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Milton Academy (informally referred to as Milton) is a coeducational, independent, and college-preparatory boarding and day school in Milton, Massachusetts, educating students in grades K–12. The Lower School (grades K–8) educates day students and the Upper School (grades 9–12) educates a roughly even mixture of boarding and day students.
Milton's list of notable alumni includes Nobel laureate T. S. Eliot, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy, and Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick.
According to the official town history, the early Milton Academy, like many other old New England academies, was initially "a state-chartered and partially subsidized institution which, in effect, served as a county high school." In March 1798, the Massachusetts legislature granted the academy a corporate charter and a state-funded endowment (three square miles of land in Maine).Teele, pp. 327-38. However, the academy did not actually open for business until 1807, due to protracted disputes about whether the campus should be located in the center or outskirts of town.Teele, pp. 330-31. In 1807, the academy opened in the center of town with 23 students.Teele, p. 333. Most students were locals, although some out-of-town students boarded with local families.Hamilton, pp. 102-03.
Few records of the early academy survive. Alumni of the early academy include Major General Edwin Vose Sumner, who commanded Union troops at Antietam and Fredericksburg.Teele, p. 334.
In 1866, the town of Milton effectively bought out the first Milton Academy. It opened Milton High School, a tax-funded, tuition-free public school, and hired the academy's principal to lead it.Teele, p. 338. In response, the academy's board of trustees shut down the academy and sold the campus to the public school.Teele, pp. 338-39. From 1866 to 1884, Milton Academy survived as a paper entity, with a board of trustees but no teachers, students, or campus.
Milton Academy re-opened in September 1885 with four teachers and roughly 40 day students.Teele, pp. 340, 342. John Forbes' son William H. Forbes (president of Bell Telephone Company, the predecessor of AT&T) was elected president of the board of trustees. The academy reopened its boarding department in 1888.Hamilton, p. 103. Although Milton originally educated both boys and girls, in 1901 the Upper School divided into separate boys' and girls' divisions, each with its own faculty and campus. The boys' and girls' schools reunited in 1981.
The new Milton attracted an affluent clientele and became a notable college-preparatory institution. From 1906 to 1915, Milton sent 179 students to Harvard College, making it Harvard's fifth-largest feeder school, after Boston Latin, Phillips Exeter, Cambridge Latin, and Nobles. In 1996, 33% of Milton graduates went on to Ivy League colleges, second-highest among New England boarding schools. In 2002, Harvard's student newspaper reported that in some years Milton has produced as many as 25% of the students admitted to Harvard through the so-called "Z-list," a set of students who are promised admission to Harvard after taking a gap year; students on the Z-list often have legacy connections to Harvard.Karabel, p. 513.
Although Milton was nonsectarian, it traditionally educated large numbers of Unitarianism students, in contrast to the many Protestant Episcopalian boarding schools founded at the turn of the 20th century. (In the nineteenth century, the town of Milton was one of the few towns in Massachusetts where Unitarians may have outnumbered trinitarians.Hamilton, p. 137.) Unitarian Miltonians include poet T. S. Eliot (who later converted to Episcopalianism) and architect Buckminster Fuller. In 1901, several Milton friends and alumni (including William Forbes's son Cameron and Milton trustee Norwood Penrose Hallowell) helped establish Middlesex School, another formally nonsectarian prep school with a large and wealthy Unitarian clientele. Some prominent Catholics were also drawn to Milton's relative lack of Protestant influence. Robert F. Kennedy attended Milton after Rose Kennedy withdrew him from St. Paul's (due to what she believed was SPS' anti-Catholic atmosphere), and his brother Ted Kennedy also went to Milton.
In November 1948, T. S. Eliot '06 visited Milton to give a lecture to the students; during this visit, he learned that he had won the Nobel Prize. Academic Richard Livingstone spoke at Milton's 150th anniversary celebration; his talk was published, in abridged form, in the November issue of The Atlantic. Other notable guest speakers include Scottish statesman John Buchan, the politicians Newton D. Baker, Bill Clinton. and Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the diplomat Sumner Welles.
In 1991, Milton appointed Needham High School president Edwin P. Fredie as headmaster. According to The New York Times, this made Milton "the first major American boarding school with a black headmaster." Fredie served until 1999 and was succeeded by Milton's first female headmaster, Robin Robertson, who served until 2007.
From 2015 to 2020, Milton conducted a $182 million fundraising campaign, which included $48 million for student financial aid and funded upgrades to Milton's science, art, drama, and athletic facilities.
In a typical year, the Upper School enrolls 100 freshmen, 25 incoming sophomores, and 15 incoming juniors.2023-2024 Admissions Catalogue, p. 73. The Lower School enrolls 24 kindergarteners, 8 incoming fourth-graders, 13 incoming sixth-graders, and 10 incoming seventh-graders.
In the 2021–22 school year, the Lower School educated 317 students.
In the same year, tuition at the Lower School ranged from $42,950 for kindergarteners to $62,550 for middle schoolers.
Milton's athletics rival is the Noble and Greenough School of Dedham (colloquially "Nobles"). The two schools began playing an annual football game in 1886, and contest the fifth-oldest high school football rivalry in the United States. In 2020, Milton and Nobles were the two largest feeders to Harvard's Harvard Crimson; Milton supplied nine Harvard athletes and Nobles supplied fifteen.
In 2005, the school expelled five members of the boys' varsity ice hockey team for obtaining oral sex from a 15-year-old female student on three separate occasions. Following an investigation by the Norfolk County District Attorney, all five expelled students were indicted for statutory rape. The DA dropped the charges against the three older students in exchange for an apology, 100 hours of community service, and two years of probation. (The two younger students were indicted in juvenile court, where fewer details are disclosed to the public.) The female student was placed on administrative leave and eventually transferred to a different school. One of the expelled students later sued the academy, but his suit was dismissed in 2007. Two Milton graduates used this story as the inspiration for a book, which was later adapted into a movie.
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