[26] The school focused heavily on preparing students for Yale's entrance exams, and by the early 1920s Hotchkiss was consistently beating Andover's scores at the College Boards.

The Ford family of Michigan built the school library;[37] Ohio newspaperman Paul Block donated the chapel;[38] and automobile magnate Walter Chrysler paid for the infirmary.

[39] By 1920, the reputation was sufficiently established that Minnesota native F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise poked fun at Hotchkiss and its athletics rival Taft for "prepar[ing] the wealth of the Middle West for social success at Yale.

"[51] Van Santvoord found an ideological ally in Yale president James Rowland Angell, who declared at a Hotchkiss alumni dinner that college entrance examinations were "disastrous" for secondary education.

[52] When Van Santvoord announced his retirement in 1954, Time magazine stated that "of all U.S. prep schools, few, if any, can beat the standards Hotchkiss has set".

[54][55]) Under Van Santvoord, Hotchkiss became the first of the post-1884 American boarding schools to accept black students when Marcellus Winston '55 matriculated in 1951.

[58] However, Van Santvoord strongly opposed co-education, and due to his continuing influence over the school's board of trustees, Hotchkiss did not begin accepting girls until nearly two decades after his retirement.

[59] Under his leadership, Hotchkiss' financial aid resources "largely went to the nouveau poor, well-to-do families who had taken their lumps during the Great Depression.

[62] Neither did Van Santvoord fully dislodge the school's no-second-chances approach to student discipline, which was facetiously compared to "Stalag 17".

[60] Twenty-five years after his retirement, The New York Times wrote that Hotchkiss "has long been known for its strict rules and the alacrity with which it expels youngsters who break them.

[61][69][70] In 1974, Hotchkiss began admitting girls (but not before certain board members nearly succeeded in firing Olsen to prevent it),[71] and as of 2014 there was an approximately 50–50 gender balance in the student body.

Established by the class of 1948, the Fund for Global Understanding enables student participation in summer service projects across the world.

[30] In 2010, Hotchkiss partnered with Peking University High School to establish its study abroad, international division called Dalton Academy.

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

[84] However, the school had previously allowed that faculty member to return to Hotchkiss after first suspending him following reports of sexual misconduct.

[82] In 2017, following a jury trial and unsuccessful appeal, Hotchkiss was required to pay $41.5 million to a former student who contracted tick-borne encephalitis during a 2007 school trip to China.

"[91] Operating on a semester schedule, Hotchkiss offers a classical education,[30] 224 courses, several foreign languages[3] and study-abroad programs.

[97] In 2007, The Wall Street Journal stated that Hotchkiss, compared to Choate Rosemary Hall and Deerfield Academy, had more students accepted at Harvard, Princeton, and six other universities, excluding Yale.

[3] The Main Building serves as the academic and social center, featuring 30 SmartBoard classrooms, the Edsel Ford Memorial Library with 87,000-volumes occupying 25,000 square feet, and dining halls.

[112] The school renovation project earned Robert A.M. Stern Architects the 2010 Palladio Award, with Paul Rudolph[112] and Butler Rogers Basket[109] contributing elements of modern architecture.

In 2005, Hotchkiss opened the 715-seat Esther Eastman Music Center, equipped with a handmade Fazioli F308 piano, 12 Steinway pianos, 12 practice rooms, 3 ensemble practice rooms, a WKIS radio station, and Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) lab.