Milton Academy

Milton Academy is a private, preparatory, coeducational boarding and day school in Milton, Massachusetts, United States. Milton was historically a "feeder" school for Harvard University, and while Harvard still tops the matriculation list, nearly as many Milton students now go on to schools like Yale, Brown, Columbia and NYU. Behind Phillips Academy, Milton was recently ranked as the second best private school in the Boston area by Boston Magazine (http://www.bostonmagazine.com). The Boarding School Review (http://www.boardingschoolreview.com), in a comparison of most private preparatory schools, rated Milton as having the fourth highest average SAT score (tied with Groton School), and ranks the Academy as the most selective school in the country. For athletics, Milton competes in the Independent School League (ISL) with schools such as Groton and St. Paul's, in addition to Milton's historic rival, Nobles. Milton's $140 million endowment and 125 acre (0.5 km²) campus serve about 680 upper school students.

History and alumni

Milton Academy was established in 1798 as an all-boys school, under its first headmaster Samuel Thurber. The school remained an academy for boys until 100 years after its establishment, when it became coeducational. Milton has been the educator of many famous families including the Kennedys, Roosevelts and Rockefellers. Other well-known alumni include Buckminster Fuller, renowned architect and inventor of the geodesic dome (Class of 1913) and T.S. Eliot, world-famous poet and Nobel Prize laureate (Class of 1906.) A number of political figures have delivered recent graduation speeches, including Senator Edward Kennedy in 2002 and Bill Clinton in 2003. Also, the Academy's War Memorial Lecture has attracted a number of influential speakers, including:

• Franklin D. Roosevelt
• T.S. Eliot
• George C. Marshall
• Carlos Fuentes
• William F. Buckley, Jr.
• Helen Suzman
• Óscar Arias Sánchez
• Maya Angelou
• Robert Oppenheimer

Campus and student life

The school is situated in Milton, a residential suburb of Boston, and is accessible by Boston's public transit system, the T. The campus is spread across roughly 125 acres (0.5 km²) with 17 tennis courts for the undefeated (2004) tennis team, 12 sports fields, and 7 squash courts. The campus also includes a chapel, Cox Library, an observatory, and over a half dozen dormitories.

Milton also has a 400m track, hockey rink, fitness center, and an outdoor swimming pool. Recently the school administration has embarked on an ambitious building plan, starting with a new student center which was completed in fall 2003 along with a renovation of Warren Hall (an English building) which refinished the halls, added classrooms, moved departments. In the future, a new arts center and a science building will be built. Students at Milton are actively involved in the 46 student organizations, including the nationally-competitive speech team, a capella groups, and a broad range of special interest clubs ranging from the Science Fiction Club to the Asian Society.

The school is also home to two student newspapers, The Milton Paper and The Milton Measure. The Milton Paper was founded in 1979 by four Milton Academy students and has been publishing weekly since 1983. The student-run Paper is financially independent from the school, and is funded entirely by the payments and donations of its 250+ subscribers, who are mostly parents and alumni. Upwards of 700 students, faculty, and parents read The Paper every week. Editors of The Paper enjoy a greater degree of freedom and autonomy (as well as responsibility) than those responsible for The Milton Measure, the "official" school newspaper. The Measure publishes on a biweekly basis (although before a couple years ago it came out only once every couple of months), but is a much better publication than The Milton Paper because it prints on real newspaper and does not add opinion into every article. The Milton Measure enjoys a budget similar in size to the capital raised by The Paper. It is interesting to note that the Paper and the Measure have a heated rivalry, and that this article is heavily biased.

External links

• Milton Academy Official Website (http://www.milton.edu)
• Boarding School Review (http://www.boardingschoolreview.com/school_ov/school_id/13)