Mercersburg Academy

Mercersburg Academy is a coeducational boarding and day school in the town of Mercersburg, in Pennsylvania’s Cumberland Valley a few miles north of the Maryland state line. It enrolls grades 9 through 12 and offers a PG (postgraduate) year. The school traces its roots to 1836, and in 1893 William Mann Irvine reorganized it as a college-preparatory school on the Exeter model; it became coeducational in 1969. The school’s home page reports 443 students, 83 percent of them boarders, and the 2025-26 school profile reports students from 26 states, the District of Columbia and 38 countries, with 51 percent receiving financial aid. The campus covers 300 acres and has seven dormitories, and every day student is affiliated with a dorm. Mercersburg has spiritual roots in the Reformed or United Church of Christ tradition but no formal relationship with any faith, and Sunday chapel is voluntary. Quentin McDowell became the eighth head of school in 2022.

Mercersburg Academy offers 145 courses across eight academic departments, with a 4:1 student-to-faculty ratio and an average class size of 12, on a trimester calendar. Its most rigorous courses are called Advanced Studies (AS), and the school profile notes that students may generally complete a maximum of four AS credits per term. Since 2022-23, select courses use Earned Honors, in which students earn an honors notation on the transcript by meeting honors criteria across the full year. The course catalog shows that some AS courses follow Advanced Placement syllabi, such as AS Language, Rhetoric, and Composition, which is aligned with AP English Language and Composition, while others note that they do not fully prepare students for the AP exam. The language department teaches Mandarin Chinese, French, Spanish and Latin.

Every senior must complete a capstone. MAPS (Mercersburg’s Advanced Program for Global Studies) is a selective two-year program for 12 to 15 students per class that culminates in a 30- to 50-page research project in twelfth grade; other students take a Springboard course built on the Challenge-Based Learning model, ending in a project that is published or presented publicly. The school does not report GPA or class rank. For the class of 2025, the school profile reports an SAT middle 50 percent range of 650 to 750 in reading and writing and 670 to 780 in math among 42 test takers, and an ACT middle 50 percent range of 32 to 34 among 24 test takers. Students are paired with a college counselor in tenth grade, and in eleventh grade they receive personalized SAT or ACT tutoring free of charge.

The Mercersburg Academy application begins with the online inquiry form, after which each family is paired with an admission counselor. Families apply through the Standard Application Online (SAO) or Gateway to Prep Schools (day students must use SAO), and the application includes the student application, transcripts for the current and previous two years, three letters of recommendation and an interview. The application fee is $50 for domestic students and $100 for international students; it may be waived for demonstrated financial need, but merit scholarship candidates are not eligible for a fee waiver. Applicants to grades 9 and 10 are not required to submit test scores under the school’s testing-preferred policy, though the SSAT (Secondary School Admission Test) or ISEE (Independent School Entrance Exam) is required for merit scholarship consideration; applicants to grades 11 and 12 or a PG year must submit a PSAT, SAT or ACT. Applicants whose native language is not English submit the TOEFL (suggested 5.0 or higher on the 6-point scale), Duolingo (suggested 135 or higher) or IELTS, unless they have studied for three or more years in an English-medium school.

An interview is required of all applicants and must be completed before the January 15 deadline: the student meets one-on-one with an admission counselor for about 30 minutes, and parents spend about 30 minutes with the same counselor. A typical weekday visit with a tour and interview lasts about two and a half hours, and boarding families who cannot come on a weekday may attend a weekend Interview Day on November 7 or December 13, 2026, or January 9, 2027. Students with citizenship in China must complete the interview through Vericant. Applications and financial aid materials are due January 15, decisions are announced March 10, and responses are due April 10. Students enroll at all four grade levels, with grade 9 as the primary entry point, and the school enrolls about 10 to 15 PG students each year. The school reports that nearly 800 students interviewed last year for about 150 spaces and does not publish an acceptance rate.

Mercersburg Academy publishes 2026-27 boarding tuition of $81,600 and day tuition of $53,340. Boarding tuition covers all meals and dorm lodging along with health center, technology and laundry fees; textbooks, private music lessons, athletic attire and transportation for medical appointments are billed monthly, and there are annual fees associated with senior year and living abroad. The school covers the full demonstrated financial need of any admitted family. Last school year it awarded nearly $12 million in aid, and half of its families receive merit- or need-based aid ranging from a few thousand dollars to the full cost of tuition and fees. Need-based aid is requested through Clarity by January 15, and families reapply each year.

Merit scholarships are open to domestic applicants, who are considered automatically if they complete the application by January 15 and submit SSAT or ISEE scores; the school describes recipients as typically earning A averages. Access scholarships go to domestic boarding applicants whose families qualify for full need-based aid and cover full tuition, room and board, plus $5,000 in funding for incidental charges; recipients generally score in the 85th percentile or above, and SSAT, ISEE or HSPT scores are required. Scholarship recipients are notified by March 10 and respond by April 10.

Mercersburg Academy does not require the SSAT or ISEE for grade 9, but merit scholarships depend on scores and the school describes its policy as testing preferred, so a solid score still carries weight in a pool competing for about 150 spaces. The January 15 deadline pushes the last usable sitting into December, so book a seat about two months ahead. The interview must be finished before the deadline, so a family flying from Irvine should combine the tour and interview into one trip, for example on the November 7 or December 13 weekend Interview Day; Washington Dulles and Baltimore/Washington International are each about 90 minutes from campus. Pennsylvania is three hours ahead of California and about 2,230 miles from Irvine in a straight line, and because the school closes for Thanksgiving, winter and spring vacations, families need flights or a place to stay on the East Coast for each break. EDUBUS is based in Irvine and works on school selection, SSAT preparation and high school planning around this school’s published dates.