St. Paul's School

St. Paul's School (also known as SPS) is a college-preparatory, coeducational boarding school in Concord, New Hampshire, affiliated with the Episcopal Church. The 2,000-acre (8.1 km2) New Hampshire campus currently serves 531 students, who come from all over the United States and the world.

St. Paul's is a member of the Eight Schools Association.It is also a member of the Independent School League, the oldest independent school athletic association in the United States.

The school's rural 2,000-acre (809 ha) campus is familiarly known as "Millville", after a now-abandoned mill whose relic still stands in the woods near the Lower School Pond. The overwhelming majority of the land comprises wild and wooded areas. The campus itself includes four ponds and the upper third of the Turkey River.

There are 18 dorms, nine boys' and nine girls', which each house between 20 and 40 students and are vertically integrated: every dorm has members of all four forms. The architecture of the dormitories varies from the Collegiate Gothic style of the "Quad" dorms (built in 1927) to the spare, modern style of the Kittredge building (built in the early seventies).

Classes are held in five buildings: language and humanities classes meet in the Schoolhouse; math and science classes in the Lindsay Family Center for Mathematics and Science; visual arts in Hargate; music and ballet classes in the Oates Performing Arts Center; and theater classes, in the New Space black box theater. The Schoolhouse, Moore and the Lindsay Center form a quadrangle, along with Memorial Hall, the 600-seat theater used for all school gatherings not suited to the chapel space.

St. Paul's operates on a six-day school week, Monday through Saturday. Wednesdays and Saturdays, however, are half-days, with athletic games or practices in the afternoons. The school has four grades, known at St. Paul's as "forms": "Third Form", which corresponds to ninth grade, up through "Sixth Form", which corresponds to twelfth grade.

For Paulies, as St. Paul's students are colloquially known, the four full days each week begin with Chapel. The mandatory interfaith half-hour meeting involves a reading, speech or music presentation, and community-wide announcements.

St. Paul's conducts its Humanities classes using the Harkness method, which encourages discussion between students and the teacher, and between students.The average class size according to the school's website is 10–12 students.

Rather than having physical education classes, St. Paul's requires all its students to play sports. These sports range from the internationally competing crew team to intramural hockey.

St. Paul's School founded the summer Advanced Studies Program in 1957 to provide juniors from public and parochial New Hampshire high schools with challenging educational opportunities. The students live and study at the St. Paul's campus for five and a half weeks and are immersed in their subject of choice. Recent offerings have included astronomy and Shakespeare. In addition to the course load, students choose a daily extracurricular activity or sport to participate in four afternoons per week. The program had a 47% admission rate in 2010. In 2014, 267 students from 78 high schools participated in the Advanced Studies Program.According to its website, "The Advanced Studies Program is committed to educating the whole person and preparing students to make contributions to a changing and challenging world. ASP defines education as all of the structured experiences in which students participate: course work, athletics, extracurricular activities, and residential life. These opportunities involve valuable interaction between faculty, interns, house advisers, and students."