Phillips Academy Andover

The short answer

A large school, and a short night

Andover is large for a boarding school. The 2025–26 profile lists 1,172 students, 861 of them boarders and 311 day students, an average class size of 13, and more than 300 courses.

Five residential clusters, a major museum, and 67 interscholastic teams give a student many ways to find a smaller home. The question is whether your child will use that freedom, or be worn out by it.

The Phillipian’s voluntary 2026 State of the Academy survey drew 889 responses, about 76% of enrollment. Respondents reported an average 6.96 hours of sleep and 3.54 hours of coursework a day.

Among respondents, 83.2% said they were happy and 83.5% said faculty cared about their wellbeing. Only 7.2% said they always had enough time for self-care, and 40% had considered leaving temporarily, permanently, or both.

The same profile lists 61% students of color and students from 53 countries. Friends were respondents’ strongest day-to-day support.

In that survey, 53.2% of respondents perceived social divides around race, 39.4% around socioeconomic class, and 19.2% said they had experienced discrimination because of race.

The week

After the last class

Families choose boarding or day in the application. Andover says there is no geographic restriction, and the choice is made once, not after admission.

Day students receive a cluster, a locker, a mailbox, an adviser, and all meals, including weekends. The day splits after dinner.

Boarders share check-in, study, and a Sunday-night reset. Day families decide when to leave and how often to come back.

In the survey, 72.1% of boarding respondents thought day students were integrated into social life, compared with 51.6% of day respondents.

There are no regular Saturday classes. Games, rehearsals, performances, testing, trips, club work, and community commitments can still occupy Saturday, and Sunday carries study and dorm rhythms.

Residential pages welcome occasional day-student sleepovers. The general FAQ requires advance approval and says there are no spare beds.

It allows the school to refuse, and it allows almost no overnights before class days.

For 2026–27, phones fall under “Away for the Day”: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., and Wednesday from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. They should be off or on Do Not Disturb and out of sight, with limited approved locations and exceptions, and they are put away during commitments.

On nights before classes, the restriction resumes after 8 p.m. in supervised study and dorm common spaces. Juniors and lowers charge phones outside their rooms from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. before class days.

Weekends are otherwise more flexible.

Five clusters of roughly 220–230 students hold dorms of about 4 to 44 residents. A house counselor lives in the building, and other assigned faculty cover specified nights and weekends.

Ninth graders live in junior dorms with prefects; sophomores move into upperclass housing. New lowers are typically matched with another new lower, postgraduates with postgraduates, and one-year seniors with one another.

Before class days, juniors, lowers, and uppers sign in by 8 p.m., and junior lights-out is 11 p.m.

Classes

Five or six courses, and an email the student sends

Andover runs on three terms and lists more than 300 courses. Juniors and lowers normally take five or six; uppers and seniors generally take five.

In the first term, a new lower may add only PHD 200 as a sixth course, and a new upper, senior, or postgraduate is limited to five. Students cannot request teachers or class periods.

The schedule may not arrive until the day before classes. A sixth course depends on room, staffing, and the student’s health.

A listing is not a seat. Term-contained science courses are limited and allocated with seniority in mind; the school prioritizes full-year sequences.

A course should require six to nine hours a week, including roughly three to six hours of homework, scaled by level. Teachers should not make work due over a weekend.

They cannot require homework on the first day back from vacation, and they should assign no more than one major assessment or assignment per course each week. If three major assignments fall on the same day, a student may ask to move all but two.

The student normally emails the teachers, copies the adviser or point person, and gives about 24 hours’ notice. Five courses at that standard are 30–45 hours of academic time a week.

Six are 36–54, before the afternoon program, rehearsals, publications, dorm jobs, meals, and sleep.

Arts requirements depend on entry year: a ninth-grade entrant completes four arts credits, a new tenth grader three, an eleventh-grade entrant one art or music course, and a one-year senior none. Private lessons and some art or music materials can cost extra.

Andover officially offers only three AP courses (Calculus AB, Calculus BC, and Statistics); the profile describes 500-level courses as comparable to college introductory work and 600-level courses as the depth of a college major.

Support and safety

Help the student has to ask for

Teachers hold 30-minute conference periods. The Academic Skills Center works individually and in small groups on time management, organization, study habits, and related skills.

Trained peer tutors support mathematics, science, and languages through the 300 level, and evening peer help is available four nights a week in mathematics, science, and writing. Outside tutors may not work with students on campus.

Accommodations are case by case. Prior accommodations do not transfer automatically, so send current documentation early.

Requests are best made by June 1. Changes are not retroactive, and an accommodation cannot fundamentally alter Andover’s program.

A Fall 2027 entrant starts under new leadership. Raynard Kington remains head of school through June 2027; the trustees elected alumnus and longtime administrator James F.

“Jim” Ventre as the 17th head, beginning July 1, 2027.

In August 2026, Andover told the community that two alumni had reported being sexually abused as students by former medical director Richard Keller, who worked at the school from 1992 to 2011. Keller later pleaded guilty in a child-pornography case and served more than six years in federal prison.

The alumni reports are allegations about abuse at Andover; they were not findings in that criminal case. The school corrected its 2012 statement that it had no reason to believe Andover students were affected, and apologized to survivors and the community.

The Boston Globe reported that one alumnus said he first reported the abuse to Andover four years before the public disclosure. Andover’s letter describes stronger training and policies, survivor-informed work with Learning Courage, reporting through the Dean of Students, an anonymous EthicsPoint route, outside counsel, and referral to law enforcement.

A 2016 outside investigation found historical sexual misconduct by former faculty members.

Cost

The baseline, then the rest of the bill

For 2026–27, boarding tuition is $79,800 and day tuition is $63,840. The required $1,200 course-materials account brings the school-charge baseline to $81,000 boarding or $65,040 day.

Unused account funds are returned after final charges when the student leaves. Andover also requests a $500 breakage deposit and a $6,000 nonrefundable enrollment deposit.

Admission is need-blind for domestic and international applicants, and Andover says it meets 100% of demonstrated need with grants, not loans. The profile says 47% of students receive aid and lists $29.9 million in total assistance.

Apply through Clarity by February 1, the same day as admission. All living parents are expected to participate.

Separated households file separately. If you might need aid in a later year, apply in the admission year rather than planning to enter at full pay and switch.

The published average grant does not match itself: about $45,000 for a returning student on one page, and $49,300 on another. Neither is your award.

Demonstrated need is Andover’s calculation. The optional tuition-refund plan costs 1.9% of tuition after the $6,000 deposit and aid, and generally refunds 65% of the unused covered amount.

After July 1, tuition is otherwise not refundable.

Applying

February 1, then March 10

Andover accepts applications for grades 9, 10, 11, 12, and the postgraduate year. Its general FAQ says a typical entering cohort includes more than 200 ninth graders, about 85 tenth graders, 20–25 eleventh graders, and 30–35 new seniors and postgraduates combined.

Those are class-size averages, not admit rates.

Start with a Candidate Profile in Gateway to Prep Schools. Portal credentials arrive roughly 24 hours later.

The file is a graded writing sample, an essay, a short video, a parent or guardian statement, current-year grades, the prior two years of grades, a principal or counselor recommendation, current English and mathematics teacher recommendations, and a personal recommendation. Grade 12 and postgraduate applicants also submit a complete transcript.

A special-interest recommendation and arts or athletics supplements are optional. Choose an on-campus interview, a virtual interview, or an interview recording.

Interviews run through January. A tour is encouraged.

It does not replace the interview. Testing is required: Upper Level SSAT, Upper Level ISEE, PSAT, SAT, or ACT.

On the fee, one official FAQ lists $60 for domestic and $125 for international applicants, but attaches those amounts to an obsolete “Preliminary Application Form 1,” while the live process begins with the Gateway Candidate Profile. Treat the numbers as provisional and confirm the charge shown in Gateway before budgeting or seeking a waiver.

International applicants complete the same Gateway and Andover materials. At every grade, a student who attends school outside the United States in a non-English-medium program submits TOEFL iBT, IELTS, or Duolingo English Test results.

Andover says most admitted students score at least 100 on TOEFL, 7.5 on IELTS, or 135 on Duolingo. Those figures describe prior admits.

They are not cutoffs. A recommendation may be written in the teacher’s language.

An official English translation is helpful but not required. After enrollment, the international student coordinator issues the I-20, supports the family, and organizes a one-and-a-half-day orientation before the wider opening.

On breaks, some students fly home and others arrange host families. The $3,100 insurance charge, unless a waiver is approved by July 1, belongs on that travel budget.

Who notices, who supervises and what Andover costs

At a large boarding school, ask who calls home when things slide, who is in the dorm at night, and what the all-in Fall 2027 bill will be.