....Generally the older, best-known schools have the largest endowments. Phillips Exeter, founded in 1781, is the nation’s sixth-oldest boarding school. Even older schools are West Nottingham Academy in Colora, Md., Linden Hall in Lititz, Pa., the Governor’s Academy in Byfield, Mass., Salem Academy in Winston-Salem, N.C., and Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., which now has $800 million. Choate Rosemary Hall’s endowment has reached $267 million.

But some day schools, where endowments are generally far lower, are doing very well, too. The Westminster Schools in Atlanta have over $239 million in their coffers and the Brearley School in Manhattan has $100 million.
“Today, capital campaigns at New York’s private schools are likely to aim at $50 million,” Ms. Bass said. “That is almost the ground floor.”

Indeed, fund-raisers at both day and boarding schools find that graduates feel more loyalty toward their secondary schools than to their colleges.
“I always tell people I was educated at Exeter and went to Yale,” said James H. Ottaway Jr., a former board member of Dow Jones & Company, whose most recent gift to Exeter was $10 million for its scholarship fund. “I have always given more money to Exeter because I felt it was the most educational experience and character-forming experience of my life.”

Most private schools, of course, are not so rich. Of the 179 independent schools for which Commonfund, an investment group, manages money, 73 percent have endowments under $50 million.
But some prep schools can seem as luxurious as the nation’s top universities. Exeter’s 619-acre campus boasts two swimming pools, two hockey rinks, the largest secondary school library in the world, a cafeteria with made-to-order omelets for breakfast and classes with a typical student-teacher ratio of no more than 12 to one....

Anonymous wrote:Do the endowments per pupil of area D.C. area private schools even make it on the top 500 list?

Well, endowment size definitely proves that Kamehameha and the Milton Hershey School are head and shoulders above all other boarding schools in the country! Andover/Exeter are not even in the same league.
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2008/01/25/business/20080126_PREPGRAPHIC.html

Anonymous wrote:Data:

There are very significant differences in the endowment($$$$) per student.

You got any support for that other than your personal opinion as an Andover student? The objective data I've seen so far disagrees with you.

I appreciate the more measured tone you're taking now. Thank you. And I agree with you that there's too much infighting to put down schools. But I think you're adding to the infighting when you do things like proclaiming the supposed superiority of your school over all others. I look forward to any data supporting your views. Here's some data supporting my view that schools like Andover and Exeter (while very strong) are pretty comparable to some DC schools: https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AnukIDABt...pTFp1SUIxS2c&hl=en&pli=1#gid=5

This board is called DC Urban Moms for a reason. No one here is interested in or applying to schools outside the DC area.

Anonymous wrote:There is no Andover or Exeter equivalent in DC, period. Sidwell is the only school that comes close, which explains why the last two presidents who had elementary/middle-school-aged children all went to Sidwell.

Anonymous wrote:... I still maintain that Andover/Exeter/St. Pauls and many of the NY and NE private schools are both academically and extracurricularly superior to pretty much all of the DC day schools. There is no Andover or Exeter equivalent in DC, period ....