WELL BEGUN IS HALF DONE
Since the 1870s, when a revitalized Andover was profiled in H a r p e r ’s Weekly, the school has been the
subject of articles in national publications as diverse as Education Week, the Saturday Evening Post
and Fortune. Perhaps the most famous article featuring Andover appeared in the issue of Time published October 26, 1962; it was titled “Well Begun Is Half Done.” Headmaster John Mason Kemper
was on Time’s cover.
In the next two months, some 1,400 teen-age boys and their parents all over the U.S. will tremulously collect the credentials – IQ scores, grades, test results, recommendations, interviews – needed to
apply for admission to what they are sure is the nation’s best prep school: Andover. Many applications will come from Eastern boys with good primary education and some wealth and social standing. But not all. Even now, Andover alumni are searching slums and back-country towns for bright
boys who may have little money and position but who “need” Andover. Recruiters are grilling newspaper circulation managers for deserving paper boys, asking forest rangers to suggest rural applicants, checking big-city youth clubs for promising kids – and then helping the boys apply.
By Jan. 15 all the applicants, rich and poor, will be listed on a big chart in Andover’s admissions
office. Studying each boy’s credentials, three facultymen and an admissions director, working individually, will grade the applicant from 1 to 5, with 5 representing total disapproval. About one fifth
of the boys will be accepted.
Our faith in private schools is chiefly rooted in their freedom. They can select better students.
They can pay teachers by merit, make innovations, borrow ideas from anywhere. By combing the
country for bright recruits of all races, religions and incomes, they are fast becoming more democratic than homogeneous suburban public schools. All this portends something new: “the national public school.” Such is the goal of John Mason Kemper, 50, headmaster of Phillips Academy, popularly
known as Andover. The definition comes close to fitting both Andover and its younger brother,
Phillips Exeter Academy. More than any other U.S. prep schools, they fulfill the dream which they
began: to be “ever equally open to youth of requisite qualifications from every quarter.”
With 436 acres and 139 buildings, Andover has more students than half the nation’s four-year
colleges. Its 80,000 volume Oliver Wendell Holmes Library tops three-fifths of all college libraries.
Its Addison Gallery of American Art, with works from Homer to Hopper, would do a sizable city
proud. Its 85-man faculty is superior to most college faculties, and some teachers are paid more – up
to $12,000, plus fringe benefits that add as much as $3,000. Andover is such a big business that its
budget this year hit a record $3,000,000, including $3,000 for athletic tape, $80,000 for mowing and
planting the grounds, $210,000 for food and $727,690 for instruction.
School spirit at floodtide: a torchlight pep rally before the Sam Phil portico.