Phillips Academy

Phillips Academy, also known as Phillips Academy Andover (abbreviated as Andover or PA), is a private, co-educational, boarding-and-day, college-preparatory school located in Andover, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. The academy enrolls approximately 1,150 students in grades 9 through 12, including postgraduate students. It is part of the Eight Schools Association and the Ten Schools Admission Organization.

Founded in 1778, Andover is one of the oldest high schools in the United States. It has educated a distinguished list of notable alumni through its history, including American presidents George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush, Bill Belichick, foreign heads of state, members of Congress, five Nobel laureates and six Medal of Honor recipients.

Andover admits students on a need-blind basis and provides financial aid covering 100% of students' demonstrated financial need. 47% of Andover students receive financial aid.

Phillips Academy is the oldest incorporated academy in the United States. It was established in 1778 by Samuel Phillips Jr., a local businessman who hoped to educate Calvinist students for the ministry.

The American Revolutionary War had caused significant upheaval to education in New England, and Phillips Academy filled part of that gap. (For example, Boston Latin School shut down during the war because its headmaster John Lovell, a Loyalist, fled to British Canada after the fall of Boston in 1776.) The founders of Phillips Academy were strongly associated with the Patriot cause. Samuel Phillips and Eliphalet Pearson (later Andover's first head of school) manufactured gunpowder for the Continental Army, and the founders attempted to stock Andover's library with books confiscated from Loyalist families who had fled New England.

Several prominent Revolutionary figures maintained links with the academy, including George Washington (who personally visited the academy while president in 1789; eight of his nephews and grandnephews attended Andover), John Hancock (who signed the academy's articles of incorporation), and Paul Revere (who designed the academy seal). Revere's design of the academy seal incorporated a beehive, crops, the sun, and the academy's two mottos: Non Sibi ("not for oneself") and Finis Origine Pendet ("the end depends upon the beginning"). Other mottos include Youth from Every Quarter and Knowledge and Goodness, two paraphrases from the academy constitution.

In 1828, all-boys Phillips Academy was joined by a sister school, Abbot Academy. Abbot was one of the first secondary schools for girls in New England. Although the academies had neighboring campuses in the town of Andover, their administrations sought to limit and regulate contact between the student bodies. The two academies merged in 1973.

Phillips Academy's traditional rival is Phillips Exeter Academy, which was established three years later in Exeter, New Hampshire, by Samuel Phillips' uncle John Phillips. Andover and Exeter's sports teams have played each other since 1861, and the football teams have met nearly every year since 1878, making Andover-Exeter one of the nation's oldest high school football rivalries.