[6] The American Revolutionary War had caused significant upheaval to education in New England, and Phillips Academy filled part of that gap.

[15] Although the academies had neighboring campuses in the town of Andover, their administrations sought to limit and regulate contact between the student bodies.

In the 1880s, the bulk of Andover students came from Congregationalist (mainly Calvinist) and Presbyterian households, and the academy enrolled "almost no" Unitarians or Methodists.

Bancroft improved Andover's academic reputation; he reformed the curriculum to the expectations of college presidents and visited the English public schools to learn about best practices in Europe.

[35] To compete with newer, fully residential boarding schools, the headmasters built new on-campus housing and modernized the academic facilities, a process that took over a generation to complete.

Shortly after taking over, Bancroft recognized that Andover's historical reliance on local families for student housing was hurting its reputation.

[37] Much of this expansion was funded by banker Thomas Cochran '90, a partner at J. P. Morgan who had no children and wanted to make Andover "the most beautiful school in America.

[40]During this period, Andover was a primarily white and Protestant institution, although its expanding scholarship program and occasional steps toward racial integration made it relatively diverse by New England boarding school standards.

[48] Under his leadership, Andover co-authored a study on high school students' preparation for college coursework, which led to the creation of the Advanced Placement program.

[49][50][51] Although tightening academic standards at elite universities and increased competition from public schools caused Andover's college placement record to decline significantly during Kemper's administration—the proportion of graduates attending Yale, Harvard, or Princeton fell to 55% in 1953 and 33% in 1967—nearly every major boarding school endured similar declines during this period.

[63] The previous Head of School was law professor (and 1990 Exeter graduate) John Palfrey,[64] who left Andover to take over the MacArthur Foundation.

[75] To recruit U.S. students from "historically underrepresented" backgrounds, Andover pays for certain prospective financial aid applicants and their guardians to visit the campus during the admissions process.

[77] Andover enrolls a student body that is more racially diverse than Massachusetts, although the numbers vary significantly depending on whether respondents are permitted to identify as two or more races.

[81] Phillips Academy follows a trimester program, where a school year is divided into three terms lasting around ten weeks each.

[83] With 232 teaching faculty, a 7:1 student-faculty ratio, and an average class size of 13, Andover is able to offer 300 courses and a faculty-guided independent research option.

[84] Although Andover helped create the Advanced Placement program, the academy de-emphasized AP classes in the 21st century, citing a desire to maintain curricular flexibility and independence.

[81] Andover also runs a five-week summer session for approximately 600 students entering grades 8-12,[87] which dates back to 1942.

[88] Andover does not publicly report its students' standardized test scores, explaining that many colleges adopted test-optional admission policies during the COVID-19 pandemic.

[96] Beginning in 1891, Olmsted and his architectural firm advised Andover on campus design; this relationship would continue for the next five decades.

[124][125] The gallery's permanent collection includes Winslow Homer's Eight Bells, along with work by John Singleton Copley, Benjamin West, Thomas Eakins, James McNeill Whistler, Frederic Remington, George Bellows, Edward Hopper, Georgia O'Keeffe, Jackson Pollock, Frank Stella, and Andrew Wyeth.

The collection includes materials from the Northeast, Southeast, Midwest, Southwest, Mexico and the Arctic, and range from Paleo Indian (more than 10,000 years ago) to the present day.

[citation needed] Phillips Academy's extracurricular activities include music ensembles, a campus newspaper, an Internet radio station (formerly broadcasting as WPAA), and a debate club.

[141][142] In postseason play, Andover's teams compete in playoffs organized by the New England Preparatory School Athletic Council.

[154] In 2020, an Instagram account, @blackatandover, began circulating stories from anonymous current and former Black-identifying students, many of whom detailed personal experiences with racism at Phillips Academy.

It has educated numerous billionaires, including venture capitalist Tim Draper; private equity pioneer Ted Forstmann; oil heir and environmental philanthropist Ed Bass; Rahim Al-Hussaini Aga Khan V, 50th Imam of the Ismaili Muslims, and media heir Lachlan Murdoch.

Andover, often in combination with Exeter,[160] is understood symbolically as an "elite New England prep school", connoting privilege.

Writer William S. Dietrich II described Andover and other elite prep schools as being part of a "WASP ascendancy" during the first half of the twentieth century.

[161] Elite universities such as Yale and Princeton tended to accept disproportionate percentages of prep school students while using quotas to deny admission to minority applicants.

"[166] If the WASP ascendancy has waned, the image of unaffordability continues to persist, with one writer deploring how the schools cost $30,000 and more annually.

[citation needed] For example, Florida governor Ron DeSantis regularly criticized Andover, Exeter, and Groton in his stump speech during his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.