Miss Porter's School

Miss Porter’s School is a girls’ boarding school in Farmington, Connecticut, founded in 1843 by educator Sarah Porter with 18 students, and it enrolls grades 9 through 12. The school reports 340 students for 2026-27 from 28 countries, with boarders making up 65 percent and the rest attending as day students. The 50-acre campus sits at 60 Main Street, only minutes from the town’s restaurants, shops, trails and museums. The school was incorporated as a nonprofit in 1943, and Dr. Katherine G. Windsor is its twelfth head of school. Dormitories are converted Victorian-era homes with air conditioning, and a full-time house director lives in each one. The whole community eats in the dining hall in Main, built in 1831, and monthly formal Sit-Down Dinners bring students and faculty together.

Miss Porter’s School reports 115 classes offered in 2026-27, a 6:1 student-to-faculty ratio and an average class size of 12. It runs a modular block trimester schedule: the year is divided into three 10-week trimesters, each with a different set of classes that meet in 90-minute blocks almost every school day. The school practices competency-based mastery learning, so ninth graders receive standards-based ratings and detailed feedback rather than letter grades, and transcripts for grades 10 through 12 carry traditional letter grades. In place of final exams, students present Demonstrations of Learning, such as projects, presentations and performances, to the school community.

Students in grades 11 and 12 take Advanced Interdisciplinary Seminars (AIS), which the school describes as project-based courses not built around a single high-stakes exam and deeper than traditional Advanced Placement (AP) classes. In eleventh grade, the AIS Global Intensive pairs part of a trimester of study on an issue facing one country with two weeks of travel there; the 2026 destinations were Costa Rica, France and Spain. Every senior takes an AIS Professional Experience course built on job shadowing, site visits and conversations with professionals. The seven departments are humanities, languages, mathematics, science, Technology, Innovation and Entrepreneurship (TIE), visual arts and performing arts, and the languages taught are Chinese, French, Latin and Spanish. Each student has a dedicated college advisor from tenth grade, and the 2026 college destinations listed by the school include Princeton University, Columbia University, Brown University, Cornell University, Duke University, the University of Chicago, UC Berkeley, UCLA and the University of Southern California.

The Miss Porter’s School application begins with the online inquiry form, which must be completed before scheduling a visit or registering for an event. Campus visits and interviews run Monday through Friday from mid-September and last about two hours, including a student-led tour and an interview with an admission officer; families outside the region can ask for a virtual visit and interview, and international applicants may interview by Zoom or WeChat. Applicants submit everything through the Standard Application Online (SAO): official transcripts for the current and previous two years, a graded paper from a current English, history or humanities class, and three recommendations from the current English or humanities teacher, the current math teacher, and a principal, guidance counselor or advisor. SSAT or ISEE scores are optional. Non-native English speakers and students who have not attended an English-medium school for at least two years submit the TOEFL or Duolingo English Test, with minimums for grades 9 and 10 of 5 on the TOEFL 1-6 scale or 120 on the Duolingo test; applicants from mainland China must complete a Vericant interview by January 1, which is not required of students living and studying in the United States.

Applications and financial aid materials are due January 15 and interviews by February 1. All applicants hear about admission and financial aid by March 10, and admitted students submit the enrollment agreement and tuition deposit by April 10. The fall 2026 Porter’s Preview open houses are on October 12 and November 3, and a limited number of interviews by appointment follow the October program for families traveling from a distance. The school generally does not accept mid-year international applicants. The admission pages do not list an application fee or publish an acceptance rate.

Miss Porter’s School publishes 2026-27 tuition of $79,900 for boarding students and $62,000 for day students. The school estimates that families spend an average of $1,000 to $2,000 a year on additional expenses, such as tuition refund insurance, health insurance, the international student fee, books, a laptop, laundry service and riding lessons. In 2026-27, 44 percent of students receive aid, with about $5.7 million distributed. Need-based aid is open to U.S. citizens and permanent residents whose families file U.S. income taxes; international students are not eligible for need-based aid but may receive limited merit awards.

Families apply for aid through Clarity: new families submit by January 15 and hear by March 10, and returning families reapply each year by November 1. The school notes that funds for students who apply after enrolling are typically limited, so it is best to apply at the time of admission. Every new applicant is automatically considered for the Trustee Scholarship of $5,000 to $20,000 a year, renewed annually, and the Sarah Porter Scholarship of $5,000 a year is offered to children, grandchildren, siblings, nieces and cousins of alumnae. Scholarship decisions also arrive with the admission letter on March 10.

Miss Porter’s School is test-optional, so for an Irvine family the key question is whether a score will help: take a first SSAT in the fall of grade 8 to set a baseline, submit it if it is a strength, and otherwise spend the time on the writing sample and interview. The application requires a graded humanities paper, and it is wise to choose it before December. Although interviews are due February 1, a family flying from California to Connecticut should combine the campus visit, an open house and the interview into one fall trip, or book a virtual interview early. Connecticut is three hours ahead of California and about 2,490 miles from Irvine in a straight line. A girls’ school, long trimester classes and a gradeless ninth grade are a real change from an Irvine public school, so explore them together as a family before applying and identify a trusted adult on the East Coast. EDUBUS is based in Irvine and works on school selection, SSAT preparation, writing and interview coaching, and high school planning around this school’s published dates.