MID-ATLANTIC BOARDING SCHOOL GROUP: A COLLECTION OF PRESTIGIOUS BOARDING SCHOOLS ACROSS DELAWARE, NEW JERSEY, PENNSYLVANIA AND VIRGINIA

The Mid-Atlantic Boarding School Group (MABS) is a network of elite boarding schools on the East Coast of the United States. The five member schools collaborate across a multitude of disciplines and projects, including marketing and promotion and a common approach to admissions. It is one of many regional boarding school consortiums around the United States and includes some of the most prestigious schools in the country.

ABOUT

The consortium was established to give a collective voice to the top schools in the region that often were overlooked in favour of their more famous peers in the Northeast, New England particularly. Despite being broadly similar in terms of selectivity, academic rigour and sporting prowess, the schools of the Mid-Atlantic were often not the first choice of many prospective families, opting for the better-known Group of Seven or St. Grottlesex schools.

The five member schools of the Mid-Atlantic Boarding School Group (Blair, Episcopal, Mercersburg, Peddie and St. Andrew’s) are on a par with the great New England boarding schools and share close relationships with many of them. These schools have a long legacy of educating the upper classes of American and international society and have traditionally been viewed as bastions of the old guard and beacons of privilege. These schools, and their private school peers across the country, have worked enormously hard to ensure that their gilded halls are no longer the exclusive enclave of America’s WASPiest first families but are accessible to capable and gifted pupils, irrespective of ethnicity or family background. A host of scholarship and financial aid packages exist to support entry to MABS schools and a core component of the work that the MABS secretariat carries out is raising awareness of these opportunities and encouraging applicants.

The MABS group organise various fairs, events and visits to promote their member schools and to advocate for boarding in the Mid-Atlantic region. The group regularly attend elementary and middle schools as a collective to engage with admissions officers, parents and pupils and to discuss applications and to make the case for their schools as preferred options for boarders. It acts as an admissions interface, a representative voice and marketing body for the region as well as its member schools in a similar fashion to other regional boarding schools consortia, such as The Boarding School Consortium (BSC), the Great Boarding Schools (GBS) coalition, the Eight Schools Association (ESA), Maine Boarding Schools (MBS), Midwest Boarding, the Midwest Boarding Schools Association (MBSA / MWBS), the Ten Schools Admission Organization (TSAO), the Texas Boarding Schools Association (TBSA), the Western Boarding Schools Association (WBSA) and the Western Connecticut Boarding Schools Association (WCBS) alongside other, ethos specific organisations like the Catholic Boarding Schools Association (CBSA), the Junior Boarding School Association (JBSA), the Semester Schools Network (SSN) and the Small Boarding Schools Association (SBSA).

The five member schools also share close relationships with some of the most selective liberal arts colleges and universities in the region, particularly Johns Hopkins, Penn, Princeton, Rutgers, Swarthmore, UVA and the Pennsylvania Consortium for the Liberal Arts (PCLA) colleges. Indeed, these schools have an illustrious alumni list which includes many established American dynasties and aristocratic families – many of whom have attended these prestigious universities post-graduation. Episcopal and St. Andrew’s, especially, have long-been fashionable choices for America’s wealthy Episcopal upper crust and the Philadelphia elite, alongside the St. Grottlesex schools.

The five member schools of the Mid-Atlantic Boarding School Group are all accredited independent schools, with the Middle States Association (MSA), the New Jersey Association of Independent Schools (NJAIS) and the Pennsylvania Association of Independent Schools (PAIS) resepctively. Their boarding programmes are accredited and subject to inspection by The Association of Boarding Schools (TABS). All of the schools are in good standing with the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) and are members of the Global Education Benchmark Group (GEBG).

If you would like to learn more about the Mid-Atlantic Boarding School Group, please contact your preferred member school as listed below.

If you studied at one of the schools listed below, please do share your insights as these greatly help inform prospective families decision-making. Any specific anecdotes or details that might give a better picture of life at such a school would be very welcome. Likewise, if you taught at one of these schools, or attended a MABS event, please feel free to discuss your thoughts with us.