Exeter reports its college outcomes in broad bands rather than exact counts. Read carefully, and set beside Andover’s latest list, those bands still say a good deal about where Exeter graduates enroll.
When Phillips Exeter Academy posted its 2026–27 profile for colleges this fall, its list of colleges that had enrolled at least ten Exeter graduates over three years had grown to 32, up from 23 in the previous profile. Williams, Notre Dame, Purdue, and the University of New Hampshire were on it. Stanford, Duke, and Northwestern were not. All three appear in Exeter’s lower group, which means each enrolled at least one Exeter graduate across those three classes, but fewer than ten.
That distinction says as much about how Exeter reports outcomes as about where its students go, and it shapes how every number below should be read. This profile works from Exeter’s own documents: its 2026–27 and 2025–26 Profiles for Colleges, its college matriculation page, its 2026–27 Courses of Instruction, and its tuition and financial aid pages. Calculated figures are marked as ours, outside figures are attributed, and figures we could not find in official sources are left blank.
For context on Exeter’s peers, see our list of the best boarding schools in the US and our directory listing for Phillips Exeter Academy.
Exeter at a Glance
Each row carries its source and year. Profile figures are the school’s 2026–27 snapshot, published in fall 2026.
| Measure | Figure | Source and year |
| Total enrollment | 1,096 | College profile, 2026–27 |
| Seniors | 312, including 35 new seniors and postgraduates (labeled “Class of 2026” in the profile; see note below) | College profile, 2026–27 |
| New students entering in fall 2026 | 355 (entering students, not admission offers) | Exeter admissions page, viewed Nov. 2026 |
| Geographic reach | 45 states plus D.C. and Guam; 38 countries | College profile, 2026–27 |
| Students of color | 55% | College profile, 2026–27 |
| Students receiving aid | 49% | College profile, 2026–27 |
| Average annual grant | $60,036 boarding; $39,715 day | College profile, 2026–27 |
| Tuition | $71,797 boarding; $56,077 day | Exeter tuition page, 2026–27 |
| Faculty | 253 (28% with doctorates, 63% with master’s degrees) | College profile, 2026–27 |
| Average class size | 12; published student-teacher ratio 6:1 | College profile, 2026–27 |
| Courses offered | 478, of which 287 (60%) are in Exeter’s college-level categories | College profile, 2026–27 |
| AP courses | None | College profile, 2026–27 |
| Class rank | Not reported | College profile, 2026–27 |
A note on the senior figure: the 2026–27 profile labels its 312 seniors “Class of 2026,” but the same document identifies its current National Merit seniors as the Class of 2027, and the previous profile reported 329 seniors in the Class of 2026. The label appears to be uncorrected, but we have not found an independent Exeter source that confirms the size of the Class of 2027, so we report 312 as the profile states it.
Exeter admits students without regard to financial need and meets 100% of demonstrated need with grants. On tuition alone, Exeter is less expensive than Andover: Andover’s 2026–27 tuition letter sets boarding tuition at $79,800, $8,003 more than Exeter’s. That is a tuition comparison only; Exeter estimates $900 for books and supplies, and Andover adds a separate $1,200 course materials charge.
We did not find a current acceptance rate in the official Exeter sources we reviewed. Boarding School Review lists 17% and marks its summary as a verified school update, but it does not identify the admissions cycle behind the figure, and we have not been able to check it against Exeter’s own data.
How Exeter Reports College Outcomes
Exeter does not publish how many students enrolled at each college. Its 2026–27 profile groups the colleges attended by the Classes of 2024 through 2026 into two bands, ten or more students and fewer than ten, plus a separate international list with no band. Exeter’s college matriculation page repeats the list with slightly more entries at the low end and labels its lower group “10 or fewer” rather than “fewer than 10.” We use the profile’s definition when discussing the bands.
The format answers one question well: which colleges enrolled at least ten Exeter graduates over a three-year period. It cannot show whether that happened every year, whether a college enrolled 10 students or 40, or how many Exeter students were admitted or applied.
Where Exeter Graduates Enroll, 2024–2026
Exeter’s matriculation page lists 196 destination entries for 2024–2026: 32 in its ten-or-more group, 149 in its lower group, and 15 under International. Entries are not the same as distinct institutions. The page lists Oberlin College and the Oberlin Conservatory separately, for example, as well as two University of Connecticut campuses. The International heading is Exeter’s reporting convention rather than a strict geographic split: the profile PDF places Sciences Po in its lower group, while the webpage lists it under International. Exeter’s profile adds that 99% of graduates attend a four-year institution.
The 32 colleges in the ten-or-more group fall into four types. The counts below are colleges, not students, and the groupings are ours.
| Type of college (10+ group) | Colleges | Names |
| Ivy League | 8 | All eight: Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn, Princeton, Yale |
| Other private colleges and universities | 12 | Babson, Boston College, Case Western Reserve, George Washington, Georgetown, MIT, Northeastern, Notre Dame, NYU, Tufts, UChicago, WashU |
| Liberal arts colleges | 6 | Bowdoin, Colby, Holy Cross, Trinity College, Wellesley, Williams |
| Public universities | 6 | Michigan, Purdue, UC Berkeley, UMass Amherst, University of New Hampshire, William & Mary |
Because each Ivy enrolled at least ten, at least 80 Exeter graduates across the three classes combined enrolled at an Ivy League university. That is a floor for the whole period, not a yearly figure or an admission rate. New England is well represented, from Bowdoin and Colby to the University of New Hampshire, the state flagship in Exeter’s home state. Several highly selective universities, including Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, Johns Hopkins, Vanderbilt, and Rice, are in the lower group.
The list moved noticeably in one year. Twenty-two colleges stayed in the ten-or-more group. Ten were added: Babson, Case Western Reserve, Colby, Holy Cross, Purdue, UMass Amherst, the University of New Hampshire, WashU, William & Mary, and Williams. USC dropped below the line. The two lists share the Classes of 2024 and 2025, so the change reflects the Class of 2026 replacing the Class of 2023, and two or three students can move a college across the threshold. Stanford, Duke, and Northwestern were below ten in both lists.
Exeter and Andover: Comparing Their Latest Three-Year Lists
Andover’s 2026–2027 profile groups colleges into finer bands of 30 or more, 20 to 29, 10 to 19, and 5 to 9 students. Combining its top three bands produces a ten-or-more list that can be set beside Exeter’s. One caveat applies to the whole comparison: Exeter’s list explicitly covers the Classes of 2024 through 2026, while Andover’s September 2026 profile describes its period as “the past three years” without naming the classes. Andover’s profile separately reports Class of 2026 outcomes, so 2024 through 2026 is a reasonable reading, but it is an inference. Both schools report senior classes in the low-to-mid 300s in their current profiles (312 at Exeter, subject to the label issue above, and 334 at Andover), so the lists come from cohorts of broadly similar size.
Twenty colleges appear on both lists, including all eight Ivy League universities, MIT, UChicago, Georgetown, and Tufts. Beyond that shared core, the lists diverge.
| Exeter 10+ only (status on Andover’s list) | Andover 10+ only (status on Exeter’s list) |
| Babson, Trinity College, Williams (Andover 5–9 band) | Stanford, Northwestern, USC, Emory, Boston University, Carnegie Mellon, Barnard, Bates, Middlebury, Wesleyan, Miami, UNC Chapel Hill, Wisconsin (Exeter fewer than 10) |
| Bowdoin, Colby, Holy Cross, George Washington, Notre Dame, WashU, William & Mary, Purdue, University of New Hampshire (not listed in Andover’s bands, which start at five) | McGill, St Andrews (Andover 10–19; on Exeter’s international list, which has no band) |
Andover does not publish a band below five students, so a college missing from its bands may have enrolled anywhere from zero to four Andover graduates; that range is an inference from the list’s structure, not a figure Andover reports.
Exeter’s distinctive entries lean toward New England liberal arts colleges and a set of Catholic, Midwestern, and public universities. Andover’s lean toward Stanford, Northwestern, and other large private universities, plus two universities abroad. The bands cannot explain the difference. Student interests, recruiting relationships, geography, financial aid, and chance in classes of a few hundred students are all possible explanations.
For more on three of the colleges where Exeter graduates cluster, see our guides on how to get into Williams, how to get into Bowdoin, and how to get into Notre Dame. Our directory listing for Phillips Academy Andover covers the other school in the comparison.
Reading an Exeter Transcript: The 11-Point Scale
Exeter grades on a numeric scale from 11 (an A) down to 1 (a D-), with E for failure. Grades and GPAs are unweighted, the cumulative GPA includes only Exeter coursework, and by faculty vote Exeter does not report class rank. Unlike Andover, Exeter does not publish a GPA distribution, so there is no public way to place a given GPA within a class.
| Exeter grade | Letter grade |
| 11 | A |
| 10 | A- |
| 9 | B+ |
| 8 | B |
| 7 | B- |
| 6 | C+ |
| 5 | C |
| 4 | C- |
| 3 | D+ |
| 2 | D |
| 1 | D- |
| E | Failure |
Exeter runs on trimesters and does not calculate midterm or midyear grades; fall term grades are available in early December. All 9th-grade courses in the fall term are taken pass or no-pass. Term honors require averages of 8.0 (B) for Honors, 9.0 (B+) for High Honors, and 10.0 (A-) for Highest Honors. Our explainer on class rank covers how colleges read transcripts from schools that do not rank.
Harkness and the Curriculum
Exeter’s classes are built around the Harkness table, with about 12 students and one teacher in discussion around a single table. Weekday classes are scheduled between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m., with classes on some Saturdays. The profile includes a chart of course rigor by department, which we have redrawn below using Exeter’s own categories.
| Department cluster | Introductory / Intermediate (100–300) | College Level (400 and 500) | College Major Equivalency (600, 700, 999) | Total | College level or above |
| Humanities / Social Science | 32 | 87 | 2 | 121 | 73.6% |
| Math / Science | 41 | 70 | 10 | 121 | 66.1% |
| Classical and Modern Languages | 87 | 63 | 17 | 167 | 47.9% |
| Visual and Performing Arts | 25 | 16 | 0 | 41 | 39.0% |
| Interdisciplinary / Exeter Innovation / Health and Human Development | 6 | 22 | 0 | 28 | 78.6% |
| Total | 191 | 258 | 29 | 478 | 60.0% |
In 2026–27, 287 of Exeter’s 478 courses (60%) fall in its College Level or College Major Equivalency categories. These are Exeter’s classifications of course level; they do not establish college credit or transfer equivalency, and they count courses offered rather than students enrolled in them. The previous profile reported 61% of 481 courses, a difference too small to read as a change in rigor. The share varies by department: about three-quarters of humanities and social science courses are in the upper categories, while 87 of 167 language offerings fall in the introductory or intermediate category.
| Course number | Level, as Exeter defines it |
| 100 | Preparatory |
| 200 | Intermediate or advanced |
| 300 | Advanced proficiency |
| 400 | Beyond AP or first-year college level |
| 500 | First- or second-year college level |
| 600 and 700 | College major equivalency |
| 999 | Independent field course or tutorial |
The Top of the Catalog
The 2026–27 Courses of Instruction includes several courses well beyond a typical high school ceiling:
- Mathematics: Linear Algebra (MAT640) and Foundations of Abstract Mathematics (MAT700), a proof-based bridge to courses such as real analysis and abstract algebra, plus Selected Topics courses (MAT690 and MAT790)
- Physics: Quantum Mechanics (PHY640), which begins where PHY400 ends and lists PHY400, PHY520, and MAT520 as prerequisites, or permission of the instructor
- Biology: Biology Research (BIO670), conducted in collaboration with a Stanford laboratory that studies insulin-producing cells, and Malaria: Exploring Bioinformatics and Next-Generation Sequencing (BIO650), offered in partnership with the Catteruccia Lab at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and open by application to 11th and 12th graders
- Independent work: student-designed field courses (999) and supervised research projects (SRP 400), with faculty approval
Exeter offers no AP courses. Its Courses of Instruction says the school does not subscribe to the AP program because many courses are taught at or beyond AP level. Exeter still administers AP exams on campus each May and advises that only students with consistently superior work in a subject should take them.
Four-year students meet diploma requirements across English, languages, mathematics, history, science, the arts, religion, ethics, and philosophy, computer science, health and human development, and physical education. English alone requires eleven term credits, and math requires nine term credits or a pass in a course numbered 330 or higher. The Courses of Instruction lists the full requirements and their exceptions.
Testing and National Merit
Exeter does not record test scores on its transcript. Its profiles report test results for the most recent graduating class, as labeled below.
| Measure | 2026–27 profile: Class of 2026 | 2025–26 profile: Class of 2025 |
| SAT Reading and Writing average | 711 | 719 |
| SAT Math average | 726 | 719 |
| SAT total, middle 50% | 1360–1530 | 1360–1550 |
| ACT composite, middle 50% | 31–35 | 30–35 |
| Share of AP exams scored 4 or 5 | 82% | 86% |
The profiles do not say how many students these SAT and ACT summaries represent, so they should not be assumed to describe every graduate. The AP figure is a share of exams taken, not of students. National Merit results are reported for a different cohort, the senior class at the time each profile was published:
| Profile | Class | National Merit Semifinalists | Commended Students |
| 2026–27 | Class of 2027 | 27 | 70 |
| 2025–26 | Class of 2026 | 23 | 61 |
Our guide to what counts as a good SAT score puts these ranges in national context.
College Counseling at Exeter
Exeter’s College Counseling Office is led by Dean of College Counseling Elizabeth M. Dolan, with nine associate directors and four office staff listed in the 2026–27 profile. Exeter describes the process in phases: exploration in 9th and 10th grade, research and list building with a counselor in 11th grade, and applications in 12th grade, with each student paired with a dedicated counselor. Seniors plan their academic programs with their advisers and the counseling office, and every senior signs an honesty and integrity statement covering the college application process. We did not find counselor caseloads or the date counselors are assigned in the sources we reviewed, and we have not estimated either.
Does an Exeter Diploma Raise Your Odds at Selective Colleges?
The published data shows that Exeter graduates enroll at highly selective colleges in large numbers: every Ivy League university enrolled at least ten Exeter graduates across the Classes of 2024 through 2026. It does not show that attending Exeter caused those outcomes. Exeter selects students with strong academic records, and where admitted students enroll is shaped by financial aid, binding early decision commitments, athletic recruiting, and personal preference, none of which the bands capture. These school publications do not provide a matched comparison of otherwise similar applicants, so strong outcomes and an admissions advantage remain different claims.
A Counselor’s Read for Exeter Families
The points below are College Transitions’ professional interpretation. They are consistent with Exeter’s published data but not proven by it.
Course selection and teacher recommendations provide additional context when rank and a GPA distribution are unavailable. Colleges that read Exeter files regularly know the 11-point scale and the course numbering, and recommendations from Harkness teachers draw on sustained classroom discussion.
Use the ten-or-more group as background, not as a list-building tool. A college in the lower group can be a realistic choice; the band shows where at least ten graduates enrolled over three years, not where Exeter students were admitted.
Late entrants should plan early. The 2026–27 profile reports 35 new seniors and postgraduates among its seniors, and students who arrive for one year have little time to build an Exeter transcript and the faculty relationships behind recommendations.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which colleges enrolled at least ten Exeter graduates?
Across the Classes of 2024 through 2026, 32 colleges, including all eight Ivy League universities, MIT, UChicago, Georgetown, Williams, and Notre Dame. Exeter does not publish exact counts or rank its most popular destinations.
Does Exeter offer AP classes?
No. Exeter does not subscribe to the AP program, though students may take AP exams, which the school administers each May.
How does Exeter grade?
On an unweighted 11-point scale where 11 equals an A. Exeter does not rank students or publish a GPA distribution.
What is Exeter’s acceptance rate?
We did not find a current acceptance rate in official Exeter sources. Boarding School Review lists 17%, citing a school update, without identifying the admissions cycle.
Methodology
Sources: Exeter’s 2026–27 Profile for Colleges, posted in fall 2026; its 2025–26 Profile for Colleges; its college matriculation page; the 2026–27 Courses of Instruction, dated April 7, 2026; and its tuition, financial aid, admissions, and college counseling pages. Andover comparisons use Andover’s 2026–2027 Profile for College Admission Offices, prepared in September 2026, and its March 2026 tuition letter. All sources were accessed on November 11, 2026.
Dates differ by measure. Enrollment, faculty, aid, and course counts are the 2026–27 profile’s snapshot. College outcomes cover the Classes of 2024 through 2026. Test averages describe the Class of 2026 (current profile) and Class of 2025 (prior profile), while National Merit counts describe the Classes of 2027 and 2026. Tuition is for 2026–27.
We extracted figures directly from the PDF files. Course-rigor values come from the profile’s chart; its legend is embedded as an image, so we read it from the rendered page. The ten-or-more list is identical in the profile and on the matriculation page. Destination entries are counted as Exeter lists them. Groupings of colleges by type are ours. Andover’s 30+, 20–29, and 10–19 bands are combined at the ten-student line; absence from Andover’s bands is reported as such, not as a count. Two items remain unresolved: the class label on Exeter’s 312-senior figure and the exact classes in Andover’s three-year period. Exeter does not publish exact counts, admission results, a GPA distribution, counselor caseloads, or an acceptance rate in the sources we reviewed, and we have not estimated any of them.
Exeter is part of a series of data-driven school profiles. You can browse our other data visualizations.
Appendix: Exeter’s Ten-or-More Colleges, 2024–2026
The 32 colleges that enrolled ten or more Exeter graduates across the Classes of 2024 through 2026, with CT’s grouping and each college’s band on Andover’s latest three-year list.
| College (10+ at Exeter, 2024–2026) | CT group | Andover band, latest three-year list |
| Babson | Other private | 5–9 |
| Boston College | Other private | 20–29 |
| Bowdoin | Liberal arts college | Not in Andover’s 5+ bands |
| Brown | Ivy League | 20–29 |
| Case Western Reserve | Other private | 10–19 |
| Colby | Liberal arts college | Not in Andover’s 5+ bands |
| Columbia | Ivy League | 30+ |
| Cornell | Ivy League | 30+ |
| Dartmouth | Ivy League | 10–19 |
| George Washington | Other private | Not in Andover’s 5+ bands |
| Georgetown | Other private | 20–29 |
| Harvard | Ivy League | 20–29 |
| Holy Cross | Liberal arts college | Not in Andover’s 5+ bands |
| MIT | Other private | 20–29 |
| Michigan | Public | 10–19 |
| NYU | Other private | 20–29 |
| New Hampshire | Public | Not in Andover’s 5+ bands |
| Northeastern | Other private | 10–19 |
| Notre Dame | Other private | Not in Andover’s 5+ bands |
| Penn | Ivy League | 10–19 |
| Princeton | Ivy League | 10–19 |
| Purdue | Public | Not in Andover’s 5+ bands |
| Trinity College | Liberal arts college | 5–9 |
| Tufts | Other private | 20–29 |
| UC Berkeley | Public | 10–19 |
| UChicago | Other private | 30+ |
| UMass Amherst | Public | 10–19 |
| WashU | Other private | Not in Andover’s 5+ bands |
| Wellesley | Liberal arts college | 10–19 |
| William & Mary | Public | Not in Andover’s 5+ bands |
| Williams | Liberal arts college | 5–9 |
| Yale | Ivy League | 10–19 |
If your family is weighing how a school like Exeter shapes a college list, or you want an outside read on a transcript from a demanding school, our college admissions counselors work with students at every stage of high school.
