Miss Porter's School

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Miss Porter's School
Location
Farmington, CT, USA
Information
Religion None
Head of School M. Burch Tracy Ford
Enrollment

327 total
210 boarding
117 day
Faculty 60
Student:teacher ratio 8:1
Average SAT scores (2007) 1863
Tuition Boarding $40,440, Day $31,120
Campus Township, 55 acres
Athletics 29 Interscholastic Sports
Mascot None; the Fighting Daisy is often mistakenly cited and much beloved as an unofficial mascot by many students
Color(s) Green, white, and black
Homepage www.missporters.org

Miss Porter's School, sometimes simply referred to as "Farmington", is a college preparatory school for girls, aged 14-18, located in Farmington, Connecticut. It was founded by education reformer Sarah Porter in 1843, with an eye to educating young women of the Eastern seaboard.

Contents

[edit] Mission Statement

Miss Porter’s School excels at preparing young women for college, for leadership, and for life. Our attentive, diverse boarding and day community provides a demanding curriculum – academic, artistic, athletic, and residential. We challenge our students to become informed, bold, resourceful, and ethical global citizens. We expect our graduates to shape a changing world.

[edit] History

Sarah Porter (August 17, 1813 – February 18, 1900) was the American educator who founded Miss Porter's School for Girls. She was born in Farmington, Connecticut to Congregational minister and famed preacher, the Rev. Noah Porter (1781–1866) and his wife, Mehitable "Hetty" Meigs Porter (1786-1874). She was educated at Farmington Academy and, uncharacteristically for women of the time, studied privately with Yale College professors. She taught in Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania, and returned to Connecticut in the 1840s to found a female counterpart to Simeon Hart's Academy for Boys. Initially, she had only 25 students, but because of the school's expansive curriculum, including the sciences as well as the humanities, the daughters of the affluent soon made it their school of choice, and MPS quickly expanded. Porter was an opponent of women's suffrage but promoted other legal reforms for women. She was a serious, life-long scholar who spoke four languages and taught herself Hebrew in her 80s.

Sarah Porter's older brother, Noah Porter, was President of Yale College from 1871 to 1886.

Miss Porter's School, still located in Farmington, today continues to operate as a private, college preparatory school for girls.

Main Building
Main Building

[edit] School endowment

The endowment had a market value of $103 million on June 30, 2007. On September 20, 2005, Miss Porter's launched a new campaign, Moonbeams Over Manhattan. The intention was to increase the school's endowment to $100 million.

[edit] Athletics

Miss Porter's School successfully competes in the Founders League with Choate Rosemary Hall, Hotchkiss, Kent, Kingswood-Oxford, Loomis Chaffee, Taft and Westminster schools. In addition, our teams compete with the most competitive teams when they participate in the New England Championships at the end of each season.

Fall Interscholastics

Winter Interscholastics

Spring Interscholastics

[edit] Porter's Terminology

  • Ancient - Alumna
  • Big-D - Formal Dress
  • Day Studs - Day Students
  • Daeges Eage - Yearbook
  • Little-D - Semi-Formal Dress
  • Milk Lunch - Morning Break
  • P-lettes - Perilhettes, Senior Singing Group
  • Prescott - Visiting Speaker Program sponsored by The Prescott Fund
  • Salma - Salmagundy, School Newspaper
  • Sit-Down Dinner - Semi-Formal Dinner
  • Oprishniki - Keepers of Tradition
  • Traditions - Events designed to bring the community closer

[edit] Campus room terminology

  • Amphitheater - Outdoor stage
  • Congo - Congregational Church used as a meeting house
  • Cool House - Squash and Pool Building, Dedicated to Lynn Cox
  • Daisy - Daisy Cafe and Common Room
  • Hacker - Barbara Hacker Theater
  • Hamilton - English Literature, History Building
  • Nonie - Nona Evans Room
  • Olin - Sciences, Mathematics, Arts, and Computer Sciences Building
  • Timco - Timothy Cowles Archives Building

[edit] Notable alumnae

[edit] Miss Porter's in fiction

  • In the movie Holiday, the lead female, played by Katharine Hepburn, went to Miss Porter's.
  • In the movie Mona Lisa Smile, the record for Joan (played by Julia Stiles) shows that she attended Miss Porter's though the record incorrectly locates the School in Pennsylvania.
  • In the movie, The Skulls, the lead female went to Miss Porter's.
  • In the musical Rent, one of the leads, Harvard-educated lesbian lawyer Joanne, attended and learned to tango with the French ambassador's daughter in her dorm room at Miss Porter's.
  • In the television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer, when Buffy's mother thinks it would be best to send Buffy away to school, she picks up an application to Miss Porter's. Buffy incorrectly believes it is a Catholic girls school.
  • In the television show The Nanny in Mr. Sheffield's office, Fran suggessts Gracie attend the summer program at Miss Porter's.
  • In the television series Dynasty Blake Carrington's headstrong daughter Fallon Carrington (Pamela Sue Martin) is a graduate of Miss Porter's.

[edit] External links

Coordinates: 41°43′20.737″N 72°49′45.894″W / 41.72242694, -72.829415

Languages