Discover

'Phillips Exeter Academy' (most commonly called 'Exeter', also 'Phillips Exeter' or 'PEA') is a co-educational independent boarding school for grades 9–12, located on 619 acres^[1] in Exeter, New Hampshire, U.S., fifty miles north of Boston.

Contents

Origins and philosophy

The student body: youth from every quarter

Harkness and Exeter's Academics

Endowment

Campus buildings and facilities

Dormitories

Houses

Tuition

Summer school

Athletics

Exeter in Literature

Exeter in Film

See also

References

External links

Origins and philosophy

The School was established in 1781 by merchant Dr. John Phillips and his wife Elizabeth. John Phillips was the uncle of Samuel Phillips, Jr., who had founded Phillips Academy in 1778. As a result of this relationship, the schools share a rivalry; the football teams have met nearly every year since 1878. Exeter has a motto: "χάριτι Θεοῦ"—"by the grace of God" in Greek. Exeter's ''Deed of Gift'', written by John Phillips at the founding of the school, warns that "Goodness without knowledge is weak and feeble, yet knowledge without goodness is dangerous. Yet the two combine to form the most noble of character." In an adaptation of a requirement in the Deed that the document be read at every meeting of the trustees, the principal of the Academy speaks on this theme every year at the school's opening assembly.
Since its founding, the Academy has moved progressively away from requiring Christian religious observance among its students, and from the teaching of Christian Theology^[2]. Christian religious observances in the Chapel designed by Ralph Adams Cram were ended by Tenth Principal Richard W. Day, who also led the renovation of the room to strip out any religious connotation. Day also ended the requirement that all students take one year of classes in Christian Theology.

The student body: youth from every quarter

The Academy is devoted to a tradition of diversity. One of its unofficial mottoes–"Youth from Every Quarter"–is held of the maxim of this dedication. Director of Scholarships H. Hamilton "Hammy" Bissell (1929) worked long and hard to help qualified students from all over the U.S. attend Exeter.^[3]
Currently, 45 states, 26 different countries, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands are represented in the student body of the Academy. Students of non-European descent represent 38% of the Academy. (Asian 24%, Black 8%, Hispanic/Latino 6%, Native American 0.4%) Male and females both represent 50% of student body. Legacy students represent 13% of the student body.
The devotion to diversity also ensures that students come from a broad range of socioeconomic origins. Of new students entering in 2006 (a total of 345), 54% attended public school and 46% attended private, parochial, military, home or foreign schools.
Tenth Principal Richard Ward Day believed in the value of students studying outside of the town of Exeter and during his tenure the Washington Semester and foreign study programs were begun. In addition to the year-long programs offered in China, Spain, Italy, and France through the School Year Abroad program, the Academy sponsors trimester-long programs in Stratford, England; Grenoble, France; St. Petersburg, Russia; Göttingen, Germany; and Cuernavaca, Mexico.
A traditional, though informal, association existed between Exeter and Harvard University from the early 19th Century. This traditional association declined throughout the 20th Century, and students now matriculate to a wide range of colleges and universities. Eighty-one percent of the students board, living in on-campus dormitories or houses. The remaining nineteen percent of the student body is composed of day students from the surrounding communities. Phillips Exeter has been co-educational since 1970; in 1996 a new gender-inclusive Latin inscription ''Hic Quaerite Pueri Puellaeque Virtutem et Scientiam'' ("Here, boys and girls, seek goodness and knowledge") was added over the main entrance to the Academy Building (see left) to augment the original ''Huc Venite, Pueri, ut Viri Sitis'' ("Come hither boys so that ye may become men") to reflect the school's coeducational status. The Academy uses a unique designation for its grades: entering first-year students are called Juniors (nicknamed preps), second-years students are Lower Middle (also called lowers), third-year students are Upper Middle (uppers), while Seniors remain Seniors.

Harkness and Exeter's Academics

Exeter has a long tradition of offering its students rigorous, broad, and cutting-edge academics. This is demonstrated not only by state-of-art facilities like the Library or Phelps Science Center, but also Exeter's pioneering of the Harkness philosophy. On April 9, 1930, philanthropist and oil magnate Edward Harkness wrote to Exeter's Principal Lewis Perry regarding how a substantial donation he had made to the Academy might be used:
"What I have in mind is [a classroom] where [students] could sit around a table with a teacher who would talk with them and instruct them by a sort of tutorial or conference method, where [each student] would feel encouraged to speak up. This would be a real revolution in methods."
The result was “Harkness Teaching,” in which a teacher and a group of students work together, exchanging ideas and information, around a table.
Since a 1930, the Academy's principal mode of instruction has been by discussion, "seminar style", around an oval table known as the "Harkness table". The completion of the Phelps Science Center in 2001 meant that all science classes, previously the only ones taught in a more conventional layout, could also be conducted around the same oval tables. Classes are small, no more than 12 students per class, to encourage all students to participate. These "Harkness" classes feature heavily in both the school's identity and its day-to-day life. Harkness is a symbol of the Academy and considered one of the many highlights of an Exeter education.
Lectures are rare; students learn from each other, guided by an instructor's questions. This is evident not only in humanities and language courses, but also in the sciences and math. For example, math is not taught with traditional text books. Instead, workbooks written by the faculty and some students are used. Students complete complex word problems from the workbook and present their work to the class. Students are not given theorems, model problems, or principles beforehand. Instead, these emerge from students' complementary approaches to the assigned problems.
Elements of the Harkness method can now be found at academic institutions across the globe.
The school offers 350 courses in 19 subject areas, the student to teacher ratio is 5:1, and a substantial majority of the faculty have advanced degrees in their fields.^[4]

Endowment

Exeter's endowment as of 7 December 2006 was $902 million.^[5] This is the second-highest endowment of any American secondary school, behind the $7.7 billion endowment of Kamehameha Schools in Hawaii,^[6] and ahead of the $730 million endowment of its traditional rival, Phillips Academy. Exeter's large endowment enables the Academy to provide excellent financial aid.

Campus buildings and facilities

★ Academy Building: The third of its kind, erected in 1914 after the devastating fire that ruined the second, the Academy Building was designed by the noted architect Ralph Adams Cram of Cram, Goodhue & Ferguson and houses the History, Math, Religion and Classical Languages departments. Two wings were added to the original structure during the great building boom of the 1920s and 1930s orchestrated by Principal Lewis Perry. The building houses the Assembly Hall (formerly known as the Chapel), a grand room upholstered with red carpeting and furnished with red seating (which replaced what had been the traditional style of predecessor rooms in the previous Academy Buildings: the plaster walls were painted, the flooring was plain, and students sat on traditional wooden parsons benches [visible in photos of the predecessor Chapels in the previous Adademy Buildings]), which seats the entire student body during Assembly. In former times, non-denominational, Christian religious services were conducted in the Chapel every morning Monday through Saturday before the beginning of classes and attendance was mandatory for all students in keeping with the wishes of the founders of the Academy. The bell (visible in the above photo of the Acadmey Building tower) was rung in a succession of rings to call the student body to worship: Ones, Twos, Threes, Fours and Fives. After Fives were rung, monitors would begin walking down the rows checking attendance on the benches. The bell is also rung to mark the end of classes.

★ Class of 1945 Library: The campus is well known for its modern library, designed by Louis Kahn. It is a building of much repute: it was awarded the 25 Year Award by the American Institute of Architects in 1997. On May 19, 2005, the library was honored on a United States Postal Service stamp that inaugurated it as one of twelve Masterworks of Modern American Architecture along with the Chrysler Building, Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall and the TWA terminal in New York's JFK Airport. As of 2006, the library houses 158,000 volumes and has a shelf capacity of 250,000 volumes. It is the largest secondary-school library in the world.

★ Fisher Theater: Home to the Drama Department, Shakespeare Society, and the Dramatic Association (DRAMAT). Includes a blackbox theater (seats: 90) and a main stage (seats: 300).

★ Forrestal Bowld Music Center: Home to the Music Department, the Music Library, and a capella groups.

★ Mayer Art Center: Home to the Art Department and the Lamont Art Gallery.

★ Phelps Science Center - Designed by Centerbrook Architects, the state-of-the-art center facilitates Harkness instruction and provides ample laboratory and classroom space. Recipient in 2004 of American Institute of Architects New Hampshire's Honor Award for Excellence in Architecture.

★ Phelps Academy Center: Opened in the Spring of 2006, the Phelps Academy gives a center to the entire community. It is home to the new Grill, the new Post Office, the Forum (a 300 person auditorium), most student clubs including ''the PEAN'' (Phillips Exeter Annual, the student yearbook), ''the Exonian'' (Exeter's student newspaper, the oldest continuously running secondary school newspaper in the country), ''PEALife Magazine'' (''PEAL''), the Student Council (StuCo), and Student Activities.

★ Phillips Church (formerly the Third Congregational Church): Renovated and reopened in the winter of 2003, the building is a place of worship for students to all faiths. The building includes a Hindu shrine, a Muslim prayer room and ablutions fountain, a kosher kitchen, and a meditation room. Services that are individual to Phillips Church include Evening Prayer on Tuesday nights, Thursday Meditation, and Indaba—a religious open forum.

★ Phillips Hall: Home to the English and Modern Languages Departments. Includes the Elting Room—home to faculty meetings. Built during the tenure of Principal Lewis Perry.

★ The Boiler Plant: The Academy has its own steam-boiler operation where steam is raised and piped all over the campus, heating most of the buildings.

Dormitories

★ Abbot Hall (Oldest dormitory, named for the Second Principal Benjamin Abbot.)

★ Soule Hall (Named for the Third Principal, Gideon Lane Soule.)

★ Hoyt Hall

★ Peabody Hall

★ Dunbar Hall

★ Webster Hall (Named for distinguished alumnus Daniel Webster (1796).)

★ Lamont Hall (formerly the Lamont Infirmary Annex; named for distinguished alumnus Thomas Lamont (1888))

★ Wheelwright Hall (Named for John Wheelwright, founder of the Town of Exeter.)

★ Langdell Hall (named after Christopher Columbus Langdell)

★ Merrill Hall (named for alumnus Abner Merrill (1838) who gave the original Merrill Hall which stood on the site)

★ Bancroft Hall (Named for distinguished alumnus George Bancroft (1811).)

★ Wentworth Hall (named after George Wentworth)

★ Amen Hall (Named for the Seventh Principal, Harlan Page Amen.)

★ Cilley Hall (Used for filming of the movie "A Separate Peace")

★ McConnell Hall

★ Ewald Dormitory

★ Main Street Hall
[N.B. Merrill-Langdell are girls' dormitories.]

Houses

★ Browning House

★ Dow House

★ Dutch House

★ Gould House

★ Knight House (across Front Street from Phillips Church)

★ Kirtland House (CEJM)

★ Moulton House

★ Williams House (Built in 1820, oldest dormitory facility on campus.)
(N.B. The Academy has long had a policy of moving houses around the town of Exeter and the campus.)

Tuition

Tuition to Exeter for the 2007–2008 school year is $36,500 for boarding students and $28,200 for day students, not including optional and mandatory fees. Exeter offers need-based financial aid. Beginning with the Junior (freshman) class of 2010, Exeter will offer admission aid on a need-blind basis.

Summer school

Each summer, Phillips Exeter plays host to 650 students embarking on an intensive five-week program of Academic Study. The summer program accommodates a diverse student body typically derived from over 40 different states and dozens of foreign countries.
The summer school is divided into two programs of study: Upper School, which offers a wide variety of classes to students currently enrolled in high school who are entering grades ten through twelve as well as serving post graduates; and Access Exeter, a program for students entering grades eight and nine, which offers accelerated study in the arts, sciences and writing as well as serving as an introduction to the school itself. Access Exeter curriculum consists of five academic clusters; each cluster consists of three courses organized around a focused central theme.
In addition to intense academic study, the Summer School offers unique introductions to several defining characteristics of the school, including the residential prep school life, school facilities, and sports including squash and crew.

Athletics

Exeter is known not only for its strong academic curriculum, but also for its competitive athletic teams. The school offers 65 interscholastic teams at the Varsity and Junior Varsity level as well as 27 intramural sports squads. Other various fitness classes are also offered. The Boys' Water Polo team has won twenty-two New England prep school championships. Boys' Swimming has won fifteen of the last seventeen New England championships (with rival school Andover winning for the first time in 2007), placing runner-up both losing years, and the Cycling team is the defending champion. Wrestling has won the New England tournament thirteen times as well.
Exeter is a fixture in New England championship tournaments in nearly all sports, narrowly missing the championship in both Boys' and Girls' Soccer in 2005, and winning the New England Class A Championship in Football in 2003. In 2007, the Boys' Squash team finished second at the New England Division A Interscholastic Championship and fourth at the National High School Team Tournament. Both the Men's and Women's Cross Country Teams have become perrenial powerhouses, winning the NEPSTA Championship multiple times in the past decade. The wrestling team has won more Class A and New England Prep School Wrestling Association titles than any other team, most recently winning the Class A tourney in 2007, 2003 and the New England tourney in 2001. It has also crowned a National Prep Wrestling champion, Rei Tanaka, in 1990. Both the Girls' and Boys' Ice Hockey teams have won New England Championships recently as well.
Exeter is also known for a consistently strong and richly traditioned rowing program. In recent years the Boys' Crew took first and fourth place at the U.S. Rowing Junior National Championships in 1996 and 2002 respectively. The girls' recently took sixth place at the 2006 championships. The Boys' Crew was the first organized sport at Exeter and over its more than 100 years of competition has produced several Olympians, National Team members and numerous Division I rowers. The school's traditional athletic rival is Phillips Academy, and the annual Exeter-Andover Football game has been played with great passion since 1878. Other opponents on the sports fields include Deerfield Academy, Northfield Mount Hermon, Choate Rosemary Hall, Loomis Chaffee, Avon Old Farms, Worcester Academy, and Cushing Academy.

'Fall Interscholastic Sports' ★ Cross Country ★ Field Hockey ★ Football ★ Volleyball ★ Soccer ★ Boys' Water Polo

'Winter Interscholastic Sports' ★ Basketball ★ Hockey ★ Squash ★ Swimming and Diving ★ Indoor Track ★ Wrestling

'Spring Interscholastic Sports' ★ Girls' Water Polo ★ Track ★ Baseball ★ Softball ★ Crew ★ Cycling ★ Golf ★ Lacrosse ★ Tennis

The athletics program utilizes many facilities including:

★ 'The George H. Love Gymnasium' (Houses squash facilities with 12 international sized courts, two swimming pools, four basketball courts, a weight training room, sports science lab, gym offices, two hockey rinks, a training room, locker rooms, a dance studio, an indoor cage, wrestling room, gymnastics space, cycling training room and visiting team locker rooms.)

★ 'The Thompson Gymnasium' (Gift of Col. William Boyce Thompson [1890])

★ 'The Thompson Cage' Built 1931. (Gift of Col. William Boyce Thompson [1890])

★ 23 outdoor tennis courts

★ 'Ralph Lovshin Track' (an outdoor, all-weather track) named for the long-serving, much loved track coach.

★ 'Plimpton Playing Fields' (room for all the Academy's Varsity and JV sports)

★ 'Phelps Stadium' (Used for football, lacrosse and field hockey. Has been recently converted into turf surface)

★ 'William G. Saltonstall Boathouse' (Center of crew on campus on the Squamscott River) Named for the Ninth Principal.

★ 'Amos Alonzo Stagg Baseball Diamond' Named for the distinguished alumnus.

★ 'Hilliard Lacrosse Field'

★ 'Roger Nekton Championship Pool' Named for the former swimming coach whose wife was Director of Athletics at the Academy.

★ Several miles of cross country and running trails.

★ Wrestling Practice Room

Exeter in Literature

Several pieces of fiction mention Exeter. Some of the more significant works have been by alumni, who often change the name of the school in their works.

★ ''A Separate Peace'': This novel by John Knowles is set at "Devon", a thinly veiled fictionalization of Exeter, in the summer of 1942. The climactic scene of the novel is set in the Ralph Adams Cram-designed Chapel.

★ ''A Prayer for Owen Meany'': In this novel by John Irving, the protagonist/narrator, John Wheelwright, and his best friend, Owen Meany, are both day students at Gravesend Academy, modeled after Exeter. Owen writes a popular column in ''The Grave'' (modeled after ''The Exonian'') called "The Voice", which is critical of the school administration and the Vietnam war, among other topics. Part of this book was later adapted for the movie ''Simon Birch'', though none of the Exeter parts made it into the film.

★ ''The World According to Garp'': In this novel by John Irving, the protagonist/narrator, T.S. Garp, is the illegitimate, only child of Jenny Fields, the school nurse at "Steering School", Irving's fictionalized name for Exeter. Young Garp grows up in Steering's infirmary, eventually attending the school and joining its wrestling team. The book was adapted into a screenplay for the film of the same name, starring Robin Williams, Glenn Close, and featuring a cameo by the author as a wrestling referee.

★ ''A Widow for One Year'': In this novel by John Irving, Eddie O'Hare, one of the main characters of the story, is a student at Exeter. Also, Eddie's father, "Minty" O'Hare, is a teacher there, and Eddie is raised on the campus.

★ ''The Imaginary Girl Friend'': In this collection of autobiographical essays by John Irving, both Exeter and wrestling are discussed. The dust jacket features a photo from the PEAN of the 1961 Exeter Varsity Wrestling Team.

★ ''Tea and Sympathy'': This play by Robert Anderson (later a movie as well) treats the inner struggles of an Exeter student.

★ ''In Revere, in Those Days'' A novel by Roland Merullo, this is about a boy who, instead of attending public school in his predominantly Italian town in Masschusetts, attends Exeter and plays hockey.

★ ''American Psycho'' A novel by Bret Easton Ellis. This novel, a satire on the "yuppie" affluent culture of privileged, powerful, young men in Manhattan features a delusional protagonist, Patrick Bateman, who is referenced as having attended Exeter.
The following pieces of nonfiction mention Exeter and/or document its history.

★ ''The Story of Phillips Exeter (1957): A historical documentation of the Academy's history by Myron R. Williams.

Exeter in Film

★ ''A Separate Peace'' (1972): The movie is filmed on the Exeter campus, with the author having based the fictional Devon on his years at Exeter.

★ ''The Birdcage'' (1996): Calista Flockhart's character, the daughter of a politician, is seen wearing an Exeter sweatshirt.

★ '' (1992): Edmund Perry, the stories protagonist, is shown to have attended Exeter as a scholarship student prior to his death. The focus is on the four years and the events at the Academy which ultimately led to the tragedy.

★ The Prince of Tides (1991): Tom Wingo (Nick Nolte) coaches Bernard Lowenstein (Jason Gould) in football fundamentals in Central Park; Bernard will try out for the Exeter football team when he returns to school in the fall.

See also

★ List of notable Phillips Exeter Academy alumni

★ Phillips Exeter Academy Crew

References

1. Communications Office, "Facts 2006-2007: Phillips Exeter Academy," Exeter, 2006.
2. John Irving speaks of what he learned about Christian theology in classes at Exeter
3. ''Boston Globe'', Nov. 1998.
4. [1]
5. Communications Office, "Facts 2006–2007: Phillips Exeter Academy," Exeter, 2006.
6. http://www.ksbe.edu/allpdfs/annualreport04/6_strengthening_endowment.pdf

External links

★ Phillips Exeter Academy web site

★ Chronology of Phillips Exeter Academy web site

★ PEA Alumni/ae web site (Academy official)

★ PEA Alumni/ae web site (by an alumnus)

★ Alumni/ae Website (class of 1961)

★ Alumni/ae Website (class of 1980)

★ Alumni/ae Website (class of 1989)

★ Phillips Exeter's "A Separate Peace" site

★ Phillips Exeter Academy Admissions Video on SchoolFair.tv

★ Phillips Exeter Academy on Placeopedia

★ Donald Hall talking about Phillips Exeter Academy on Peoples Archive.

★ Boarding School Review

★ Phillips Exeter Academy Crew Homepage

★ America's Best College Preparatory Boarding School Information