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The biggest change in New England boarding schools is, in a word, girls. Since 1970 Andover, Exeter, St. Paul's, Groton. Hotchkiss, Middlesex and St. Mark's have all gone coed. With the girls came the easing of once strict daily regimens. Traditionally, schools such as Groton and St. Paul's tried to imbue their boys with a "muscular Christianity" through spartan rigor in almost monastic isolation. Chapel at these Episcopal Church schools was required every day and twice on Sunday; supervision was so strict that at Groton, seventh-graders were given black marks for going out in the rain without rubber overshoes, and eleventh-graders had to ask permission to go to the bathroom during study hours. Then came the virulent student discontent of the late '60s. After some bitter rear-guard struggles, the schools emerged with female students (of the top schools, only Deerfield and Lawrenceville remain all male) and far more freedom: relaxed dress codes; fewer required chapels, meals and study halls; more weekends away. "We treat them like human beings now," says Exeter Principal Stephen Kurtz, "not just as pupils."
At Andover rules have been whittled down to the "essentials." Except for taking drugs, drinking liquor or engaging in sexual intercourse, students can do what they want where they want, as long as they meet class and athletic appointments and return to their dormitories by 10 p.m. (11 p.m. for seniors). Even room visiting between the sexes is now permitted, though it is limited to a couple of hours in the early evening.
The result is a cheerful, creative, motley-looking student body. Beating Exeter in football and hockey is no longer the student body's chief interest; Andover, like other schools, has seen an explosion of interest in art, music, drama and dance. Boy-girl friendships are easygoing, though formal dating is rare and romances do not last long in the fishbowl of a residential school. "The school used to be rigorous but humorless," says English Department Head Kelly Wise. "Now there is more laughter and joy and excitement than there was a few years ago." And every bit as much schoolwork. The days when more than half of Andover's senior class sailed into Yale or Harvard are long gone. Andover still gets 40% of its seniors into Ivy League schools, but the competition for "thick letters" on "Black Monday"—the day in mid-April when Ivy acceptances arrive—is still fierce.
Whether or not they make it into Harvard, as 42 did this year, Andover's 376 seniors will be well prepared for college. In classes averaging fewer than twelve students, the school's first-rate faculty drills home such basics as English competence, a writing course required of all entering students. After fulfilling a rigorous core of requirements, students can choose electives ranging from infinite series and differential equations to calligraphy.