Phillips Exeter Academy

Phillips Exeter Academy is a coeducational boarding school in Exeter, New Hampshire, founded in 1781. It enrolls grades 9 through 12 and a PG (post-graduate) year. The school reports 1,096 students in 2026-27, with 890 boarding and 206 day students, on a 700-acre campus of 147 buildings. Its 2025-26 college profile lists students from 44 states, the District of Columbia and Guam, and from 39 countries.

Teaching at Phillips Exeter Academy happens at the Harkness table: twelve students and one instructor around an oval table, a method that originated at Exeter and now shapes the whole school. The catalogue lists more than 450 courses taught by 243 faculty. The college profile states that Exeter does not offer AP classes, because its courses often go well beyond the AP curriculum and more than half are taught at the pace and level of college courses, frequently with college textbooks. Research courses include partnerships with labs at Stanford University and the University of Pennsylvania. The practical consequence for a student arriving from a test-focused background is that speaking in class is itself part of the assessment.

The Phillips Exeter Academy application runs through Gateway to Prep Schools and includes a candidate profile, a $60 fee, two essays of 200 to 500 words, a parent statement, an interview in person, online or by video, current and prior transcripts, and four recommendations from a principal or counselor, an English teacher, a math teacher and a personal referee. Testing depends on entry grade, as described in the FAQ below. Applications open in July, close on January 15, and decisions are released on March 10. No acceptance rate is published.

For 2026-27 Phillips Exeter Academy publishes boarding tuition of $71,797 and day tuition of $56,077, plus an estimated $900 for books and supplies. These are the posted rates for that year and exclude travel, insurance and personal spending. Admission is need-blind: the school states that decisions are made without regard to a family’s financial circumstances, awards roughly $30 million in grants with no loans, reports that 49 percent of students receive assistance, and states that families earning under $150,000 pay no tuition. The financial aid application page addresses international families directly: the application goes through Clarity by January 15, and families living outside the United States who do not file U.S. taxes submit official 2025 income and tax documentation, such as foreign tax returns or official wage statements from employers. Documents in a language other than English are submitted in the original along with an officially translated copy.

Phillips Exeter Academy’s January 15 deadline pushes the last usable SSAT sitting into December, and Southern California test centers fill early in the fall; book a seat two months ahead. If you want an on-campus interview, attach it to a Thanksgiving or winter trip east. Then weigh the parts that no calendar solves: a 14-year-old three time zones away, several cross-country flights a year, dorm routines you cannot supervise, and the value of having a trusted adult within driving distance of campus. EDUBUS is based in Irvine and works on school selection, SSAT preparation and high school planning around this school’s published dates.