Andover welcomes new and returning students back to campus

Upon their arrival on Friday, Sept. 7, members of PA’s 235th incoming class will receive an enthusiastic welcome from Andover’s Blue Keys

August 31, 2012 —Over the course of the next week, the Phillips Academy campus will slowly come back to life as students return to Andover Hill to begin PA’s 235th school year. Hailing from Mexico and Malaysia to Montana and Maine, this year’s student body is a diversified group that represents a total of 41 countries and 47 U.S. states and territories.

The first group of students—athletes, Blue Keys, prefects, proctors, and new international students—will arrive on campus on Tuesday and Wednesday, September 4 and 5. Members of the new incoming class will arrive on Friday, where they will be greeted in the traditional manner by Gunga and a screaming, cheering throng of brightly dressed Blue Keys. They’ll spend the weekend participating in various orientation activities before being joined by returning students on Sunday. Classes will begin on Tuesday, September 11.

Of the 1,143 students that make up the student body for the 2012-2013 school year, 361 will be coming to Andover for the first time. Many of them will be ninth graders, but there will also be a sizeable group of new 10th, 11th, and 12th graders as well as several new post graduate students in the mix.

As always, Andover’s newest incoming class brings with it a diversity of experiences, interests and talents. Academically and extracurricularly, the members of the class have excelled in their current schools and contributed greatly to their communities. They have achieved in the classroom, on the athletic fields, on stage, in the orchestra pit, in volunteer capacities and in many other ways.

Among Andover’s newest scholars are these impressive young people:

• A young scholar from Minden, Nevada, who founded a community science club that became so popular she had to begin selecting kids by lottery.

• A student from Kotzebue, an Alaskan village with about 3000 residents, who hunts caribou, moose, and grizzly bears, in between being home schooled and taking classes at the University of Alaska via conference call.

• A San Diego native, who spent the last year traveling (to Ecuador, Peru, Argentina, Morocco, Spain, UAE, South Africa, Thailand, Cambodia, and China) and documenting the adventures in a blog for all to read.

• A talented violinist from West Linn, Oregon, who recently participated in “America’s Got Talent” but declined to continue onto the next stage of the competition when it promised to interfere with a scheduled performance with her local orchestra.

• An environmentalist inventor who won a national science contest and $10,000 for his school with a contraption that creates biofuels from algae while cleaning water and reducing CO2 levels.

• A language ambassador from Belgium who spends spring breaks teaching English to elementary school students at a migrant school in Pudong, China, in classes that often contain 50 or more students.

• An aspiring sports journalist who writes as a New England correspondent for the Bleacher Report, a reputable national website that covers sports and entertainment.

Parents of new and returning students can find helpful resources on the parent page of the PA website, as well as some very specific information related to the start of school under the SOS tab of the password-protected Parent Portal.