With an endowment of more than $1 billion, Andover prep school Phillips Academy has wealth that most colleges would envy.
It also has a tuition price to match: $66,290 for boarding students, a price that’s often largely offset by financial aid.
Phillips Andover may be an outlier in the world of prestigious boarding schools, but private schools in Massachusetts are a big business, including with some big financial numbers.
Three of the five richest private schools in the country are in Massachusetts, according to the industry publication Boarding School Review. Phillips Andover’s endowment is head and shoulders above the next closest, St. Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire, while Deerfield Academy and Groton School place fourth and fifth.
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In all, 20 of the 90 richest private schools are in Massachusetts, with a median endowment of about $100 million and an average tuition of more than $68,000. Like with prestigious colleges, those prices are often offset by financial aid, but they nonetheless are far higher than a Massachusetts resident would expect to pay for tuition, room and board at, say, a University of Massachusetts campus.
