School maintains full need-blind policy for eighth straight year

With Phillips Academy’s need-blind admission policy entering its eighth year, Dean of Admission and Financial Aid Jim Ventre ’79 announced that the Academy had another strong admission season, resulting in an incoming admitted class of 348 boys and girls. Ventre said that 152 of these students have been awarded financial aid scholarships, at a total cost of $5,810,000 in financial aid.

This year’s results saw an admission yield of 84 percent and an admit rate of 14 percent. “The demand for an Andover education continues to increase, as evidenced by our 3,026 completed applications from 50 states and 96 countries,” Ventre wrote recently in a letter addressed to the Andover community.

Ventre credited the hard work of faculty, staff, students and alumni for the strong year, noting how participation with admissions is a community endeavor. “We are especially grateful to staff members in Communications, Information Technology, OPP, Paresky Commons, Public Safety and Audio Visual for their efforts behind the scenes," Ventre said, adding that "Head of School John Palfrey articulated clearly the values we stand for and made special time to speak with families and address their questions, which many families commented was just another way Andover distinguished itself from the competition."

Ventre cited several points of interest with regard to this year’s admission season, including:

• The incoming class of 176 girls and 172 boys represents 30 states and 24 foreign countries. Eighty percent of underrepresented students of color who were admitted made the choice to attend Andover.

• Five out of five of the Academy’s newest Davis International Scholars matriculated. This class of Davis Scholars includes international students from Brazil, Cambodia, Honduras, Lithuania, and Mexico.

• More than 310 students, approximately three quarters of the admitted student pool, participated in Andover’s annual Spring Visit Program. More than 83% of the students who participated in our Spring Visit Program chose to enroll at Andover.

Andover is the only private secondary boarding school in the United States to have maintained a full need-blind admission policy since 2008. The policy allows Andover to admit students regardless of their families’ ability or inability to pay for the tuition by fully meeting the demonstrated financial need of each student. The average financial aid scholarship award for a boarding student is $39,400 per year. Forty-seven percent of all students at Andover receive financial aid, with 13 percent of the student body receiving full financial aid.