Deerfield Academy

The school has approximately 650 students and about 125 faculty.[6] Deerfield had a 16.8% acceptance rate for the 2019–20 school year.[6] Its endowment is $590 million.[7]

The Academy reports granting over $13 million in financial aid for the 2022-2023 school year, with 40% of its students receiving aid. The average boarding student grant was reportedly $54,875 and covered 81% of the total cost of tuition and fees.[3] The student body hails from 36 U.S. states and 47 foreign countries. As of 2017, 32% of the student body were nonwhite American domestic students, and an additional 12% were foreign nationals or US expats.[8]

The school has been described as an "elite boarding school" by the New York Times,[9] "one of the nation's ... most elite boarding schools" by the Boston Globe[10] and "an elite private school" by the Associated Press.[11] It is a member of the Eight Schools Association, the Ten Schools Admissions Organization, and the Six Schools League.

Deerfield Academy was founded in 1797 when Massachusetts Governor Samuel Adams granted a charter to found a school in the town of Deerfield.[12] It began to educate students in 1799.[13] In that year, it had 269 students. Boarding of students in rooms owned by the school did not begin until ten years later, at which time the school had twelve rooms for resident students. This was typical of early American academies, where students were housed with local families if they were not local residents.[14]

Graduates occupied many congressional and gubernatorial seats in New England. By the end of the 19th century, industrialization had economically hurt Deerfield, which was rural. The board of trustees was considering closing the Academy, as only nine students remained.

In 1902, Deerfield appointed Frank Boyden as headmaster, who took up the post in 1903. According to James McLachlan, Boyden "transform[ed] an obscure American academy into a nationally-known boarding school.[15] McLachlan describes Boyden's tenure as creating "an essentially new and different institution built on a moribund foundation."[16]

Boyden also emphasized athletics as a component of education, sometimes playing on varsity squads that lacked players. Boyden retired in 1968.[13][17]

By 1917, Deerfield, along with Exeter and Andover, which were also descendants of eighteenth-century academies, "were comparatively inexpensive, drew their students from a broader social spectrum, and imposed a less Victorian regimen" than the more recently founded Episcopalian church schools such as St Paul's, Groton and Kent.[18]

David M. Pynchon was appointed headmaster after Boyden, serving from 1968 to 1979.[19]

In 1989, the Academy reestablished coeducation, which Boyden had discontinued in 1948.[20] At the time male students had protested the decision.[21]

Eric Widmer '57 served as headmaster from 1994 to 2006. He stepped down in June 2006 and soon after assumed the position of Founding Headmaster at King's Academy in Madaba, Jordan, a school inspired in part by HM King Abdullah II's Deerfield years in the 1980s.[13][22][23] It opened in the fall of 2007.

Margarita Curtis, previously dean of studies at Phillips Andover, was the first woman to hold the position of Head of School at Deerfield Academy, retiring in 2019.[24]

The current head of school is John Austin, former head of school at King's Academy in Madaba, Jordan.[25]

Deerfield Academy follows a trimester system, in which the school year is divided into three academic grading periods. Deerfield students take a full liberal arts curriculum, including English, history, foreign language, mathematics, laboratory science, visual and performing arts, and philosophy and religion. However, required courses are kept at a minimum to allow students to take more courses in the subjects that interest them most.[26]

Most courses last the entire year, whereas others can last for one to two terms. The required course load is five graded courses per term, but students may petition the Academic Dean to take a sixth graded course if desired.[27] There are no Saturday classes, and classes are held from Monday to Friday, typically from 8:30 am to 2:55 pm. On Wednesdays, classes end at 12:45 pm to accommodate athletic events, as well as to provide more time for clubs and community service.[28]

Deerfield does not rank students. Academic work is graded on a scale where the minimum passing grade is 60 and the median grades are between 85 and 90. A trimester average of 90.0 or above garners Honors distinction, whereas a trimester average of 93.0 or above garners High Honors distinction.[29]

In 2004 an alumnus revealed to Deerfield's then headmaster Eric Widmer that he had been sexually abused in the Winter of 1983 by faculty member Peter Hindle.[46] Widmer responded sympathetically but did not press for details.[46] The school was aware a parent previously raised concerns about Hindle in the 1980s, and had responded with written and verbal warnings.[47] Nearly a decade later in 2012 the alumnus raised the matter again, this time with headmaster Margarita Curtis, who he says "displayed clear moral authority and offered unconditional support from the start."[46]

An investigation by the school's lawyers confirmed the allegations and uncovered more: In late March 2013 the school published information that two former faculty members had engaged in multiple sexual contacts with students: Peter Hindle who taught at the school from 1956 to his 2000 retirement, and Bryce Lambert who retired in 1990 and had died in 2007.[47][48][49] The school stripped Hindle's name from an endowed mathematics teaching chair and a school squash court, and barred him from campus events.[46][48] A subsequent criminal investigation by the District Attorney's office revealed that at least four teachers, three deceased and one still alive, had engaged in sexual conduct considered "criminal in nature" with students extending back into the 1950s. Their deaths, and the statute of limitations, precluded pursuing criminal charges.[50]

Deerfield spokesman David Thiel said "I think you saw from us an amount of transparency when this came to light that was unusual, and I hope that sets a good example for institutions and helps to assure that students are safer everywhere."[50]

In the book The Headmaster (1966), author John McPhee reviews the life and work of Deerfield's most famous, formative headmaster, Frank Boyden, last of the "magnanimous despots who... created enduring schools through their own individual energies, maintained them under their own absolute rules, and left them forever imprinted with their own personalities."[13][51] McPhee spent a year at Deerfield as a postgraduate student.[52]

John Gunther's book Death Be Not Proud (1949)[53] discusses the long struggle of his son John Gunther Jr. (called "Johnny") a Deerfield student, against a deadly brain tumor. The boy managed to complete his study before dying less than a month after graduation.[54] The book was later made into a 1975 television movie starring Robby Benson as Johnny Gunther.[55]

Novelist Hannah Pittard discusses her time at the school in her 2023 memoir We Are Too Many.[56]

• Heads of Deerfield Academy
• List of notable Deerfield alumni

• Cooke, Brian P. Frank Boyden of Deerfield: The Vision and Politics of an Educational Idealist. Lanham, Md.: Madison Books (1994)
• Cookson, Peter W. Preparing For Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools (1985) (ISBN 0-465-06268-7)
• Massachusetts Board of Education; George A. Walton (1877), "Report on Academies: Deerfield Academy", Annual Report...1875-76, Boston – via Internet Archive{{citation}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• McLachlan, James. American Boarding Schools: A Historical Study (1970)
• McPhee, John. The Headmaster: Frank L. Boyden (1966) ISBN 0-374-51496-8
• Moorhead, Andrea D. and Moorhead, Robert K. Deerfield, 1797-1997: A Pictorial History of the Academy (1997) (ISBN 0-9632800-1-5)

• Official website