St. Albans School: Brotherhood, a Serious Week, and a Leadership Change Families Should Understand

Grade 4 · Form C

The youngest applicants write, tour, and test—but do not interview

A Grade 4 family schedules a tour through Ravenna. The public checklist does not list a student or parent interview.

Do not coach a nine-year-old for an interview the school has not described.

The child submits a four-to-six-sentence response to a Ravenna prompt. The school asks for current first- and second-quarter records plus the prior school year.

Two homeroom-teacher recommendations cover the current and past year.

St. Albans automatically registers timely applicants for testing on January 9.

The public page does not name the test, content, scoring, accommodations process, or retest policy. Logistics arrive in early January.

Form C changes more than the school address. A child moves into a school that describes its own atmosphere as rigorous, adds specialists and religion, and expects boys to learn new organization habits.

Beauvoir is a separate school on the Close. The current St.

Albans pages do not publish any Beauvoir priority formula. Outside families should ask how many of the roughly 40 places were available beyond Beauvoir in recent years.

Grade 6 · Form A

Six to eight places make fit and logistics matter more than folklore

Grade 6 families tour from 8:15 to 9:45 a.m. The child is interviewed individually after the tour. Parents tour separately.

The school does not publish interview length, questions, or scoring.

The applicant writes two personal-statement answers without outside sources. This instruction matters.

Help him understand the task and meet the deadline, but leave the wording and ideas to him.

The file includes current first- and second-quarter grades, the previous school year, and two homeroom recommendations. Grade 6 applicants must submit either the SSAT or ISEE by January 13.

The testing page gives no preferred exam, score floor, typical range, weighting, superscore rule, or internal accommodations route. It says limited fee waivers are available for both tests.

Because only six to eight boys join, a denial cannot be reverse-engineered into a judgment about a child. The committee is building a very small cohort inside an established grade.

Grade 9 · Form III

The shadow day is the clearest look at ordinary life

Grade 9 applicants spend a full day on campus from 9:10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. They meet Admissions, tour, attend classes, eat lunch with a ninth-grade ambassador, and complete an interview.

Parents may book an optional parent-only tour on selected Mondays and Fridays. The student's shadow day is more useful than a polished open house if he watches class pace, transitions, lunch, and help-seeking.

The Upper School questionnaire asks for seven typed answers written without outside sources. Records cover the current first and second quarters and the prior year.

Current English and math teachers submit recommendations.

A ninth-grade applicant may submit the SSAT, ISEE, or HSPT. One is required by January 13.

The school states no preference, minimum, usual range, weighting, or test-optional path.

Grade 9 is also the first boarding entry. The public page does not separate boarding and day applicant pools.

Ask whether a student can be considered for both and how the aid review works across them.

What the process really asks

Let the application show the boy who will attend

St. Albans repeatedly tells applicants to produce their own writing.

That is both an integrity rule and useful fit evidence. Adult-polished answers can hide the voice the school is trying to meet.

For Grades 6 and 9, practice conversation rather than scripts. A child should be able to discuss what he enjoys, what challenges him, how he repairs mistakes, and what he noticed on campus.

No public source explains whether parents are interviewed. Grade 6 parents tour separately, and Grade 9 parent tours are optional.

Do not infer an unseen parent evaluation without asking Admissions.

The school publishes no acceptance rate and no test cutoff. A high score cannot reveal how character, recommendations, writing, interview, grade needs, boarding, and cohort balance combine.

The all-boys core

Brotherhood is a method, not a guaranteed feeling

St. Albans makes a direct case for educating boys together.

It says teachers understand boys' academic, emotional, and social development. It also presents the school as a place where boys can speak honestly about feelings and struggle.

The school's ideal is broader than competition. Chapel speaking, singing, theater, art, service, and counseling all challenge a narrow version of masculinity.

Athletics remain highly visible, but they are not the only public language of belonging.

Still, a stated ideal is not proof of every student's experience. Ask how adults respond when status, wealth, race, athletic identity, sexuality, or academic speed shape who feels central and who feels peripheral.

The strongest fit is not simply a boy who likes boys' schools. It is a boy who can be himself within this school's particular mix of tradition, public speaking, group loyalty, faith language, and accountability.

Faith in chapel, courses, and service

Episcopal does not mean religion is decorative

Boys and teachers gather for chapel twice a week. Students and teachers often speak.

Religion classes run in both divisions, and a blessing precedes lunch. The school welcomes families of all faiths and no faith.

The Episcopal approach emphasizes questions, dignity, service, and room for differing beliefs. It is still a Christian institutional frame.

A secular family should picture regular worship and religion study, not just broad moral discussion.

The Cathedral Close makes faith physically present. Boys learn beside Washington National Cathedral, attend major services there, and use the Little Sanctuary.

Alumni also return for baptisms, weddings, and memorials.

National Cathedral School

Single-sex at the center, coed at selected edges

St. Albans and National Cathedral School are separate schools.

Each has its own admissions process, leadership, student body, and governing board. Their coordinate program adds shared opportunities rather than creating one coed school.

Shared academic options increase by grade. The current list includes religion and history electives, senior English, public speaking, several languages, advanced math, computer science, data science, and physics.

Shared arts include plays, musicals, chorale, orchestra, dance, jazz, and a cappella. Selected clubs and sports are also coed.

Access still depends on grade, prerequisites, capacity, timing, and a student's other commitments.

The school markets more than 20 coed classes, 15 coed performances, and four coed sports. Those are school-wide opportunity counts, not a promise that a particular boy can fit that many into his schedule.

Treat the headline numbers as a catalog and ask for the actual Grade 7 or Grade 9 timetable.

The official school profile says all electives are coed, while the coordinate page names a more specific list. Families should ask which courses are actually shared in their son's grade and how often timetable conflicts prevent access.

The coordinate relationship also needs a clear accountability map. Ask who handles a concern involving students from both schools, how families are informed, and whether either school can review the other's decision.

Classes and the full week

Rigor comes from pace, breadth, and what surrounds homework

Upper School uses a seven-day rotation. Seven blocks meet four times in each cycle.

Boys take English, math, language, science, history, and religion, with arts and other electives added over time.

The prior-cycle profile reports an average class size of 13. It calls every course honors level or beyond.

Courses labeled Honors move especially quickly, and Honors Math is entered by recommendation.

The current Upper School page still lists 13 AP courses. The 2025–26 profile says students averaged three AP courses by graduation and describes U.S. History and English electives as AP level even without an AP label.

The average and unlabeled-course claims remain prior-cycle evidence.

The diploma requires at least four academic courses each semester, 17 credits, two fine-arts semesters, 60 service hours, and 11 athletic seasons. Most boys will carry more than four classes.

Published pages do not give nightly homework ranges, assessment calendars, late-work rules, or tutoring frequency. The meaningful workload is the sum of class, travel, office hours, practice, rehearsal, service, and sleep.

Support and its limits

The school names several supports but not their ceiling

The Teaching and Learning Program works with groups and individual students. It focuses especially on entry years: Grades 4, 7, and 9.

The school says tailored lessons can help students with learning barriers or disabilities.

Daily office hours provide 40 minutes after school and before athletics. Teachers meet students one-to-one or in groups.

Lower School's STArtSmart program adds after-school homework and planning support; STAySmart offers study-skills help individually or in small groups.

The counseling program includes individual counseling and help with academic accommodations. Lower School students also take Decisions, a course about social and adolescent situations.

Chaplains provide pastoral care.

A family with dyslexia, ADHD, executive-function needs, anxiety, autism, or a chronic medical condition should request a pre-enrollment review. Ask for the support plan in writing and test it against the busiest season.

Skip Grant is different from general learning support. It provides added monitoring, guidance, and possible tutoring to students from backgrounds historically underrepresented at St.

Albans. Families opt into consideration on the application.

Life beyond class

There is range here, but the calendar makes choices for you

Athletics are required every season. Upper School boys complete three seasons in Grades 9–11 and two in Grade 12.

The school presents sports as physical education, character work, and community—not only varsity competition.

The arts are more substantial than an all-boys sports stereotype suggests. St.

Albans reports more than 20 art classes, six annual theater productions, and one in four Upper School students in performing arts.

Some performance rehearsals occur after sports practice and games. That gives committed artists access, but can stretch the day.

Ask when a ninth grader in theater, chorale, or orchestra actually finishes.

Cathedral boy choristers have a more exacting published pattern: an undated live Cathedral page lists 7:10 a.m. rehearsals on Tuesdays and Thursdays, a Tuesday afternoon rehearsal, Thursday Evensong until 5:45 p.m., three Sunday commitments most months, and an August choir camp. Confirm the 2026–27 schedule rather than treating this live page as a guaranteed calendar.

Upper School boys complete 60 service hours before senior year. At least half must be person-to-person work in the DC region.

The program asks students to build a sustained relationship with one agency.

Range does not mean unlimited simultaneous access. A boy cannot be in every shared course, sport, production, service project, and fellowship.

Build a sample week around his first two priorities.

A small boarding school inside a day school

Thirty boarders is an intimate model, not a traditional campus system

About 30 Upper School boys board in the Lane-Johnston Building. Five dorm faculty and their families supervise the program.

Students come from abroad, across the United States, and the DC region.

Rooms are single or double. The dorm sits beside the dining hall and Upper School.

Boys have a supervised nightly study hall and may use the Teaching and Learning Program.

Local families sometimes choose boarding to reduce commuting pressure. That can be sensible, but it changes family life.

Ask about weekends, leave, devices, healthcare, homesickness, discipline, roommates, meals, and holiday closures.

Boarding here is best understood as a small residential community attached to a regional day school. Compare it with full boarding schools on residential programming, weekend population, staffing, health coverage, and travel logistics.

Getting to the Cathedral Close

The nearest rail stations are not at the school gate

St. Albans sits on the Cathedral Close near Wisconsin and Massachusetts Avenues.

The Cathedral identifies Tenleytown and Woodley Park as the nearest Metrorail stations. Metrobus stops are closer.

The school's public admissions and contact pages do not describe regular student buses, a rail shuttle, late activity transportation, carpool matching, or transportation fees. Do not assume the NCS shuttle serves St.

Albans boys.

St. Albans says dinner is available to dorm residents and day students staying for a rehearsal or late sports event.

That is useful late-day infrastructure, but the public page does not publish the charge, serving cutoff, allergen process, or whether a day student must register in advance.

Visitor parking is in the Cathedral garage during the school day. Surface parking is limited, and visitors are asked not to use neighborhood streets.

Daily pickup and student parking rules are not public.

A commute test should end after the activity your son would choose, not at dismissal. Try the trip in both directions during rush hour.

Add equipment, rain, missed buses, and a younger sibling's schedule.

Who feels at home

Published diversity is a starting point, not a belonging measure

St. Albans reports that 43 percent of students are students of color.

The school publishes affinity groups for Black, Asian American and Pacific Islander, Latine, Middle Eastern, Jewish, and multiracial identities.

The Cultural Awareness Organization, annual Diversity Forum, speakers, travel, and family programming add other forms of community work. These are real structures, but participation and impact data are not public.

The public site does not break enrollment, aid, discipline, leadership, retention, or advanced-course access down by identity. It also does not publish student climate results or family income distribution.

Niche displayed 63 self-selected reviews when checked. Its small polls had only 12 responses on safety and happiness, 13 on competitiveness and athletic identity, and 16 on teacher engagement and care.

Those denominators are far too small and unrepresentative to establish current climate; the recurring praise and criticism are useful only for asking how workload, athletics, teaching consistency, and brotherhood feel in practice.

A child should meet more than one student during a visit. Ask him who spoke in class, who asked for help, who seemed relaxed, and whether the school's ways of being a boy looked broad enough for him.

Health, injury, and daily care

Named people are visible; the operating policies are not

The current support page names a director of counseling who offers one-to-one counseling and helps facilitate academic accommodations, plus a Lower School counseling director. It does not publish availability, crisis coverage, session limits, confidentiality boundaries, referral practice, or how outside clinicians coordinate with school.

For athletics, St. Albans says two full-time certified athletic trainers provide injury prevention, assessment, immediate care, rehabilitation, and reconditioning in collaboration with physicians.

That is meaningful on-site capacity, but the public page does not provide concussion, heat, return-to-learn, or emergency-action protocols.

The public 2026 opening-meetings calendar scheduled mandated-reporting and anti-harassment training for faculty and staff on August 27. That is evidence of a planned current safeguard, not evidence about completion, quality, reporting outcomes, or independent oversight.

The public pages reviewed do not identify school-nurse coverage or publish medication, immunization, communicable-disease, food-allergy, mental-health emergency, injury-notification, or boarding-health rules. Families managing asthma, diabetes, severe allergy, medication, concussion, or psychiatric risk should review the current private policies with the relevant clinician before enrollment.

Who is accountable

Fall 2027 entrants will arrive during a headmaster transition

St. Albans is a division of the Protestant Episcopal Cathedral Foundation, the shared legal entity for the Close institutions.

It also has its own Governing Board, chaired by Rachel Sheridan when this guide was reviewed.

The Bishop of Washington, the headmaster, the PECF president, faculty representatives, and community members appear in the school's published board structure. Shared foundation governance does not erase each school's separate responsibility.

Jason Robinson announced on August 27, 2026 that he will leave after the 2026–27 school year. The Governing Board said it would begin a national search with an outside firm and community participation.

That timing matters for families entering in fall 2027. The new leader may shape staffing, priorities, culture, and the next strategic plan.

It does not mean the school day stops or that the outcome will be negative.

Before enrollment, ask who will lead on July 1, 2027, how the transition will be governed, and which current commitments are protected. Read the search updates rather than filling silence with rumor.

Safety, history, and present questions

The historical record belongs in due diligence, not in rumor

In 2019, St. Albans initiated an outside investigation into past adult-student sexual misconduct.

Beauvoir, NCS, and Washington National Cathedral joined when investigators found incidents crossing Close institutions.

The investigators interviewed more than 200 people and reviewed more than 40,000 documents. Independent reporting said allegations were corroborated against nine former St.

Albans employees. Most substantiated conduct across the Close dated from the 1950s through 1980s.

The institutions apologized, reported credibly accused adults to law enforcement and relevant employers, and described policy improvements. The 2019 materials said no allegation involved a then-current employee.

Historical reporting also records a 2014 student social-climate episode involving NCS accounts of unwanted advances and inappropriate St. Albans responses online.

Later reporting described added consent and healthy-relationship education.

These records are not evidence of current misconduct. They are evidence that safeguarding, adult boundaries, peer conduct, and cross-school accountability deserve direct questions from every family.

The public site does not provide a current child-protection policy, adult-boundary code, anonymous reporting route, investigation protocol, or external appeal path. Ask to read them before signing the contract.

The current contact page lists PECF Police for emergencies and after-hours issues. That is not a substitute for understanding school reporting, mandatory reporting, support for students, records, or independent review.

Fit, misfit, and a balanced list

Keep St. Albans high only if the full routine works

St. Albans may fit a boy who wants strong academics, close teacher relationships, visible tradition, athletics, chapel, service, and selected coed experiences.

He should be willing to seek help and live inside a full schedule.

Slow down if he needs a secular day, broad coeducation in every class, specialized learning intervention, freedom from seasonal athletics, a simple commute, or a lighter performance culture.

For a coed and secular comparison, look at Georgetown Day. Sidwell Friends offers coeducation and Quaker practice.

Maret offers a smaller coed DC setting. Potomac changes the campus and commute equation.

For boys' schools, compare Landon, Georgetown Prep, St. Anselm's Abbey, and The Heights.

Their faith, grade spans, boarding, athletics, academic scale, location, and price differ meaningfully.

A strong list should include schools where the child can genuinely say yes. It should not be a prestige ladder.

Keep public and charter pathways in view when they better fit the student, commute, or after-school load.

What the year really costs

$59,938 is the starting number, not a family budget

Published 2026–27 tuition is $59,938 for day students in every grade. Upper School boarding tuition is $84,497.

Fall 2027 tuition has not been published, so families should not reuse those figures unchanged.

St. Albans does not publish a complete 2026–27 fee schedule.

The public page does not say which books, lunch, technology, uniforms, athletic gear, trips, after-school programs, or transportation are included.

The aid application uses Clarity and costs $60. It opens October 1.

Applicant families must submit it with supporting documents by January 20, 2027. Awards usually arrive with admission decisions.

The school describes admissions as need-blind and aid as need-based. It says it works to meet full demonstrated need.

Yet its FAQ also says the budget can leave an admitted family on an aid wait list.

In 2026–27, St. Albans says it awarded more than $6.4 million, with grants covering 5 to 99 percent of tuition and an average grant near 69 percent.

Its tuition page says about 30 percent of students receive aid, while the admissions landing page says 26 percent. Until the school reconciles those figures, neither should be treated as an exact current denominator.

Families with incomes above $350,000 have received aid, according to the school. Income alone does not determine an award; assets and circumstances matter.

Apply if the full year would strain the household.

Cathedral Choristers and Acolytes receive stipends. The live Cathedral page still labels its only amounts as 2022–23—$6,000 for junior and $8,000 for senior choristers—so those are not current quotes.

The novice process begins in Grade 3, and a chorister place remains contingent on St. Albans admission.

Ask for the 2027–28 stipend and every associated travel, uniform, lesson, and camp cost.

Where boys actually enter

Grade 4 is the large door; Grade 6 is intentionally small

St. Albans names Grades 4, 6, 7, and 9 as entry years.

Grades 5, 8, 10, and 11 are non-entry years. The school says Grades 5 and 8 average zero to two openings and Grades 10 and 11 average zero to three.

Those are historical ranges, not promised Fall 2027 seats.

About 40 boys enter Grade 4, called Form C. They begin in an open-space, team-taught setting with English, math, and geography.

Specialists teach Spanish, science, religion, art, and music.

Grade 6, or Form A, adds only six to eight boys. The class remains in three homeroom sections.

Students continue Spanish, religion, art, and music, and choose an athletic activity for the first time.

Grade 7 is also a meaningful entry, adding 13 to 16 boys. It is the first fully departmentalized year and the first advisory year.

At least one-third of the grade is new, according to the school.

Grade 9 begins Upper School and is a published entry year. St.

Albans does not state how many ninth-grade places will be available, or how many go to current eighth graders, boarders, and outside day applicants.

The non-entry pages do not offer family tours, and the Grades 10 and 11 page also rules out shadow visits; the October 25 open house is the public visit.

Those pages disagree with themselves on testing: Grade 8 calls the SSAT or ISEE optional but retains a stale January 15 reference, while Grades 10 and 11 label testing optional and then say scores must be submitted. Confirm the actual Ravenna checklist before spending time or money on a test.

The school publishes no applicant, offer, wait-list, yield, or acceptance-rate figures by grade. Reputation is not a denominator.

Ask for actual recent seat counts before reading meaning into a tour or test score.

Fall 2027 admissions

The public calendar is unusually complete

The Fall 2027 process opens in Ravenna on September 8, 2026. Lower and Upper School Open Houses are both October 25.

Entry-grade visits are scheduled through the application portal.

The common application deadline is January 5, 2027. Grade 4 writing, records, and recommendations are also due that day.

Its school-run admission testing is January 9.

Grades 6 and 9 have a second deadline. Student writing, school records, teacher recommendations, and test scores are due January 13.

Applicant financial-aid files are due January 20.

Decisions appear in Ravenna at 4:00 p.m. on February 26. Enrollment contracts are due March 12.

The school calendar also lists May 1 as an admissions binding date, but does not explain that term publicly.

Fees vary by route. Grades 5 through 9 list $80 for domestic applicants and $120 for international applicants; Grades 10 and 11 say there is no fee.

The Grade 4 page refers to a listed fee without publishing the amount. St.

Albans offers fee-waiver codes when the charge is a hardship.