Roxbury Latin School


The Roxbury Latin School, which was founded in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston, by the Rev. John Eliot under a charter received from King Charles I of England, is the oldest school in continuous existence in North America. Since its founding in 1645, it has educated boys on a continuous basis.
Located since 1927 at 101 St. Theresa Avenue in the West Roxbury neighborhood of Boston, the school now serves roughly 300 boys in grades seven through twelve. Eliot founded the school "to fit for public service both in church and in commonwealth in succeeding ages," and the school still considers instilling a desire to perform public service among its principal missions.
The school's endowment is estimated at $189 million, the largest of any boys' day school in the United States. The school maintains a need-blind admissions policy, admitting boys without consideration of the ability of their families to pay the full tuition.
Its previous headmaster, F. Washington Jarvis, who retired in the summer of 2004 after a 30-year tenure, published two books about Roxbury Latin: a history of the school and a collection of his speeches to boys at Roxbury Latin. The title of the former, Schola Illustris, was the phrase Cotton Mather used to describe the school in 1690, following John Eliot's death. In addition to those books, Richard Walden Hale published Tercentenary History of the Roxbury Latin School in 1946.
Roxbury Latin is a member of the Independent School League and NEPSAC. It has an unofficial sister school relationship with the Winsor School in Boston as well as an African brother school, the Maru a Pula School.

Rankings

According to the school's website, the median Roxbury Latin student of the class of 2015 scored 2210 out of 2400 on the SAT. Roxbury Latin has among the highest median SAT averages of any private school. A 2004 piece in The Wall Street Journal noted Roxbury Latin for its acceptance rates at the most competitive universities, despite maintaining a low tuition relative to its peers. In 2003, Worth magazine ranked Roxbury Latin as the #1 "feeder school" for elite universities, with a larger portion of its graduating class attending Princeton University, Harvard University, or Yale University than any other school.
In 2008, the website PrepReview.com extended and updated the earlier survey by Worth magazine. Despite using more inclusive criteria in place of Worths narrow focus on Princeton, Harvard, and Yale, Roxbury Latin again topped the rankings. PrepReview.com looked at the number of matriculants to all eight Ivy League undergraduate colleges as well as to MIT and Stanford University. Roxbury Latin placed nearly half of its recent graduates among these institutions, the highest rate of any secondary school in the world. The 2008 rankings by PrepReview.com placed Roxbury Latin first in all of the following categories: America's Top 50 High Schools, America's Best High Schools Ranked by SAT, and America's Best Private Day Schools. Additionally, PrepReview.com ranked Roxbury Latin first in the world among secondary schools for its students' success at gaining admission to Harvard University: in 2009, 20% of the graduating class at Roxbury Latin matriculated at Harvard. In 2010, Forbes magazine ranked Roxbury Latin fifth in a list of the top 10 prep schools in America. In 2015, TheStreet ranked Roxbury Latin among Top US Private Schools with the Most Graduates Getting Into Ivy League Universities.

Transportation

The school provides school bus service for some students who live in the Dorchester, South Boston, Hyde Park, Mattapan, and Roxbury neighborhoods of Boston. The school charges a nominal fee for the bus usage.

Athletics

The school has varsity, junior varsity and lower-level teams in football, cross country, soccer, basketball, ice hockey, wrestling, baseball, tennis, lacrosse, and track and field. The school has a notable wrestling program, with the former varsity coach Steven E. Ward recently being inducted into the wrestling hall of fame in 2009. The varsity soccer team was co-champions with Rivers in the NEPSAC tournament in 2012. The Track & Field team has won the NEPSTA Championship in nine of the last eleven years, including five in a row from 2011–2015. The Track Team also won the ISTA Championship in 2012 and 2013. The Tennis team has won the ISL Championship in 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015, and has been invited to the NEPSAC Class B Tennis Championship nine years in a row, winning the tournament in 2013 and finishing as runners-up in 2015.

Extracurriculars

The school has a wide variety of extracurricular activities for its students to partake in. The Model United Nations program and the Debate and Public Speaking program are especially popular, with approximately a hundred students in each. The school participates in many Model United Nations conferences and debate tournaments every year. Another moderately popular activity is Botball, an annual interscholastic robotics competition. The school team has done exceptionally well in recent years, placing 5th in the New England Division in 2009. In 2010, it placed 2nd out of 19 teams, a school record. The school also boasts several language clubs and a chess team that has won or shared the South Shore Interscholastic Chess League title in 2 of the last 5 years, as well as community service clubs, such as Habitat for Humanity.

Music

The school has an extensive music program, available to students of all grades. There is junior chorus for seventh and eighth graders, and a glee club for high schoolers. There is also a small a cappella group consisting of about fourteen singers called the Latonics that requires an audition. Additionally, there is a jazz band and several halls a year devoted to instrumental performances by students and faculty.

Notable alumni

Colonists