Andover Summer Lower School Institute

The Lower School Institute is a five-week academic programme for students entering seventh and eighth grade. Rather than assembling separate subjects, students follow one interdisciplinary institute that brings several subjects together under a single theme; the school publishes eleven Lower School offerings alongside the Musical Minds institute. Most classes run with eight to ten students and are capped at sixteen. All Lower School students take a second-period course in the late morning, attend multiple off-site field trips, and have an evening class block in place of the independent study hours kept by older students. Every student is assigned an advisor for the length of the session. Optional add-ons include Princeton Review SSAT preparation, Essential Study Skills and music lessons.

The session runs for five weeks and students are required to attend all of it: those who leave before the official end do not receive grades or teachers comments. Tuition is quoted separately for boarding and for day students, and a campus activities fee and a health and safety fee are charged on top. Some courses carry an additional course or lab fee for special materials or academic field trips; the school publishes those amounts in its course catalogue. Families living outside the United States are required to buy the health insurance policy provided through Phillips Academy. Course credit is decided by the student home school; end-of-session comments are provided to every student along with a graded or mastery-based assessment.

Boarding students live in dormitories across the Phillips Academy campus, and Lower School students are housed in gender-specific dormitories and take their afternoon and weekend activities together as a group. The dormitories range from ten to forty-five students with a house counsellor to student ratio of nine to one. Every room is supplied with bed linens, a pillow, a blanket, towels and a fan; rooms are not air-conditioned and students may not bring air conditioners. All dormitories have wireless access and students receive a login and an Andover email address on arrival. Laundry machines are free of charge in most dormitories, and a paid laundry service is available as well. Friends and relatives are not placed in the same room, and dormitory assignments are given out on arrival. Day students must live with a parent or guardian within a twenty-mile radius of the campus.

Students eat in Paresky Commons. Breakfast offers cereal, pastries, eggs, bacon, hash browns and waffles; lunch and dinner are served from a salad bar, grill, Homezone, pizza, pasta bar, hearth and saute stations. Vegan and gluten-free options are available at every meal, and other diets can be accommodated in consultation with the campus nutritionist. Twice a week students are treated to a late-night snack on Flagstaff Quad.

Lower School students take part in afternoon activities in the early part of the afternoon and then have time at the Makerspace, the Addison Gallery of American Art, the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and the Cochran Bird Sanctuary. Typical activity offerings across the programme include basketball, cardio kickboxing, dance, fitness, outdoor games, power walking, soccer, spinning, squash, swim instruction, tennis, volleyball and yoga. Weekends bring on-campus events such as dances, laser tag, trivia and dance competitions, and off-campus trips to Boston, Hampton Beach, whale watching and local ice-cream and mini-golf stops. Off-site field trips are part of the Lower School programme itself rather than an extra.

The campus gives students the Oliver Wendell Holmes Library, designated maths, writing and science study centres, a computer centre and language lab, the Makerspace, the Addison Gallery of American Art, the Peabody Museum of Archaeology, the Cochran Bird Sanctuary, and extensive athletic facilities and playing fields. The Rebecca M. Sykes Wellness Center is open for urgent and routine care on weekdays, with a nurse on site at all hours and a physician and counsellor on call while the session is running. Campus Safety officers patrol the grounds at all hours and a blue-light system lets students reach emergency services from points across the campus.

Andover Summer has run since 1942 and brings together more than six hundred students from across the United States and around the world; a recent session drew students from thirty-eight states and forty countries. The residential community is organised on the Academy cluster system: five geographic areas of campus, each with a Cluster Dean and a team of house counsellors who know the students in their cluster. For many Lower School students this is a first experience of boarding school life. The town of Andover is a five-minute walk from campus. Students bring a Chromebook or similar laptop, receive an Andover email address and wireless credentials, and sign a community agreement committing to live honestly, safely, responsibly and respectfully.