Access Exeter at Phillips Exeter Academy

Access Exeter is for students who have completed grade 7 or 8 and who are at least 13 years old by the start of the school year. Students choose one of ten academic clusters; each cluster contains three courses that are deliberately grouped together so that one topic is approached through different disciplines. The schedule is arranged by the programme, so the cluster is the only academic choice a student makes. All classes are taught by the Harkness method and require participation in group discussion, so a high level of English is necessary; non-native speakers with fewer than five years of primary instruction in English submit a TOEFL iBT score of 100 or greater. Students may also add a live online SSAT preparation course, which sits alongside the three academic classes rather than replacing one.

Tuition for boarding students covers three academic courses, room and board in an Academy dormitory, daily meals and physical education classes from the general offerings. Students who live near Exeter may enrol as day students instead, in which case the fee covers the three academic courses and daily meals while on campus. Private music lessons, the live online SSAT preparation course and the rowing, soccer and volleyball clubs are charged separately and are listed under extras. International students are required to purchase the Academy's student injury and sickness insurance plan.

Boarding students live in Academy dormitories on the campus. Dormitories vary in size — some house thirty to sixty students, others ten to twenty — and each has shared bathrooms. Every dormitory has resident faculty living in it together with affiliate dorm faculty. Students are housed by programme and by gender, and card access is limited to their own dormitory. Dormitories are not air-conditioned and students may not bring air conditioners. Day students are also assigned to a dormitory and are full members of it, but leave campus by dorm check-in time unless the faculty member on duty gives permission.

Daily meals in the Academy dining hall are included for boarding students. Day students eat on campus while they are there.

Afternoons are given over to sport and to an extensive performing arts programme. Boarding students take an afternoon physical education class; for day students it is optional. Beyond that there are films and games on the quads, dormitory activities and excursions off campus. Students may replace their two sessions of sport with one of the optional athletic clubs — rowing, soccer or volleyball. Classes, sport, assembly and residential life run Monday through Saturday; Sunday is unscheduled, with campus activities and off-campus trips on offer.

The Academy campus covers 673 acres, surrounded by fields and woodland in a New England town about ten miles from the Atlantic coast and an hour north of Boston. Summer students have full access to the campus and its facilities, including the dining hall, the playing fields, performing arts spaces and practice rooms. Students bring their own laptop, Chromebook or tablet; some courses have their own technology requirements.

More than six hundred students in grades 7 through 12 attend the summer session, drawn from over forty countries and more than thirty US states. The programme is academic enrichment rather than credit-bearing study: students who complete it receive grades and teachers' comments, but no course credit and no certificate. Faculty are a mix of Phillips Exeter Academy teachers and coaches and teachers from other middle schools, high schools, colleges and universities, and most of them return each summer.