College Preparatory Boarding School in Pennsylvania

The Hill School, Montgomery County:
The Hill School is a co-educational boarding and day school consisting of grades 9-12 and a post-graduate year. We are located in Pottstown in Montgomery County PA, 40 miles north-west of Philadelphia. Founded in 1851, as The Family Boarding School, The Hill School provides students from across the U.S. and around the world with an outstanding liberal arts education designed to prepare them well for excellence in college, careers, and life.

Founded in 1851, as The Family Boarding School, The Hill School has a 76% / 24% boarding-to-day student ratio. All students must board for one year. Hill students are drawn from 27 states and 20 foreign countries.

A Hill education ultimately hopes to create a lifetime of learning inspired by intellectual curiosity, moral virtue, and esteem for human excellence. The student / teacher ratio is approximately 7-1. A typical class size consists of 12 students and the largest class size is 17 students. At The Hill School, student enrollment is 503 students, with 56% boys and 44% girls.

The school’s motto, “Whatsoever things are true,” reinforces the Honor Code and its expectations that students will develop leadership skills and show personal responsibility and courtesy for others.

The Hill School prepares young men and women for college, careers, and life.  In a vigorous, diverse, yet structured residential community, we challenge our young people through a traditional liberal arts curriculum to live, learn, and lead; to fulfill themselves; and to serve the common good.  Thus, we seek excellence in our unique way, exhorting students to strive always for 'Whatsoever things are true.' "

The academic program of The Hill School embodies the quest for “Whatsoever things are true,” our School motto, by providing an excellent liberal arts education rooted in basic skills and knowledge. The Hill School offers an educational experience that emphasizes intellectual discovery while helping students develop a moral framework by which to live their lives.

- The Hill School’s reputation for academic excellence is based upon a challenging liberal arts curriculum taught by highly qualified, dedicated teachers. 

- The Hill School is an exceptionally close learning community, a place where faculty and students treat each other as family – where teachers know and care for their students as individuals and students form lifelong friendships.

- The Hill School provides meaningful, balanced structure in a supportive atmosphere where shared community expectations sharpen each student’s focus, promote personal responsibility, build self-confidence, and form the foundation for future achievement.

- The Hill School is proud of its history and traditions, unique 160-year-old threads that connect the quality of Hill's past with the vigor and excellence of its future.

- The Hill School values and nurtures principles of honesty and genuineness, courtesy and respect, and gratitude and concern for the greater good.

Our Staff:
The Hill has 68 teaching faculty members; 70% hold or are working toward advanced degrees. Nearly all reside in dormitories serving as dorm parents, or in homes on campus.

- A challenging curriculum (including post-grad year) for boarding and day students, emphasizing critical thinking and writing.
- We offer 23 Advanced Placement courses, as well as an array of honors classes and independent studies.
- Hill students are active in athletics, the arts, student-run organizations, and community service.
- College advisers are assigned during the winter term of the fifth form (junior) year.

Subjects include:  
- English, Humanities, Classics, Modern Languages, Math, History, Science, Religion and Arts.

Athletics at The Hill School:  
With 29 varsity sports programs and our fitness-centered intramural program, athletics play a vital role in every Hill student’s development.

At The Hill, we believe some of the most important lessons are learned outside the classroom. Whether in the dormitory, the student center, during our family-style meals in the oak-paneled dining hall surrounded by original N.C. Wyeth paintings, or in the chapel, Hill students are learning how to live and succeed in a self-contained community. Through direct guidance and shared experience, students learn the importance of trust, communication, self-reliance and leadership. The school combines the traditions of the past with each student’s dreams for the future to provide a unique learning and living environment.

Approximately 80 percent of Hill students board every year, and all students are required to board for at least one year. The school believes the bonds created between students and the adults living in this lively community provide an experience that generates great academic, athletic, and social excellence and leads to relationships that are cherished for a lifetime.

Hill boarding students learn by living with students from across the United States and around the world. Whether through the weekly dorm meetings, lively “dorm feeds” or "Open Houses," the residential curriculum program, or daily interaction with peers and adults, boarding students make lifelong friends in a unique way and learn important life skills in the process. Best of all, some of the most memorable, positive, and fun experiences happen within the dormitories.

Our residential community provides a true second home for those who live on campus. More than 30 Hill faculty members live in the dorms as “dorm parents,” and a majority of those who do not serve as affiliates to a dormitory. These faculty members support students as they learn to be independent young adults.