Miss Porter's School

Miss Porter's School

Puellae venerunt. Abíerunt mulieres.
Location
Farmington, Connecticut
United States
Information
Type Independent, boarding
Established 1843
Head of School Katherine G. Windsor
Faculty 44
Grades 912
Gender Girls
Enrollment 320 total
207 boarding
113 day (2014)
Average class size 12
Student to teacher ratio 7:1
Campus 55-acre (220,000 m2) township campus
Color(s) Green and White         
Athletics 18 Interscholastic teams
Mascot none
Average SAT scores 652 Critical Reading
647 Math
686 Writing
Endowment $130 million
Annual tuition $55,475 boarding
$45,055 day[1]
Website www.porters.org

Miss Porter's School (also known as Porter's, Farmington, or MPS) is a private college preparatory school for girls located in Farmington, Connecticut. It is a selective school that excels in academics and athletics. Its acceptance rate is 20% with an average Secondary School Admission Test score in the 92nd percentile. It was named the number one girls' boarding school by U.S. News.

Porter's alumnae call themselves "Ancients".[2]

History

Origins

Sarah Porter, the founder of Miss Porter's School

Miss Porter's School was established in 1843 by education reformer Sarah Porter, who recognized the importance of women's education. She was insistent that the school's curriculum include chemistry, physiology, botany, geology, and astronomy in addition to the more traditional Latin, French, German, spelling, reading, arithmetic, trigonometry, history, and geography. Also encouraged were such athletic opportunities as tennis, horseback riding, and in 1867 the school formed its own baseball team, the Tunxises.[3] In 1884, Sarah Porter hired her former student, Mary Elizabeth Dunning Dow, with whom she began to share more of her duties as Head of School. From then until her death in 1900, Miss Porter gradually relinquished her control of the school to Mrs. Dow.

Upon Sarah Porter's death in 1900, her will named her nephew Dr. Robert Porter Keep as executor of her estate, of which the school was the most valuable part. Mrs. Dow's compensation (for her position as sole Head of School) was also specified in the will. As executor, Dr. Keep began extensive repairs and renovations to the school. While Mrs. Dow continued to receive a salary, as Miss Porter's will had specified, she was convinced that Dr. Keep, in diverting the school's income to pay for construction, was enriching his inheritance with funds that were rightfully hers. The conflict escalated and culminated in Mrs. Dow's resignation in 1903. She moved to Briarcliff, New York, taking with her as many as 140 students and 16 faculty members, and began Mrs. Dow's School for Girls, which would come to be known as Briarcliff Junior College only to be absorbed by Pace University in 1977.[4][5][6]

A banner hanging in a themed guest room in the Timothy Cowles House, at Miss Porter's School, gives insight into how Porter's girls lived during the mid 1900s

Dr. Keep announced in July 1903 that the school would reopen in October of that year with his wife, Elizabeth Vashti Hale Keep, as Head of School, as it did with eleven teachers and between five and sixteen students in attendance. After Dr. Keep succumbed to pneumonia and died on July 3, 1904, Mrs. Keep continued his legacy of renovation and construction. Of her many legacies was her establishment of a kindergarten for children of her employees.[7] The kindergarten, on Garden Street, is now home to the Village Cooperative Nursery School, and is no longer connected with Miss Porter's School. When Mrs. Keep died of influenza on March 28, 1917, leadership of the school passed to her stepson, Robert Porter Keep, Jr., who moved to Farmington from Andover, Massachusetts where he had been teaching German at Phillips Academy. From 1917 until the school's Centennial, in 1943, he and his wife, RoseAnne Day Keep, remained Heads of School at Miss Porter's.[4][8]

Mr. Keep appointed members to the first Board of Trustees including:

Not until the school's Centennial in 1943 was the school incorporated as a non-profit institution. Only then did the school dismiss its reputation as a finishing school and shepherd in a new reputation as a college preparatory school.[4] This year also ended the tradition of choosing a successive Head of School from the Porter family tree. Chosen to take the school into its second century were Ward L. Johnson and his wife Katharine.[4]

On June 12, 1994, Oprah Winfrey gave the commencement address, telling the graduating class, which included her niece Chrishaunda Lee, that "there is no success without joy."[9]

Oprah Winfrey modeled her Leadership Academy for Girls after Porter's.[10]

Academics

Classes at Porter's are held Monday through Friday, although Wednesday is a half day. Porter's has a student-to-teacher ratio of about 8:1. Like many American boarding schools, Porter's utilizes a style of teaching similar to the Harkness Method, wherein students and teachers sit around an oval table, in all its discussion-based humanities courses.

Students are required to take courses in the arts, computer science, English, ethical leadership, history, modern or classical languages, mathematics, and science.[11] Typically, students take a total of five to six units of credit per semester.[11]

On May 19, 2011, the Online School for Girls announced that Miss Porter's School and School of the Holy Child in Rye, New York had become consortium members.[12] Three Porter's faculty members are currently listed as teachers on the OSG website.[13]

iPad Program

In 2011, Porter's began requiring that each entering 9th grade student own an Apple iPad 2 (or later). The fall semester of that year saw the beginning of full integration of the iPad into the school's curriculum.

Notable faculty

Off-campus study

A student in her third year at Porter's may choose to participate in the following programs:

Finances

Tuition and financial aid

Miss Porter's offers need-based financial aid as well as a variety of merit scholarships. The school reports that, for the 2011–12 school year, roughly 34 percent of the student body receives some form of financial aid, with a total of over $3.3 million in aid awarded.[18]

Oprah Scholars

The school regularly awards five students with a full scholarship, endowed by the Oprah Winfrey Foundation, which includes tuition, room and board, travel, a laptop, and other miscellaneous expenses.

Biographer Kitty Kelley wrote regarding Oprah's connection to the school:

Oprah had been so impressed by the change in her niece after Chrishaunda attended Miss Porter's School that she established the Oprah Winfrey Prep School Scholars, and through the years contributed more than $2 million to scholarships.[19]

On November 12, 2011, Oprah Scholar Ayanna Hall '11 presented Oprah Winfrey with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences Governors Awards ceremony in Hollywood, California.[20][21]

Endowment

As of late 2007, the school's endowment was estimated at $100 million. It reportedly dropped 12% to settle at $88 million during the economic downturn, but has recently gained over $12 million in unrestricted assets during "the largest fundraising campaign in the school's history," which was concluded as of June 30, 2011.[22] The school currently reports its endowment as $110 million.[23]

Campus facilities

Academic facilities

The Olin Arts and Science Center
The Kate Lewis Gym

Athletic facilities

Other facilities

Counting House
The "Studio"

Dormitories

West Side

East Side

Athletics

Interscholastic sports

Fall

Winter

Spring

Opponents

Porter's competes in the Founders League with Choate Rosemary Hall, Hotchkiss, Kent, Kingswood-Oxford, Loomis Chaffee, Taft and Westminster schools. At the end of each season, Porter’s competes against the league’s most competitive teams in the New England Championships.[49][50] Porter's traditional rival is The Ethel Walker School.

Championships

Basketball

In 2012, the Varsity Basketball team placed fourth in the New England Championship.

Crew

In 1997, the Crew Team ranked 1st in the New England Championships.[51] In 2009, the Varsity Crew Team placed fourth in the New England Championships.[51]

Squash

In 2012, the Varsity Squash team placed fourth in New England Championships. Following the 2014 NEISA Team Championships, Varsity Squash ranked 8th out of 16 teams in Division A of the New England Interscholastic Squash Association (NEISA).[52] Participation in the 2014 NEISA Individual Championships earned the team 74 points and 6th Place overall.[53]

Volleyball

In 2010, the Varsity Volleyball team defeated Convent of the Sacred Heart to become the 2010 New England School Athletic Council (NEPSAC) Class B Champions.[54]

Student life

Extracurricular activities

Porter's offers a variety of different extracurricular clubs and organizations, of varying degrees of commitment and function in a given school year. Concordia, which is the school's social service club, helps students coordinate community service opportunities in order to satisfy the graduation requirement..

The Perilhettes, often referred to simply as the "P-lhettes," is the senior a cappella group on campus. Throughout the year, the group regularly posts videos from its performances, as recorded by fans, on YouTube.[55] Each year, the Perilhettes record their repertoire and sell the CDs in The Ivy. In recent years, the Perilhettes have competed in Kingswood-Oxford's Wyvern Invitational A Cappella Festival[56] and Choate's Acapelooza, winning awards at each. The Perilhoonies, the alternative a cappella group on campus, provides more comic relief and less commitment to students in their final year.

Residential life

Most Porter's girls live in dormitories, all but one of which are former Farmington private residences left to the school. Each dormitory has a house director. The Porter Plan, as one of the school's distinguishing features, has been designed such that house directors' primary responsibilities are within residential houses. Each dormitory, with the exception of those housing senior students, has two Junior Advisors who serve as peer counselors and mediators.[57]

All student residences are equipped with the TellEmotion Polar Bear Program, technology developed at Dartmouth College,[58] in order to encourage conscientious consumption among students. Each display features an animated polar bear at various degrees of comfort or distress depending on the building's current energy consumption. Additionally, students can monitor their dorm's progress and even compare it to that of other dorms using the software's graphical analysis feature.

Student publications

Emblems

School seal

The school's traditional seal depicts the front door of Main, with the school's motto etched to each side. Historically, the front door of Main was considered something of a sacred portal, through which only guests of the Head of School were allowed to pass regularly. At the time, students were only permitted passage through the doorway upon their first arrival at the school and during graduation exercises. Upon receiving their diplomas, the recessional led the graduating class through Main and out into world. This tradition is reflected in the image of front door of Main on the school seal and the school motto etched to either side of the entrance way: Puellae venerunt. Abíerunt mulieres. (Latin for "They came as girls. They left as women.") Today, the door is used regularly by all members of the community and the motto is taken as reference to each girl's introduction to and graduation from the school.

Today, a new simpler logo graces most official school publications, strategically omitting the word "Miss" in a recent effort by communications officials to combat the school's common misperception as a finishing school.

School colors

School colors include green, white, and black. Old Girl colors have traditionally been grey and yellow. Each of the school's three intramural athletic teams⎯Minks, Possums, and Squirrels⎯is represented by one of the school's three official colors.

Notable alumnae

Other academic programs

Center for the Study of Girls' and Boys' Lives

Porter's has joined Greenwich Academy, The Haverford School, The Lawrenceville School, Riverdale Country School, The Dwight-Englewood School, The Shipley School, University School, and Georgetown Day School in the consortium of independent schools known as the Center for the Study of Girls' and Boys' Lives, which in partnership with the University of Pennsylvania conducts research, encourages public discussion, and advocates on behalf of boys and girls.[102]

Penn Master's in Teaching Residency Program

In partnership with the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education, Porter's has joined Deerfield Academy, The Hotchkiss School, The Lawrenceville School, The Loomis Chaffee School, Milton Academy, Northfield Mount Hermon, St. Paul's School, and The Taft School to design and oversee the Penn Residency Master's in Teaching Program. As part of the program, Porter's is to administer a Master of Science in Education internship program for aspiring teachers.[103]

Summer programs

The summer programs, offered to girls entering grades 7 through 9, provide access to most of Porter's facilities and staff:

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