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American boarding schools are a centuries-old tradition. Many graduates have gone on to be leaders – of their nations, of business and industry, in the arts and sciences, sports, and academia. Yet, despite this distinguished history, American boarding schools remain a mystery to most people, including many families seeking a better education for their children.

The roster of American boarding schools is so vast and varied as to be bewildering to newcomers. Many are hundreds of years old with unique histories and traditions. The range of educational offerings is wide, from elite academics to specialized and remedial programs. So too is the range of opportunities, from accelerated academics and intense athletics to advanced extracurricular offerings and semester abroad programs. Some schools provide close mentoring; others foster independence. Some schools welcome a wide range of students; some are so selective, they rival Harvard’s admission rates. Most offer generous financial aid to qualified families, and some of these have endowments larger than many colleges.

WHAT IS A “PREP SCHOOL”?

For most of American history, a “prep school” signified a boarding preparatory school; a non boarding preparatory school was a “private school.” To be “at school” or “at prep school”, meant living away from home at a boarding school.

In recent decades, the term “prep school” has lost the precise meaning it once had and now is generally but not universally used to denote all college preparatory schools, boarding and non boarding. This author much prefers the traditional terms, “prep” and private”, but defers to the contemporary usage.

TYPES OF SCHOOLS

In general, American schools can be classified by two fundamental distinctions: publicly funded vs privately funded and boarding vs non boarding. This results in four separate categories: private boarding, private non boarding, public boarding, and public non boarding.

Boarding schools are private residential high schools under faculty supervision 24 hours a day. Boarding schools are self funded, through tuition and contributions from alumni and parents. They are distinguished by enhanced academics, facilities, resources, and financial resources. Junior boarding schools, are for younger students, some beginning at 3rd grade, some going as far as 9th grade. Some of these are stand-alone schools, others are attached to high school level boarding schools.

Private non boarding schools (known as Day schools) are self funded through tuition and contributions from alumni and parents. Students live at home under the supervision of their parents/guardians. Like boarding schools, day schools are typically college preparatory programs, so they are “prep schools” in the wider sense of the term.

A Day school provides education with faculty supervision during certain hours of the work week. Day school rules and culture extend into the student’s off campus life, but only in a limited way: homework, sports, and perhaps extracurricular activities in the afternoons after classes and sometimes on weekends. The student otherwise escapes the school culture and its expectations.

Day schools tend to have less student diversity than boarding schools or colleges. This is due to several factors. Day schools are composed by definition of local students, lacking the geographic and international diversity of college and boarding school student enrollment. Day school tuition is expensive relative to typical American family incomes, but because of smaller endowments, day school financial aid is very limited relative to boarding schools or colleges, and usually reserved for a small number of students from underrepresented minority groups (URMs).

As a consequence, day school populations are more homogenous, from a narrow demographic of upper income and upper middle income families.

Public schools are publicly funded day schools. They are the largest group in terms of both numbers of schools and students. Funded by taxes, with close government oversight at the county, state and (increasingly) federal levels, public schools are inclusive, with a mandate to provide equal education and academic opportunities for all. Public schools are externally controlled – course content, budgets, employment, and planning are handled and/or influenced by an array of larger entities – school district administrators, state legislators, unions, and Federal guidelines – and subject to the vagaries of local, state, and national political trends. As is well known and reported, publics range widely in quality from excellent to substandard.

A hybrid subset of public schools are charter schools, which are privately administered but use public funds and require no tuition. Charter schools are subject to public school district curricula requirements but maintain more independence than public schools.

Public boarding schools are very rare in the United States; they number less than thirty in all, supported by state funding, offering tuition-free boarding education to in-state residents. Eligibility requirements and costs vary from school to school and state to state. In general, in-state residency is required for tax supported tuition. Room and board is typically an extra cost, but scholarships can provide funding for such costs. Admissions are typically very competitive and focused on the student’s academic record and emotional maturity. Some schools use a lottery system for applicants. In the main, public boarding schools differ from their private counterparts in two aspects – less resources and a less diverse student body. Because they are so few in number, public boarding schools will not be discussed as a group in this book. Families considering a public boarding option are advised to track many common issues in this book and contact the public boarding schools directly through TABS: The Association of Boarding Schools. See “Resources” in the Appendix.

COMPARATIVE STATISTICS

Percent of students who report that their school is academically challenging:

Boarding 91% Day 70% Public 50%

Percent of graduates who report being very well prepared for university academics:

Boarding 87% Day 71% Public 39%

Percent of graduates who report being very well prepared for university non-academic life:

Boarding 78% Day 36% Public 23%

Percent of students who say their schools provide leadership opportunities:

Boarding 77% Day 60% Public 52%

Percent of students who report being motivated by their peers:

Boarding 75% Day 71% Public 49%

Percent of graduates who achieve top management positions by mid-career:

Boarding 44% Day 33% Public 27%

Hours per week spent on homework:

Boarding 17hrs Day 9hrs Public 8hrs

Hours per week spent watching TV:

(a pattern that continues throughout life)

Boarding 3hrs Day 7hrs Public 7hrs

(source: TABS/Art & Science Group, 2003)

PERCEPTIONS AND MISPERCEPTIONS

Over its history, the boarding school world has had a disproportionate presence in popular culture. Tom Brown’s School Days, an 1856 novel set at England’s Rugby School, was wildly popular in the mid to late 19th century and has been credited for initiating American interest in English style schools. Owen Johnson’s boarding school novellas, now known collectively as The Lawrenceville Stories, and a collegiate sequel, Stover at Yale, further intrigued the reading public in the early twentieth century. Later novels included James Hilton’s Goodbye, Mr. Chips and John Knowles’ A Separate Peace. Roald Dahl brought a contrarian view with Boy, a series of stories about his unhappy days at British boarding schools. Hollywood has brought the boarding world to the general public with a string of films. The Harry Potter films, based on the novels of J. K. Rowling, are the best known boarding school stories of all time, with worldwide distribution in scores of languages.

The modern fascination with celebrity is another source of information about boarding schools which are known for their alumni, many of whom have gone on to fame as politicians, movie stars, and titans of business. News media also bring public awareness, often of a negative sort, since they tend to report on boarding schools on occasions when bad news occurs.

This aggregate cultural history has given rise to a number of myths, often contradictory:

“Boarding schools are only for rich kids.”

Due to their very high tuitions, boarding schools enroll numerous full pay students from wealthy families. Nevertheless, these schools include students of all economic backgrounds due to the schools’ huge amounts of financial aid. Many schools have over 70% of their students on financial aid. Some are “need blind” and provide significant financial aid, sometimes including 100% tuition plus funding for computers, books, and travel, to families who demonstrate need. This largesse supports tuition grants to students across the economic spectrum, including students from middle class families who often qualify for much more financial aid at boarding schools than they can get from universities.

“Boarding schools are only for delinquents and troublemakers.”

Some boarding schools focus on teens with major emotional and psychological issues. The “therapeutic” schools are only one category of boarding school; the large majority are college preparatory schools with a wide variety of specialties, including single sex schools, coed schools, schools focused on learning challenges, church schools, military schools, and equestrian schools. The list is long.

“Boarding schools are not diverse and exclude minorities.”

This was certainly true in the two hundred and fifty year past history of American prep schools, but now the trend is strongly in the opposite direction. Enrollment of students of color reaches 40-45% in many schools. Schools also promote instructional programs in diversity, hold on-campus religious services from many faiths, and promote social tolerance.

“All boarding schools are harsh, cold, and cruel, like a Dickens novel.”

Many nineteenth century American boarding schools sought to model themselves after British schools, where hazing, bullying, and corporal punishment were accepted customs until only recently. A current community of British ex-boarding school students, Boarding School Survivors, claiming permanent emotional and psychological damage from their school experiences, campaigns against British boarding schools and boarding schools in general, tarring all with the brush of their own experience.

Modern American boarding schools are a far cry from the antique British model, or indeed from what American schools once were. Today, student well-being is a top priority, with professional support from advisors, tutors, trainers, and health, dietary, psychological, and time management specialists. With extensive recreational and sports facilities, executive chefs for the dining halls, and school organic farms raising meat, dairy and produce for the dining halls, many schools are so fully equipped they are described as “country clubs with classrooms”.

“You have to be an A+ student to attend boarding schools.”

Another falsehood – the wide range of schools and academic programs means there’s a place for every student who seeks a boarding experience, regardless of classroom success.

“A boarding school education is a sure fire route to getting into Ivy League colleges”

At one time in the 19th and 20th centuries, there was correlative data that would support this false conclusion, as certain boarding schools served as “feeder schools” to elite colleges and universities. The truth was that the admission rates from certain schools and elite colleges had much more to do with family connections than it did with the schools themselves. Now that diversity is the watchword for college admissions officers, boarding school success in college admissions, though stronger on a percentage basis than any other school category, is much lower than in decades past. Mere attendance at a boarding school is no guarantee of admission to elite colleges, nor, in truth, was it ever so.

“Boarding schools are degenerate cesspools of drugs and sexual abuse.”

This canard is fostered by the media’s dictum that the only news is bad news; boarding schools and prep schools in general rarely appear in the news unless something negative happens. News of misbehavior and criminal activity, especially sexual abuse, is widely reported. Despite this, statistics indicate that misbehavior at these schools is neither frequent nor widespread.

“Boarding schools are hopelessly archaic and out of step with today’s world.”

Historically, the leading boarding schools have been and are still at the cutting edge of modern educational techniques; they participated in the creation of Advanced Placement and SAT tests and the conference style of teaching, also known as the Harkness Method. Prep schools in general and boarding schools in particular have been quick to adopt proven pedagogical and technological advances.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF AMERICAN BOARDING SCHOOLS

The development of American boarding schools centers on two fundamental questions: how to prepare the next generation of American leadership, and from where should those young leaders come? In tandem with this ongoing concern is a through line of cultural assumptions and expectations that stretches back to the earliest days of American boarding schools and continues on to this day.

Early Days - 1760s – 1840s

In colonial times, the education of the young was a matter exclusively for the highest classes. Tutors were employed to teach both boys and girls to read and write. Formal education, which consisted of Greek, Latin, rhetoric, logic, and mathematics, was given to the boys, or at minimum the eldest boy of a family. Girls’ education combined academics with social skills and the arts.

Only a handful of boarding schools, known as “academies” operated in colonial times. The term “academy” harkens back to ancient Greece and Plato’s original school and has had very different meanings in different eras and cultures. In early America, an academy was understood to mean private tuition boarding secondary schools situated in towns or cities or immediately bordering them; they were not isolated or secluded. Virtually all were single sex, primarily boys’ schools, though schools for girls also arose. Students boarded in private homes; gradually schools began to provide dormitory housing. Maryland’s West Nottingham Academy was founded in 1744; Linden Hall, a school for girls in Pennsylvania, was founded in 1746; the Governor’s Academy in Massachusetts, was founded in 1763, and North Carolina’s Salem Academy, also a girl’s school, began in 1772. All four flourish today. Other academies followed in the Revolutionary and post Revolutionary eras – Phillips Academy (Andover, MA), Phillips Exeter (NH), Deerfield (MA), Fryeburg (ME), Washington (ME), Cheshire (CT), Blair (NJ), Lawrence (MA), Milton (MA), Suffield (CT), Lincoln (ME) and Western Reserve (OH).

The academies promoted – and continue to promote – ideals of academic excellence, civic idealism, and social inclusivity. Andover’s first African American student, Richard T. Greener, class of 1865, was also Harvard College’s first black graduate. The Maidenhead Academy, later reorganized as the Lawrenceville School (NJ), enrolled students from Cuba and the Cherokee Nation as early as the 1830s. Catholic boarding schools in the United States began with the founding of the Georgetown Preparatory School (MD) in 1789. This era also saw the rise of girls’ schools, including the Emma Willard School (NY) in 1814, and Miss Porter’s School (CT) in 1843. Initially, the girls’ schools featured social graces and less rigorous academics, but the advent of women’s colleges turned the girls’ schools’ focus to college preparation. Military boarding schools also began in this period with Carson Long Military Academy (PA) in 1837. Virginia’s Episcopal High School, the state’s first high school, was founded in 1839.

The Classic Era (1850s -1950s)

The classic era of American boarding schools began with the founding of such schools as the Gunnery (CT) in 1850, the Hill School (PA) in1851, and St. Paul’s School (NH) in 1856. The post Civil War era ushered in another phase of industrial expansion and massive wealth accumulation by industrialists. The families of numerous entrepreneurs suddenly became the New Rich, who sought to emulate the lifestyles of the British aristocracy. This led to the founding of several schools modeled after the classic British “public schools” - Eton, Harrow, and Rugby. Many new American boarding schools were up and running by 1899, including many of the famed schools of today – Tabor Academy (MA), Groton School (MA), Westminster School (CT), Saint George’s School (RI), Saint Mark’s School (MA), Thacher School (CA), Choate School (CT), Taft School (CT), Hotchkiss School (CT), Pomfret School (CT), Woodberry Forest School (VA) – sixty two in all. The next decade saw the founding of Berkshire School (MA), Cate School (CA), Kent School (CT), Mercersburg Academy (PA), Middlesex School (MA), and Trinity-Pawling School (NY), along with many others nationwide.

The schools of this era were characterized by single sex enrollment, secluded gated campuses apart from an urban center, a Protestant religious affiliation (usually Episcopalian), elite admissions which focused on upper class white Anglo Saxon Protestants (WASPs), an emphasis on British sports and British terms (e.g., using the term “forms” instead of “grades’), and the promotion of “character building”. Daily chapel meetings and weekly full church services were mandatory.

The great landscape architect Frederick Law Olmstead, an Andover graduate, designed several classic prep school campuses during this era, all defined by their central circles around which the student houses/dorms and academic building were grouped. The circles gave a central focus to the community as a place for meeting, for study and for sport.

The intent of these schools was elitist – to educate the sons of the WASP upper class. They were also exclusionary, in some cases incidentally, in others by design – denying or strictly limiting admission to other groups, including Jews, Catholics, Asians, blacks, and other groups. The schools emphasized rigor and physical and mental toughness, with spare dorms, strict rules, and little free time. Sports were considered mock battle, a prelude to military service, another nod to the ideology of the British schools (Arthur Wellesley, the 1st Duke of Wellington, purportedly remarked that “the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton”). At the boys’ schools, conflict – in the form of competition for student leadership positions, team rivalries, informal contests, and roughhousing in the dorms – was encouraged. Their cultures insisted on personal sacrifice for and submission to the group: the team, the dorm, the school.

Boarding school academics readied students for college study at a socially acceptable college: girls to the “seven sisters” – Barnard, Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke, Radcliffe, Smith, Vassar, and Wellesley; boys to Harvard, Yale, Amherst, Brown, Dartmouth, Williams, Swarthmore, Bowdoin, Princeton, Haverford, Middlebury, and others (the Ivy League, founded as an athletic conference in 1954, was not a point of obsession as it is now).

The elite families had long established histories with “their” colleges, and admission of their children was a foregone conclusion. The schools’ prime objective was to shape up the children of the elite to make sure they could handle college academics. Several were “feeder schools” for specific colleges. In 1900, Exeter was Harvard’s leading feeder school and Groton sent 19 to Harvard out of a graduating class of 23 (including Franklin Roosevelt). Between 1906 and 1932, Harvard accepted 405 Grotonians, rejecting a total of 3. Choate, Andover, and Hotchkiss regularly sent their students to Yale. Deerfield supplied Dartmouth, Williams, and Amherst. The Mercersburg class of 1928 sent 54 of its 104 graduating seniors to Princeton, (including actor Jimmy Stewart). In 1934, Hill and Lawrenceville sent more students to Princeton than all US public high schools put together.

The early 1900s saw the founding of more traditional schools as well as “progressive” schools such as Putney (VT) and Buxton (MA), which turned away from the British model with coeducation, a focus on science and nature, and inclusive admissions policies. This era also saw the rise of several prominent Catholic boarding schools like Portsmouth Abbey (RI) and Canterbury (CT).

Boarding schools of this era were the source of several pedagogical innovations, notably the Harkness or Conference Method of teaching. Begun at Exeter by its famed principal Lewis Perry with funds provided by industrialist/philanthropist Edward Harkness, the Harkness Method used a large oval wooden table for classes that emphasized discussion and connection between the students rather than lecture from the teacher. Like the campus circle, the oval Harkness table emphasized community involvement and communication. This innovation soon spread to peer schools and then throughout the prep world, where it continues on strongly today.

The Modern Era (1950s-2000)

The aftermath of World War II heralded a series of major societal and economic changes to America in general and the prep school world in particular. The economic boom of the 1950s and 60s rocketed the American middle class into prosperity. Increasing numbers of middle class students applied for college admissions; many went on to professional and business careers in numbers never seen before.

This aspirational stampede prompted universities to chart a new course for their enrollment. Instead of focusing on the children of established upper class families, college admission offices widened their focus to include the high achieving children of the middle class, whose abilities and hard work appeared to point to a new class of achievers.

Concurrent with this new opportunity for middle class students, formerly excluded groups were admitted to colleges in increasing numbers as the emerging civil rights movement in the 1950s and 60s put the issue of improved opportunities for African American students and other minority students at the forefront of social discussion.

Black students were tentatively admitted to boarding schools in the mid century. Gradually diversity became the watchword. Widespread coeducation followed soon after. Some boys and girls schools merged – Choate and Rosemary Hall, Northfield and Mount Hermon (MA), Loomis and Chaffee (CT). Most of the boys’ schools added girls. The newly coed schools experienced a relaxation of the old conflict based boys’ culture, more focus on the individual, and more attention to student comforts. Meanwhile, several girls’ schools chose to remain single sex and have thrived, including Madeira (VA), Westover (CT), Hockaday (TX) and Dana Hall (MA).

Religion at many boarding schools also changed. Many schools dropped their religious affiliations; others watered down their religious aspects. Daily chapel morphed from a focus on prayer and sermons to school meetings, or was terminated altogether. Ecumenicalism – an acceptance and promotion of a wide array of world religions – sprang forth, with campus-based or affiliated chaplains of many faiths. Religious instruction turned from tenets of doctrine to courses in cultural history. Nevertheless, many schools have maintained their traditional church affiliations.

International students have been a presence on American boarding school campuses since the earliest days. Today, internationals are enrolling in larger numbers, bringing a global perspective to the prep school tradition, but also raising the prospect of institutional transformation. This new question of how the schools can accommodate a global population without losing their distinct cultural identities continues as a major challenge. Going forward, American boarding schools must find ways to reconcile their traditions with the forward momentum of the modern world.

OLD MONEY, NEW MONEY, AND NO MONEY

The history of boarding schools also embodies another American theme, one that has been constant through time - the establishment of elites, the rise of social mobility, and the quest for acceptance by excluded groups. The relationship between three aspects of American society – Old Money, New Money and for want of a better term, No Money, continues to play out on boarding school campuses.

Old Money derives from the earliest American elites, wealthy colonial families who devised behaviors and legal structures to ensure the preservation of capital and the means to pass it on within families from generation to generation. These families provided the wherewithal to found cultural and educational institutions, including the academies, as well as political leadership. Old Money families inherit and manage their wealth; work is not a means to acquire more money, it is an opportunity for service or personal enrichment. Since the earliest wealth in the United States derived from the British colonies and then the states created from them, the original Old Money people were and continue to be primarily WASPs.

WASP, an acronym for “White Anglo-Saxon Protestant” was first coined by the influential sociologist E. Digby Baltzell (1915-1996), himself a WASP with an elite education (St. Paul’s, Penn and Columbia). Baltzell’s contention that an ongoing American aristocracy was necessary to provide national leadership was tempered by his view that rising individuals from other backgrounds should join the elite based on their merits. Baltzell, who wrote from the 1950s to the 1990s, maintains influence today.

The earliest Old Money included the “Mayflower families” – the colonial New England merchants and the Dutch families who controlled New York back when it was the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam. Recently wealthy businessmen with no social background, such as John Jacob Astor, were never fully accepted, shunned as “New Money” arrivistes; in time their descendents became Old Money as well.

The rush of wealth created after the Civil War brought an entirely new wave of successful New Money families, flush with cash but lacking social credentials. These newcomers, were despised as crass, status obsessed materialists by the Old Money crowd (some of whom, of course, were rather recently considered New Money). Newly prosperous New Money families, intent on social success, were largely responsible for the sudden explosion of prep school foundings in the 1880s and 90s, the Gilded Age. These Gilded Age New Money families wanted their children to mingle with and marry into Old Money, and much of the social anxieties of the era have to do with these tensions; the novels of Henry James and Edna Ferber all do. These tensions exist in the modern era; Nelson Aldrich, Jr.’s Old Money (1988) limns this world in elegant detail.

According to Baltzell and Aldrich, New Money people are economically ascendant, focused on success, power, prestige, and status possessions. Trophy marriages are New Money habits. New Money relies less on extended families and more on nuclear families, yet with a focus on acquisitiveness and febrile upward striving – more money, more power, more fame, and more social acceptance. Old Money people live quietly. New Money people live large, with lavish lifestyles, leveraged assets, and public personalities. While Old Money remains mostly WASPs, New Money now includes families from every background in the world. The 20th century story of the Kennedy family and the current ones of the Trumps and the Clintons are New Money sagas of financial and political success followed by quests for social acceptance, with mixed results. New Money families seek status and prestige. Old Money families, such as the Bushes and the Roosevelts, seek to maintain relevance in a changing world.

Families without capital or social influence (let’s call them No Money) didn’t figure into this mix. With the exception of some scholarship students at the old academies, No Money students were not admitted to the boarding schools, nor had the means to pay the tuition even if they were accepted. This changed in the modern era with the advent of diversity and inclusion on boarding campuses. Schools which had built large endowments earmarked funds for grants for students needing tuition support. As a result, present day boarding schools include student populations from Old Money, New Money, and No Money backgrounds.

This history has significance in several ways. First, boarding school is a rare circumstance in modern society where young people of radically different backgrounds mingle, work, eat, study, and socialize together on a day to day basis. One result of this is a tendency for boarding school graduates to have more understanding of “other people” than peers from their own social background may do. Another is a certain ease of communication with all sorts of people, as a consequence of this mingling.

Boarding school populations now are economically, racially, and ethnically diverse, but staffing remains remarkably traditional, with most administrators coming from the same cohort that used to populate the traditional student enrollment. Old Prep values which derived from the original Old Money values continue on: valuing service and sacrifice over individuality, and caution and comportment over free expression and exuberance. A good portion of this preference may stem from common sense – keeping a lid on a campus full of teenagers is no small task – but the underlying assumptions of restraint, service to the group, an appreciation of conformity and a suspicion of individuality appear to be due more to cultural assumptions than to pure necessity.

A FAMILY TRADITION

Some boarding schools were founded by members of the same family. The Phillips family of Massachusetts established the Phillips Academy in Andover, MA; a few years later, Phillips Exeter Academy was founded in New Hampshire. The Webb family founded not one but two Webb Schools in Tennessee, and also the Webb Schools of California. St. George’s an Episcopal School, and Portsmouth Abbey, a Catholic school, were both founded by the same person, the Rev. John B. Diman.

SO WHAT IS A “PREPPY” ANYWAY?

Just as the definition of “prep school” is imprecise, so the term “preppy” (or “preppie”) means different things to different people. This has some relevance to the purpose of this book.

In the beginning, a preppy was simply a young lad from an Old Money background who attended the family’s boarding school as a matter of course before going on to the family’s college. The post-WWII era brought the rarified and secluded world of WASP privilege to more general attention. The “Ivy League”, a termed dating from the 1930s, became firmly entrenched in American parlance when the Ivy League athletic conference was founded in 1954. Ivy League men’s clothing became fashionable. Tracking this development, prep schools gained wider attention and interest. Some point to the film Love Story as the first wide spread use of the term “preppy” , used in a somewhat mocking and negative tone, indicating a person from an upper class WASP background and their manner of dress and behavior.

In 1980, a book was published that changed that definition – probably by accident. The Official Preppy Handbook, a witty insouciant satire on prep culture, became an instant best seller and a “how-to” handbook for determined status seekers. The result was a shift in the meaning of “preppy” from an underlying WASP lifestyle (and its fundamental values) to a fashion trend: “preppy style”. This expanded into a lifestyle choice one could acquire. A prep school education became a status symbol to collect, along with other preppy accoutrements – Volvo station wagons, pure bred dogs, and summer vacations in certain acceptable zip codes.

The prep craze was magnified by intense marketing. Ralph Lauren, who began his career with Ivy/prep mainstay Brooks Brothers, recognized this marketing opportunity and has exploited it ever since. Popular Merchandise, Inc, aiming for a Ralph Lauren look at a much lower price point, rebranded itself as J. Crew, a fabricated name referencing the ultimate Ivy clothier J. Press and the uber-prep sport, crew.

The prep style continues as it always has, waxing and waning in popularity. The damage, however, has been done. The whimsical sprezzatura of the earlier Old Money era carries on, but it has been nearly overwhelmed by a relentless, rather desperate New Money search for status. With the latter comes a grim focus on all prep schools, boarding and day, as commodities, status markers, and stepping stones to the next aspirational plateau: elite college placement. As a result, the term “preppy” now signifies a shallow materialism, ostentation, and self aggrandizement, values quite at odds with its origins.

WHEN IS PREP NOT PREP?

The terminology in this book is specifically American. British and Commonwealth schools use similar terms but for entirely different meanings:

AMERICAN USAGE BRITISH USAGE

High School College

University or college University

Junior boarding school (pre high school) Prep school

Prep School or Boarding School (high school) Public school

Government chartered high school Academy

Additionally, American usage makes a distinction between boarding “schools” and “academies”.

And as noted, to muddy things further, the American usage of “prep school” can mean either a preparatory boarding school or preparatory schools in general, whether boarding or non boarding.