With an endowment of over $1 billion, Andover Phillips Academy prep school boasts wealth that most colleges would envy.
It also has a matching tuition price: $66,290 for boarders, a price often more than offset by financial aid.
Phillips Andover may be an outlier in the world of prestigious boarding schools, but private schools in Massachusetts are big business, including big financial numbers.
Three of the five wealthiest private schools in the country are in Massachusetts, according to the industry publication Boarding school exam. Phillips Andover’s endowment is head and shoulders above the next closest school, St. Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire, while Deerfield Academy and Groton School rank fourth and fifth.
In total, 20 of the 90 wealthiest private schools are in Massachusetts, with a median endowment of about $100 million and average tuition over $68,000. As with prestigious colleges, these prices are often offset by financial aid, but they are nevertheless far more than a Massachusetts resident would expect to pay for tuition, room and board, for example, on a campus of the University of Massachusetts.