Saint Grottlesex refers to several American college-preparatory boarding schools in New England that historically educated the social and economic elite of the Northeastern United States. The schools are traditionally given as St. Mark's School, St. Paul's School, St. George's School, Groton School and Middlesex School, although some scholars also include Kent School.
The St. Grottlesex schools are part of a much larger set of boarding schools, which are primarily concentrated in the Northeastern United States. St. Paul's and St. Mark's were founded in the middle of the nineteenth century, but the other three St. Grottlesex schools were established at the turn of the twentieth century during a large boom in the boarding school industry[1] that also included Lawrenceville (refounded 1883), Milton (refounded 1884), Taft (founded 1890), Hotchkiss (1891), Choate (1896), Kent (1906), and Loomis (1914). St. Paul's and St. Mark's also more than tripled in enrollment during this period.[2]
Although the St. Grottlesex schools were not the only college-preparatory boarding schools founded during the Gilded Age, they stood out for their aristocratic reputation and their college placement record.
The St. Grottlesex schools are broadly associated with upper-class Protestantism in the United States and preppy culture.[3] [4] St. Mark's, St. Paul's, St. George's, and Groton are all affiliated with the Episcopal Church,[5] the wealthiest Protestant denomination.[6] Middlesex, though ostensibly nonsectarian, was established by similarly upper-class Unitarian Boston Brahmins.[7] They soon attracted an aristocratic clientele. In 1906, four-fifths of Groton and St. Mark's parents were listed in the Social Register.[8] The St. Grottlesex schools (as well as some other institutions, like Lawrenceville[9]) were consciously styled as the American equivalent of the English public schools,[10] in contrast to the eighteenth-century "academies" like Andover, Exeter, Lawrence, and Deerfield, which were typically set up when a rural town lacked the tax revenue to support a public school, and principally educated students from the surrounding area.[11] [12] Moreover, unlike their academy forebears, the Gilded Age schools were explicitly founded to prepare their students for college. For example, while Exeter (founded 1781) and Middlesex (founded 1901) were both strongholds of Unitarianism and prepared students for Unitarian Harvard, as late as the 1880s only 18% of Exeter graduates went to college.[13] The St. Grottlesex schools entrenched their social distinctiveness by charging much higher tuition than the academies. When Groton was founded in 1884, it charged $500 a year for tuition, room, and board.[14] By contrast, Lawrence charged $200 a year; Andover charged $69 a year for tuition and room (board not included); and Exeter charged $45 a year (room and board not included).[15] [16] [17] As late as 1940, tuition at Groton, St. Paul's, and St. Mark's was still nearly 30% higher than at Andover and Exeter (albeit less expensive than Deerfield); at Middlesex and St. George's it was closer to 50% higher.[18]
The St. Grottlesex schools' aristocratic culture strengthened their reputations with leading universities. The schools found a helpful ally in Harvard president Charles Eliot, who distrusted public high schools. Although he complimented Exeter for its "national" reach and "democratic" character,[19] he encouraged boarding schools to temper America's "habitual regard for masses and majorities" with "aristocratic institutions" and "noble family stock[]."[20] In fact, Eliot personally sponsored the establishment of Groton and Middlesex.[21] [22] Harvard's admissions office continued favoring St. Grottlesex alumni after Eliot's retirement. Even at mid-century, St. Mark's, St. Paul's, Groton, and Middlesex were still sending a larger percentage of their graduates to Harvard, Yale, and Princeton than their peer boarding schools. (Two notable exceptions were Andover and Exeter, which successfully reinvented themselves as college-preparatory schools.[23] [24]) In 1959, the university conducted an internal study to see which of its top 79 feeder schools produced the most honors graduates per capita. It found that "not one of the 30 top institutions was an eastern boarding school" and that "[s]ome of the St. Grottlesex schools, in particular, had especially poor records."[25]
Once Ivy League schools raised academic standards for undergraduate admissions in the 1950s and 1960s, St. Grottlesex's advantage partially dissipated, as nearly all the traditional feeder boarding schools lost significant market share during this period. Reinforcing this trend, the middle schools that traditionally fed students to St. Grottlesex began sending most of their students to private day schools instead, leading Groton's admissions director to comment that "the competition [for spots] isn't as stiff as it used to be, and the classics scholars are getting worried about a decline in intellectual quality."[26]
This process continued beyond the 1960s and eventually forced reforms. The schools broadened their applicant pools by belatedly admitting girls and ethnic minorities. Groton's first black student graduated in 1956, followed by St. Paul's (1964), St. George's (1968), St. Mark's (1969), and Middlesex (1970).[27] [28] Gender integration took longer. St. Paul's welcomed its first female students in 1971, followed by St. George's (1972), Middlesex (1974), Groton (1975), and St. Mark's (1977).[29] [30] [31] [32] [33] Even so, this expansion of the applicant pool was not enough to fully arrest the decline in college outcomes. In 1992, St. Paul's appointed a new rector with a "mandate ... to improve the quality of the school academically," as "[n]obody had gone to Harvard in five years, except for legacies."[34] [35]
The St. Grottlesex schools are traditionally given as:[36] [37] [38] [39]
| St. Mark's School | Southborough, MA | 1865 | Episcopal Church (United States) | |
| St. Paul's School | Concord, NH | 1856 | Episcopal | |
| St. George's School | Middletown, RI | 1896 | Episcopal | |
| Groton School | Groton, MA | 1884 | Episcopal | |
| Middlesex School | Concord, MA | 1901 | Nonsectarian (unofficially Unitarian) |
In addition, Kent School, another Episcopalian boarding school, is occasionally categorized within St. Grottlesex.[40] [41] [42]
The term is a portmanteau of the St. part of St. Mark's, St. Paul's, and St. George's, then part of Groton, an extra t, and then ending with Middlesex.
There is no clear consensus on the source of the term; however, most sources link it to admissions practices and undergraduate student life at Harvard College, where St. Grottlesex alumni traditionally sat "[a]t the top of the social hierarchy."[43] The Harvard sociologist George C. Homans claimed that Harvard's admissions office coined the term to help categorize and sort through Harvard applicants. Boarding school alumni also clustered within certain dormitories. Until the 1970s, the deans of Harvard's undergraduate dormitories were allowed to pick and choose their own students.[44] The first deans of Eliot House and Lowell House were both Groton affiliates, and over time, these houses developed a reputation for being "exclusively St. Grottlesex."[45] [46] [47] [48] Similarly, John Kenneth Galbraith wrote that when he was a tutor at Winthrop House, his dean's policy was to "automatically" accept alumni of St. Grottlesex and to "generally" accept alumni of Andover and Exeter.[49] St. Grottlesex alumni also historically dominated admission to Harvard's exclusive undergraduate final clubs.[50] [51]