When parents tour Wycliffe, they often arrive with a list of questions about test scores, college admissions, and amenities. We answer each of them honestly. But we also try to redirect the conversation, because the most important questions a family can ask about a school are not about outcomes. They are about what happens in the classrooms, and what kind of person walks out of them in six years.
We are a small school by design. Four hundred and sixty students. Forty-two faculty. A six-to-one student-to-faculty ratio. That arithmetic matters because it is what allows our teachers. Who hold doctorates and masters degrees from the world's serious universities. To know each student as an individual. Our seminars seat twelve. Our writing tutorials are one-on-one. There is nowhere to hide at Wycliffe, and nowhere to be overlooked.
What we ask of our students is also unusual. They begin Latin or Greek in seventh grade. They write a senior thesis. They sit in seminars where they are expected to read the assignment, hold an argument, and revise it under pressure. We do not believe these expectations are too much. We believe most schools ask too little.
Our graduates go on to Harvard, Yale, MIT, Williams, the great public flagships, and the colleges that suit them best. That matters. But what matters more is what they do once they get there. And twenty years after that. The Wycliffe graduates I am proudest of are the ones who, in their thirties and forties, are still reading widely, still wrestling with hard questions, still helping their communities think more clearly.
If that is the kind of education you want for your child, I would welcome the chance to talk with you. Come walk the quad with us. Sit in on a class. Ask our students what they are reading. The answer will tell you everything you need to know.
Margaret Whitcomb
Dr. Margaret Whitcomb
Head of School
