Phillips Academy

Founded in 1778, Phillips Academy is an independent, coed, boarding high school serving a diverse community of 1,100 students who come from across the country and around the world. That’s Andover made simple for search engines. But simple, Andover is not. Andover is a high school that stands ready to meet, match, and expand the minds and passions of some of the brightest students in the nation and the world. We have a roster of 300 courses, more than 150 electives, and opportunities for pursuing independent study and study abroad projects. Because of our size, Andover offers enormous depth and breadth of activity and opportunity while still feeling like a personal place. Phillips Academy's energetic, one-of-a-kind educational community ultimately helps young people grow intellectually, artistically, athletically and morally. Smart and curious students from 50 states and 34 countries study with teachers and scholars who are also coaches, mentors, house counselors, advisors and inspirations. Non sibi. Not for self. Paul Revere forged this motto into Phillips Academy’s original seal 230 years ago. Whether it is helping a classmate with a difficult math homework, taking on a leadership role in a school club, or participating in the dozens of service learning projects that take us into local neighborhoods and around the world, non sibi is a way of life. Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, is the oldest incorporated boarding school in the United States. The Academy, widely known today as “Andover,” was founded at the height of the American Revolutionary War in 1778 by the Honorable Samuel Phillips, Jr. A converted carpenter’s shop served as Andover’s first classroom and contained a small group of boys of various ages, among them, a fifer in his father’s militia by the name of Levi Hutchens, who went on to invent the alarm clock; a future mayor of Boston and president of Harvard University, Josiah Quincy III; and John Lowell, Jr., who would one day found Harvard Law School. Since its auspicious beginning, Andover has stayed true to its original mission, as set forth by Judge Phillips in the school’s founding constitution. In that document, Phillips ordained the school to “educate youth from every quarter,” for, among other noble purposes, the “great end and real business of living.” For more than two centuries, its students and educators have heeded Phillips’s doctrine on the importance of good character in laying the “surest foundation of usefulness to mankind,” because “goodness without knowledge...is weak and feeble; yet knowledge without goodness is dangerous.” Paul Revere casted Andover’s unwavering mission thus, personally engraving its official seal, which includes two Latin phrases: Finis Origine Pendet (the end depends upon the beginning) and Non Sibi (not for self). According to the account book of Paul Revere, on April 5, 1782, he received two pounds eight shillings from John Lowell, a trustee of Phillips Academy, for his work. President George Washington visited the academy during its first year as part of his 1789 tour of New England. Upon his return, he recommended the academy to his nephews, who subsequently enrolled in the academy. In 1780, John Hancock ensured that Andover would serve future generations for centuries to come by scrolling his signature to the academy’s articles of incorporation. Andover is the older of the two Phillips Academies, which are independent of each other. Phillips Exeter Academy, located in Exeter, New Hampshire, was founded three years later by Phillips’s uncle, John Phillips. The two schools have enjoyed a passionate sports rivalry since 1861, making it one of the oldest and most storied school rivalries in the nation. For a century, Phillips Academy shared its campus and board of directors with the Andover Theological Seminary, which was the first graduate institution of any kind in the United States. The Seminary moved to Cambridge in 1908, leaving behind much of what comprises the center of Phillips Academy’s present-day campus, including Pearson Hall (formerly Bartlet Chapel), Foxcroft Hall and Bartlet Hall. In the 1920s and 1930s, the campus underwent a major expansion around this historic core, thanks, in large part, to the vision and philanthropy of alumnus Thomas Cochran. The campus expansion included the neo-Georgian additions of Samuel Phillips Hall, George Washington Hall, Samuel Morse Hall, Paul Revere Hall, Oliver Wendell Holmes Library, the Dining Commons, the Addison Gallery of American Art and Cochran Chapel. Along with this new construction, at least nine existing buildings were moved to make way for the campus Vista and the Great Lawn.

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