This genre of video has existed on TikTok for years, and is growing increasingly common. Recent videos feature boarding school students miming along to songs in their uniform or students highlighting how strict their specific school is.

The hashtag #BoardingSchool has over 1.4 billion views, but the videos attract a mix of responses, ranging from people saying they wished they'd had the chance to attend a private school, to those who wonder how anyone can afford them. Some users have commented to say they didn't know boarding schools really existed.

Not all viewers agree the experiences should be glorified, but many of the creators express positive feelings towards the institutions they attended, and say they want to dispel the misconceptions around the stereotypes.

Videos of lavish boarding schools are extremely popular on TikTok

One of the most popular videos in the genre has over 7.2 million views. It features a montage of Fettes College in Edinburgh, Scotland, with snapshots of towers with turrets and spiral staircases. Another video with 5.8 million views shows a day in the life of a boarding school student, with a schedule of three classes a day, study hall time, and yoga.

One creator who posted a viral boarding school TikTok is Katrina Ip, 21, who took viewers on a tour of the lavish accommodation and facilities at Queen Margaret's School For Girls in York, England, which costs £42,480 ($49,000) a year to attend as an international student.

Ip, who studied at the school for five years and now attends University of the Arts London, told Insider she decided to make the video while she was there for a reunion.

She stopped by the student accommodation she lived in, a field on the grounds to visit a horse she used to ride, drank wine in the school restaurant, and re-visited the swimming pool and gym.

Unaware that boarding school videos were popular on TikTok, Ip told Insider she was surprised by the size of the reaction to her video which gained her an additional 3,000 followers.

"I thought it was gonna get 50k views, but it got nearly a million so I was like, why are people that interested?" she said.

Creators see their videos as a way to dispel misconceptions

Charlie, a 30-year-old TikToker based in the UK who goes by @TheRoamingReader and requested Insider use only her first name due to privacy concerns, has posted dozens of videos about her experience at a British boarding school, which she attended between 2003 and 2010.

"It's such a closed-door thing," she said. "Unless you know someone who went to boarding school there's so many misconceptions and stereotypes."

Ip agreed, telling Insider she's seen lots of comments on her video referencing the 2008 movie "Wild Child" which follows the story of an American teen visiting a British boarding school, and people comparing her experience to their assumptions based on pop culture depictions of boarding schools.

Both Ip and Charlie also said they'd also received many comments from people who assumed all boarding school students come from a privileged background. While most boarding school students will be fee-paying, some, like Charlie, are able to receive scholarships, although one study found that full funding is only given to 1% of private schools students in the UK, i News reported in 2021.

Charlie posted a video in July explaining she received funding that covered her fees, which incorporated extracurricular activities, food, and accommodation, and she was able to borrow the uniform and text books.

"People hadn't heard of that side of boarding school either, which I really wanted to show in my videos as well, is that you didn't have to be rich to go to boarding school," she told Insider.

Some viewers took issue with the glorification of the boarding-school lifestyle

Both Ip and Charlie told Insider they'd received many comments from people who push back on their positive experience of boarding school.

"Something that comes up a lot that people say, which I find bizarre, is 'why do parents have kids if they're not going to bring them up?'" Charlie said. "You think that my parents just dumped me in boarding school and didn't see me for seven years? That wasn't the case."

Boarding schools are a divisive topic. U.S. News & World Report contributor Doug Abrahms reported that, "While Hollywood often depicts children being 'sent away' to boarding school, the reality is that many students go to boarding schools to participate in innovative programs, live more independently at a younger age and gain a better shot at getting into top colleges."

But boarding school is not a positive experience for everyone. Dr Joy Schaverien, a psychotherapist and author who coined the term "boarding school syndrome," told the British Psychotherapy Foundation that some former boarders can experience symptoms linked to the traumas of being separated from their parents and family, homesickness, and feeling that they cannot leave.

Charlie told Insider she thinks some people who post videos about boarding school "do sugarcoat it a bit" and leave out some of the challenges, such as dealing with a tough workload and constantly being around your friends which can be difficult at times, but overall she was happy with her time as a student.

"I think boarding school was a really formative time for me and it was an amazing experience," she said, and she has no plans to stop telling her TikTok followers about it.

For more stories like this, check out coverage from Insider's Digital Culture team here.