St. Andrew's School (Delaware)

St. Andrew's School
"Pistis Kai Episteme" ("Faith and Learning")
Location
Middletown, Delaware, USA
Information
Type	Private, Boarding
Religious affiliation(s)	Episcopal
Established	1929
Headmaster	Daniel T. Roach
Faculty	65
Enrollment	297 total
Average class size	11 students
Student to teacher ratio	6:1
Campus	Rural, 2200 acres
Color(s)	Cardinal Red and White
Athletics	21 Varsity Interscholastic Teams
Athletics conference	Independent
Mascot	Cardinal & Saint
Average SAT scores	1320 verbal + math  (2012)
Website	www.standrews-de.org

St. Andrew's School is a private, Episcopal, co-educational boarding school located on 2,200 acres (8.9 km²) in Middletown, Delaware. The school enrolls 290 students in grades nine through twelve.

Admission to St. Andrew's remains very competitive. The school admitted less than 16% of applicants in 2010, one of the lowest rates among boarding schools in the country.

Educational philosophy

St. Andrew's offers a full course curriculum in the liberal arts. The culmination of a student's English career is the Senior Exhibition. In the Senior Exhibition, a student will read a work of literature provided by his or her instructor, attempt to develop a thesis on that work of literature in the form of a 10–15 page paper and defend the thesis before members of the English department.

Many graduates of St. Andrew's matriculate at American liberal arts colleges, although some students choose larger universities. Classes of 2006–2009, greatest number of matriculations:^{[citation needed]}

Williams College: 10, Boston College:9, Davidson College: 8, Vassar: 8, Franklin & Marshall: 8, University of Virginia: 7, Hamilton College: 7, Carnegie Mellon University: 7, Brown University: 6, George Washington University: 6.

Also, in the classes of 2005–09, St. Andrew's has sent 3–6 students to each of the following colleges: Bates College, Boston College, Boston University, Bowdoin, Brown, Carnegie Mellon, Columbia, Cornell University, Dartmouth, University of Delaware, Dickinson, Duke, Franklin and Marshall, Georgetown, Haverford, Johns Hopkins, Kenyon, Mass. Institute of Technology, Mount Holyoke, New York University, Princeton, University of Richmond, University of St. Andrews (Scotland), Tufts, Vassar, Yale.

Tuition and financial aid

St. Andrew's has an endowment of $170 million. The tuition at the school is $44,450. Roughly 45% of the students receive some form of financial aid. St. Andrew's dispensed approximately $4.45 million in financial aid in 2009, with an average grant of $33,978.

History

St. Andrew's was founded in 1929 by A. Felix duPont (1879–1948), a member of the Du Pont family, which made its fortune in the chemical industry. It was founded to provide a top education to boys of all socio-economic backgrounds, regardless of the families' ability to pay. St. Andrew's originally was an all-boys school, but became coeducational in 1974. The school also has a student-run Spectrum Club, which addresses issues of racial and ethnic diversity.

The Irene duPont Library at St. Andrew's School was given by and named for the founder's sister, Irene Sophie duPont. The Library was built in October 1956 and completely renovated in 1997. It contains 32,000 volumes and over 120 periodicals.

Athletics

All St. Andrew's students are required to participate in a sport every season at the thirds, junior varsity or varsity level. Teams that have won state championships include the varsity girls' lacrosse team, winning the state title from 2002–05, and boys' varsity tennis, which took the state championship in 2009. The varsity boy's lacrosse team took states in 2004. In 1997, the St. Andrew's women's rowing team won the School/Junior Eights class in the Henley Women's Regatta in England. In 2011, the St. Andrew's men's rowing team finished second to Abingdon who broke the 20-year old course record in the final of the head-to-head, single-elimination Princess Elizabeth Challenge Cup challenge, after beating two-time defending champion and British champion Eton College.

St. Andrew's is a member of the Independent Conference. Traditional rivals in conference include the Wilmington Friends School, Tatnall School and Tower Hill School. Every year, the football team battles the Tatnall Hornets for the coveted cannon trophy and often the conference title in the Cannon Game. Athletic rivals in other sports include the Hill School, Sanford School, Salesianum, Middletown High School and Westtown School.

Fall Interscholastic Sports Field Hockey (W) Football (M) Volleyball (W) Soccer (M/W) Cross-Country (M/W)

Winter Varsity Sports Basketball (M/W) Squash (M/W) Swimming (M/W) Wrestling (M)

Spring Varsity Sports Baseball (M) Crew (M/W) Lacrosse (M/W) Tennis (M/W)

Film appearances

The 1989 film Dead Poets Society starring Robin Williams was filmed almost entirely on the school grounds.

The The West Wing filmed at the school for the episode entitled "Two Cathedrals" (#44).

Notable alumni

• Bulent Atalay (1958) - Physicist and author
• Dennis C. Blair (1964) - former Director of National Intelligence for President Barack Obama and former United States Navy four-star admiral
• Eric Boateng (2005) - Professional basketball player, former center for Arizona State Sun Devils, 2005 McDonald's All-American and Gatorade State Athlete of the Year
• William R. Brownfield (1970) - United States Ambassador to Venezuela for President George W. Bush
• Erin Burnett (1994) - host of Erin Burnett OutFront on CNN
• Roy Foster - Irish academic, educator and historical writer
• Cristina Stenbeck Fitzgibbons (1994) - Swedish American businesswoman
• Hume Horan (1951) - American diplomat and ambassador to five countries
• Steven Naifeh (1970) - Pulitzer Prize winning author and artist
• John Seabrook (1976) - American author and journalist for The New Yorker
• Kirk Varnedoe (1963) - American art historian and writer
• Loudon Wainwright, Jr. - Life (magazine) columnist
• Loudon Wainwright III (1965) - American songwriter, folk singer, humorist, and actor
• George Welch (1936) - first pilot to break the sound barrier (before Chuck Yeager)
• William H. Whyte (1935) - author of The Organization Man
• Tom Verlaine - frontman of the band Television (did not graduate)
• Dominic Seiterle (1994) - Canadian rower, Olympic Gold Medalist

External links

• St. Andrew's School website