St. Andrew's School

St. Andrew’s School is a coeducational Episcopal boarding school in Middletown, Delaware, founded in 1929 by A. Felix duPont. It enrolls grades 9 through 12. The 2026-27 school profile reports 318 students, all of them boarders, with international students making up 14 percent and students coming from 28 states and 13 countries; the campus covers 2,200 acres. The school describes itself as one of only four fully residential coeducational boarding schools in the United States: there are no day students, and the community stays on campus on weekends, with elected Form Council students planning weekend life. A phone-free policy keeps phones in dorm rooms during the academic day, sports and activities, and students turn them in before lights out. Head of School Joy McGrath, class of 1992, is the school’s fifth head.

St. Andrew’s School states in its school profile that it does not offer Advanced Placement courses. Its college-level courses are called Advanced Study (AS), and an Advanced Topics Tutorial (ATT) is a course beyond the AS level. The school reports an average class size of 10 and a 4:1 student-teacher ratio. It does not rank by GPA or weight courses, and all fall semester courses in ninth grade are pass/fail. Exhibitions run through all four years: students orally defend their analytical papers with student and faculty readers. In twelfth grade, Advanced Study English is required, and students write and defend a 10 to 15 page analytical paper on a novel before moving into an Oxford-style tutorial in the spring; a history research seminar with a major independent paper grounded in primary sources is required in grade 11 or 12. Math and science together offer ten year-long AS or ATT courses and eleven semester-long electives, and the language department teaches Latin, ancient Greek, Chinese, French and Spanish.

The school profile lists the most attended colleges for the classes of 2023 through 2026: the University of Pennsylvania (17), Davidson College (16), Brown University (11), Duke University and Vanderbilt University (10 each), and the University of Virginia and Princeton University (9 each). For the class of 2027, as of June 2026, the SAT middle 50 percent range was 580 to 740 on the reading and writing section and 590 to 730 in math.

The St. Andrew’s School application begins with the online inquiry form, which must be submitted before a visit and interview can be scheduled. Families then apply through either the Standard Application Online (SAO) or Gateway to Prep Schools, and the school asks applicants not to submit both. Recommendations come from the current English teacher, the current math teacher and a school administrator, and recommendations, transcripts and other forms are submitted between December 1 and January 31. Every applicant submits the SSAT (Secondary School Admission Test) or the ISEE (Independent School Entrance Exam); applicants whose second language is English and who do not study in an English-medium school also submit the TOEFL or IELTS. An interview is required of all applicants: on-campus tours and interviews run while school is in session from September through December, by appointment, and virtual interviews run from mid-September through mid-January, with appointments after December 15 not guaranteed.

Applications are due January 15. For applications completed by January 31, decisions are mailed by March 10, and admitted students confirm enrollment by April 10. St. Andrew’s admits students to grades 9, 10 and 11 for fall enrollment only and offers no twelfth-grade transfer or PG (post-graduate) year; it typically admits 15 to 20 new sophomores and as many as six new juniors. Application fee waivers are available to families who have completed an inquiry form and whose income is under $150,000. The school does not publish the fee amount or an acceptance rate.

St. Andrew’s School publishes tuition of $78,500 for 2026-27. Because every student boards, there is a single rate; travel, insurance and personal spending are not included. The school meets 100 percent of demonstrated financial need for every admitted student with grants, and states that students are accepted without regard to their families’ means. The 2026-27 school profile reports that 45 percent of students receive aid, with $8,654,647 granted and an average grant of $60,522. Under a policy announced in September 2026, admitted U.S. students from households earning under $150,000 receive a full scholarship covering tuition, room and board, provided the family shows two years of verifiable W-2 income and assets consistent with that income; for households earning $150,000 to $350,000, tuition is capped at 10 percent of annual household income.

Families apply for aid through Clarity, selecting St. Andrew’s School (DE), Clarity code 8579. Clarity opens each August; new families submit by January 15, decisions arrive with the admission letter on March 10, and prior-year tax returns are due May 15. Families who live outside the United States or do not file U.S. taxes are contacted separately for documentation, and the school states that its aid program supports a limited number of international students.

St. Andrew’s School’s January 15 deadline pushes the last usable SSAT sitting into December, so book a seat about two months ahead. On-campus interviews are offered only while school is in session from September through December, so a family flying east should combine the visit and interview into one fall trip; otherwise, book a virtual interview early and avoid the crowded weeks after December 15. Delaware is three hours ahead of California and about 2,350 miles from Irvine in a straight line, which means several cross-country flights a year. An all-boarding campus, weekends at school and a phone-free culture are a real change for a child used to setting their own after-school schedule, so talk it through 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 and high school planning around this school’s published dates.