Phillips Exeter Academy
Phillips Exeter Academy is an independent, co-educational, college-preparatory school in Exeter, New Hampshire. Established in 1781, it is America's sixth-oldest boarding school and educates an estimated 1,100 boarding and day students in grades 9 to 12, as well as postgraduate students.
Exeter houses the world's largest high school library. The academy admits students on a need-blind basis and offers free tuition to students with family incomes under $125,000. Its list of notable alumni includes U.S. president Franklin Pierce, U.S. politician Daniel Webster, over 35 U.S. congresspeople, 6 governors of U.S. states, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, three Medal of Honor recipients, and three Nobel Prize recipients.
History
Origins
Phillips Exeter Academy was established in 1781 by John and Elizabeth Phillips, citizens of Exeter, New Hampshire. It is the nation's sixth-oldest boarding school.John Phillips had earned degrees from Harvard College and came to Exeter as a young man in 1741, initially as a teacher. He made his fortune as a merchant and banker, and gained influence over time as an advisor to the colonial governor, circuit court judge, elected representative, and senior militia officer in the years leading up to the American Revolutionary War. In 1778, he supported his nephew, Samuel Phillips Jr., financially when the latter founded Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, about 40 miles away. As result of this original family relationship, the two schools share a friendly and historic rivalry. John Phillips stipulated in Exeter's founding charter that it would "ever be equally open to youth of requisite qualifications from every quarter".
The new academy benefited from donors besides John Phillips. Phillips had previously been married to Sarah Gilman, the wealthy widow of Phillips' cousin, Nathaniel Gilman, whose large fortune, bequeathed to Phillips, enabled him to endow the academy. The Gilman family also donated to the academy much of the land on which it stands, including the initial 1793 grant by New Hampshire Governor John Taylor Gilman of the Yard, the oldest part of campus; the academy's first class in 1783 included seven Gilmans. In 1814, Nicholas Gilman, signer of the U.S. Constitution, left $1,000 to Exeter to teach sacred music.The academy's first schoolhouse, the First Academy Building, was built on a site on Tan Lane in 1783, and today stands not far from its original location. The building was dedicated on February 20, 1783, the same day that the school's first Preceptor, William Woodbridge, was chosen by John Phillips.
Exeter's Deed of Gift, written by John Phillips at the founding of the school, states that Exeter's mission is to instill in its students both goodness and knowledge:
19th Century and Rivalry with Phillips Academy
In the early 1800s, a deep religious divide opened up between Unitarian Harvard and Calvinist Yale. As a result, Unitarian-friendly Exeter developed a closer relationship with Harvard, and Calvinist-friendly Phillips Academy with Yale. Although originally, most Exeter graduates did not go on to further formal education, the ones that did placed at Harvard in substantial numbers. From 1846 to 1870, Exeter supplanted Boston Latin School as Harvard's largest feeder school, supplying 16% of all Harvard students during that period. In the latter half of the 19th century, graduates of Exeter and the now-defunct Adams Academy of Quincy, Massachusetts were "dominant socially" on Harvard Yard.Exeter's first recorded minority student was Moses Uriah Hall, a young Black man, who entered the Academy in 1858, served in the Union Army during the Civil War, and was known for many years as a skilled stonemason and businessman in nearby Epping, New Hampshire. During the Civil War, four White students from a border state, Kentucky, threatened to leave the Academy unless it adopted a whites-only policy. The principal, Gideon Lane Soule, replied that "the colored student will stay, you can do as you please."
After a brief interlude in the 1880s when Exeter's focus partially shifted from college preparation to general education and only 18% of Exeter students went on to college, Charles Everett Fish restored academic standards by adopting a policy of expelling students who could not attain a C average. A student in the Class of 1892 recalled that "here was no real discipline... the only measure of a boy's quality was his scholarship. If that was satisfactory, little else mattered." The percentages of students going on to college recovered rapidly to 1870s levels, although the student body shrank significantly, dropping from 355 in 1890 to 123 in 1895.File:Philips Exeter Academy advertisement 1909.png|thumb|1909 advertisement for the school, proclaiming that "tudents are dropped from any class, at any time, if they fail to do satisfactory work."|leftFish's successor Harlan Page Amen solidified Exeter's mission as a college-preparatory school. Amen cleaned up Exeter's social image, as the student body had acquired a reputation for unruly behavior. He doubled tuition from $75 to $150 between 1895 and 1899, and claimed in 1903 that he had expelled 400 boys in eight years. He also improved the academy's residential facilities; by 1903 two-thirds of Exeter students were living on campus. Despite the expulsions, Exeter's new-look mission resonated with parents, and enrollment jumped to 390 in 1903 and 572 in 1913. From 1890 to 1894, 67% of Exeter's college-bound students went on to Harvard, Yale or Princeton. 60-odd years later, in 1953, the corresponding number was 67% for the entire academy.
From 1879 to 1881, Exeter participated in the Chinese Educational Mission, hosting students from Qing China who were sent to the United States to learn about Western technology. However, all students were recalled after just 2 years due to mounting tensions between the United States and China, as well as growing concern within the Chinese government that the students were becoming Americanized.
Harkness Gift and financial independence
was appointed principal in 1914 and ran the academy until 1946. Although his early years were marked by grave financial difficulties, including a $200,000 bill to rebuild the Academy Building and the disruption of World War I, he had a "talent for getting wealthy men to part with their money." A professional fundraiser, he did not teach classes; instead, he "spen much time away from school spreading Exeter's fame and obtaining endowments." Exeter's endowment increased ninefold during his tenure. In 1936, Exeter boasted an $8 million endowment for roughly 700 students, making it the richest boarding school in New England in both absolute and per capita terms.Perry used the money to improve student quality of life, expand access for the underrepresented, and build a more cohesive and higher-achieving student body. Under Perry's leadership, Exeter was able to provide housing for all its students for the first time. Perry also adopted a policy that scholarship students should comprise at least 20% of the student body. He imposed greater restrictions on students' after-class activities, culminating in the abolition of fraternities in 1940. Perhaps counterintuitively, these restrictions limited the number of disciplinary cases and helped students improve their academics. From 1922 to 1931, the number of students expelled or asked to leave for academic reasons declined from 136 to 40. When Perry retired, the school educated 725 boys.
Despite Perry's reforms, Exeter retained a certain informality, which was reflected in the school's "unwritten code that there were no rules at the academy until you broke one." Expelled alumni include the journalist David Lamb and the writer and editor George Plimpton.
Perry's largest financial windfall came on April 9, 1930, when philanthropist and oil magnate Edward Harkness wrote to Perry to propose a new way of teaching and learning, for which Harkness would donate funds to foot the bill:
The result was "The Harkness Method," in which a teacher and a group of students work together, exchanging ideas and information in a seminar setting. In November 1930, Harkness gave Exeter $5.8 million to support this initiative. To support the more intensive teaching style, Exeter's faculty grew from 32 teachers in 1914 to 82 in 1946. In addition, through Harkness' largesse, the academy was able to avoid cutting faculty salaries during the Great Depression, making it a rarity among boarding schools.
Since 1930, Exeter's principal mode of instruction has been by discussion, "seminar style," around an oval table known as the Harkness Table. Today, all classes are taught using this method, with no more than 12 students per class.
More recent history
'24 succeeded Perry and continued Perry's successful fundraising record. He began his tenure by completing a $5.6 million fundraising drive, ending in 1948. Later that year, J. P. Morgan partner Thomas W. Lamont '88 left Exeter another $3.5 million in his will.Under Saltonstall, the academy maintained strong ties to elite universities, although like nearly all boarding schools, it lost ground to public schools during this period. Exeter served as one of the testing grounds for the Advanced Placement program, and in 1957, it produced 11 of the 30 incoming Harvard students with enough AP credit to enter as sophomores. In addition, in 1963 Exeter produced 73 National Merit Scholarship finalists, the most in the nation. However, elite universities relentlessly pushed Exeter to tighten academic standards even further, as Harvard's appetite for Exeter graduates meant that the top cut of Exeter students did not reflect the full breadth of the academy's contingent at Harvard. Due to a surge of applicants from public schools, Exeter students no longer enjoyed near-automatic admission to the colleges of their choice. From 1953 to 1963, the percentage of Exeter graduates admitted to Harvard, Yale, or Princeton declined by a third, from 67% to 42%.
Faced with a decline in applicants, the academy responded by broadening its student body. In 1969, Exeter stopped requiring students to attend a weekly religious service. In 1970, it became coeducational; it later appointed its first female principal in 1987. In 1996, to reflect the academy's coeducational status, a new gender-inclusive Latin inscription Hic Quaerite Pueri Puellaeque Virtutem et Scientiam was added over the main entrance to the Academy Building. This new inscription augments the original one—Huc Venite, Pueri, ut Viri Sitis. In 1999, 55% of incoming Exeter students came from public schools.
On January 25, 2019, William K. Rawson '71 was appointed by the academy's trustees as the 16th Principal Instructor. He is the fourth alumnus of Exeter to serve as Principal, after Gideon Lane Soule, Harlan Amen, and William Saltonstall. In 2021, Rawson announced that Exeter would adopt a need-blind admissions policy, following a $90 million fundraising campaign to support financial aid. In 2025, Rawson announced that he would retire at the end of the 2025-26 school year.
Jennifer Karlan Elliott, a 1994 graduate of Phillips Academy, was announced by the Exeter Trustees on November 14, 2025 to be the Principal to succeed Rawson.