PhillipsAcademy ,Andover ,MA
PhillipsAcademy is the oldest incorporated academy in the United States, established in 1778 by Samuel Phillips, Jr.. Phillips's uncle founded Phillips Exeter Academy three years later, starting a rivalry that has continued through the centuries. Phillips Academy's endowment stood around $787 million in January 2008, the fourth-highest of any American secondary school. Andover is subject to the control of a board of trustees, headed by Oscar Tang, a New York financier and philanthropist. In July 2012, Tang will retire and Peter Currie, class of 1974, will take over as Chairman of the Board of Trustees.
PhillipsAcademy admitted only boys until the school became coeducational in 1973, the year of Phillips Academy's merger with Abbot Academy, a boarding school for girls in downtown Andover. Abbot Academy, founded in 1829, was the first incorporated school for girls in New England. Then-headmaster Theodore Sizer oversaw the merger, and Phillips Academy's move to coeducation is seen as his most important accomplishment.
Andovertraditionally educated its students for Yale (and to a lesser extent, Harvard), but students now matriculate to a wide range of colleges and universities. In recent years, Andover has sent the largest number of its students to Yale, Harvard, Columbia, Stanford, Duke, Princeton, Johns Hopkins and other top-tier colleges and universities in the United States and abroad. Among other notable alumni, Andover has educated two American Presidents, George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush, NFL Head Coach Bill Belichick, Law & Order creator Dick Wolf, Namesake of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope Lyman Spitzer, four Medal of Honor recipients[citation needed], inventor Samuel Morse, and author Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. The Phillipian, the school's student-run newspaper, is the oldest secondary school newspaper in the U.S., first published on July 28, 1857. It has published regularly since 1878. Likewise, the Philomathean Society (Phillips Academy) is the oldest high school debate society in the nation, established in 1825.