The 25 most expensive elite boarding schools in America

Location: Portsmouth, Rhode Island

Tuition: $54,630

Enrollment: 360

Portsmouth Abbey School boasts 1.24 miles of coastline along Narragansett Bay and houses 70% of its students. The Roman Catholic school is also home to a fully operational, on-campus monastery led by a community of Benedictine monks. The Benedictine ideal of a "community life of work and prayer" informs the school's ethos, which teaches students to balance academics with social and physical activities.

Location: Mount Hermon, Massachusetts

Tuition: $54,700

Enrollment: 650

In 2014, the highest number of Northfield Mount Hermon students matriculated to Boston University, NYU, George Washington University, and Northwestern. The school helps students get there by offering $8.4 million in financial aid and a College Model Academic Program, which requires them to complete three college-prep courses each semester. Eighty percent of students are boarders on NMH's 1,565-acre campus, most of which is along the scenic Connecticut River.

Location: Deerfield, Massachusetts

Tuition: $54,720

Enrollment: 638

Deerfield Academy provides 35% of its student body with $8 million in financial aid annually. In addition to participating academically, students are required to be involved in a cocurricular activity like community service, dance, theater, or sports. More than one-fourth of Deerfield's 330-acre campus is comprised of athletic fields, tennis courts, a fitness center, and a 5,900-square-foot boathouse along the Connecticut River.

Location: Lawrenceville, New Jersey

Tuition: $55,350

Enrollment: 816

The Lawrenceville School is defined by its House System: a living situation for boarders and day students where each of the 18 dormitories represents a subcommunity informed by grade and gender. The houses often compete for academic and athletic honors and have individual traditions like sports games and community-service events. Lawrenceville is committed to its Green Campus Initiative, which includes a 30-acre solar farm that covers 90% of the school's energy needs.

Location: Middletown, Delaware

Tuition: $55,500

Enrollment: 310

Technology is intertwined with the curriculum at St. Andrew's School. Students use blogs to document their progress in physics, musicians send recordings to their instructors for feedback, and teachers keep in touch with their pupils through learning-management software.

St. Andrew's students also gain entrance to elite colleges. New York University, Wesleyan University, and Davidson College topped the list of the most popular choices from the last four years.

Location: Marion, Massachusetts

Tuition: $55,510

Enrollment: 514

Affectionately known as "The School by the Sea," Tabor Academy has a longstanding maritime heritage that permeates its programs and extracurriculars. Experiential learning opportunities for students include marine- and nautical-science studies, traveling to the Virgin Islands on the school's part-classroom, part-vessel schooner, and participating in a collaborative class on the Oyster Farm. Tabor hopes to be internationally recognized for ocean ecology by 2026.

Location: Carpinteria, California

Tuition: $55,550

Enrollment: 270

The vigorous academic courses at Cate School are designed to foster students' self-knowledge and the village-like campus — known as the Mesa — encourages students to take advantage of the nearby Los Padres National Forest and Pacific Ocean for outdoor learning and leisure activities. Cate School's selectivity could be explained by its commitment to diversity: The student body is comprised of 42% students of color from 31 states and 17 countries.

Location: North Andover, Massachusetts

Tuition: $55,560

Enrollment: 352

At Brooks School, students are encouraged to fill their schedules with the classes that most interest them, from multivariable calculus to 3-D design to African-American literature. Between their junior and senior years, students can apply for a spot in Brooks' Students on the Forefront of Science program, which matches applicants with internships in cutting-edge science and technology hubs. Past placements have included spots at Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women's Hospital.

Location: Ojai, California

Tuition: $55,600

Enrollment: 250

The Thacher School is in California’s serene Ojai Valley where the mountains run east to west and hiking and horseback riding are common outdoor activities for students and faculty. The school aims to teach its student body — 90% of whom are boarders — the value of a disciplined education in congruence with adventures in the wilderness.

Location: Millbrook, New York

Tuition: $55,650

Enrollment: 304

Millbrook School still maintains decades-old traditions that help cement each student as a piece of the school's rich history. These traditions range from Friday Night Forums, where students hear from renowned speakers, to intersession, where they spend a week outside the classroom doing things like mastering ballroom dancing or camping in the Adirondacks.

Location: Blairstown, New Jersey

Tuition: $55,750

Enrollment: 460

Blair Academy students can take advantage of the "maker space," a laboratory-turned-workshop where students dive headfirst into hands-on design projects like 3-D printing and building robots. On the other side of the creative spectrum, students can also partake in a range of fine arts, from acting to orchestra to set design for plays.

Location: Portland, Oregon

Tuition: $55,900

Enrollment: 860

Oregon Episcopal School is a pre-K through 12th-grade day school with an optional boarding program for grades 9 through 12. The high school's Aardvark Science Exposition is an annual science, engineering, computer-science, and math-research competition where finalists are sent to the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, the world's largest international precollege science competition. Last year, more than a dozen OES students received Grand Award prizes of $500 to $1,000.

Location: Byfield, Massachusetts

Tuition: $55,900

Enrollment: 406

At The Governor's Academy, each class is tailored toward helping students develop one of the school's seven essential skills, which include thinking critically, communicating effectively, and readily adapting to new situations. Students can also take advantage of the school's college counselors, who partner with them to help narrow down their choices and put together competitive applications.

Location: Claremont, California

Tuition: $55,985

Enrollment: 407

Home to two schools that share a campus, Webb features an all-boys and an all-girls school in the same space. The two keep classes separate through 10th-grade, transitioning into coeducational courses in junior year. The Webb Schools are also home to the Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology, the only museum in the US on a high-school campus that is accredited by the American Alliance of Museums.

Location: Newport, Rhode Island

Tuition: $56,000

Enrollment: 365

In addition to lively academic discussion and debate in the classroom, St. George's School emphasizes experiential learning in the local community and around the world. Every semester the seaside Episcopal school sends students on one leg of a transatlantic voyage in a 69-foot marine-research vessel called Geronimo, where they get a firsthand education in marine biology.

Location: Concord, Massachusetts

Tuition: $56,060

Enrollment: 384

The Middlesex campus was designed by the famed Olmsted Brothers landscape architecture firm and is just 20 miles outside Boston, among some of the country's most historic towns. The school balances personal exploration and demanding academics — an Introduction to Mindfulness course that teaches pupils how to reduce stress and improve relationships is required for all new students. Notable alumni include former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld and Kevin Systrom, the cofounder of Instagram.

Location: Simsbury, Connecticut

Tuition: $56,100

Enrollment: 390

The Westminster School aims to turn students into lifelong learners through dynamic relationships with instructors and a traditional liberal-arts and sciences curriculum. Students can take their education a step further through a number of enrichment opportunities, including WISE, an online summer program that features classes like mythology and genetics, and the School Year Abroad program, where students spend a year studying and traveling throughout China, France, Italy, or Spain.

Location: Sheffield, Massachusetts

Tuition: $56,150

Enrollment: 405

Located at the foothills of Mt. Everett, Berkshire School is surrounded by arts, culture, and health and wellness destinations in an area known as The Berkshires. The school is committed to preserving the setting's natural beauty with sustainable buildings and an 8-acre solar field. In addition to a strong college-prep curriculum, advanced programs in math and science research and humanities research are available to Berkshire students who want to explore beyond the required study.

Location: Concord, Massachusetts

Tuition: $56,360

Enrollment: 382

Though Concord Academy enrolls more day students than boarders, the school has a strong living-learning community. Students from every grade live together in six historic family homes and also have the option for homestays with day students' families. Concord values hard work over competition, calling itself a "no prize" school that eschews class rank and academic awards.

Location: Troy, New York

Tuition: $56,390

Enrollment: 358

In 1814, Emma Hart Willard opened the doors to her Middlebury, Vermont, home and transformed it into a school. Now in upstate New York, Emma Willard School threw its bicentennial bash in 2014, celebrating a 200-year-old legacy of excellence in girls' education. Emma Willard is rooted in tradition: Each year girls participate in dozens of seasonal and farewell rituals like plays, retreats, and a baccalaureate service.

Location: Kent, Connecticut

Tuition: $56,500

Enrollment: 570

Kent School's course catalog rivals that of a university, with a breadth of options that includes music technology, Roman lyrical poetry, and meteorology. The curriculum also retains serious rigor with 27 Advanced Placement classes available and opportunities for students to complete independent-study projects on a topic of their choice.

Location: North Bethesda, Maryland

Tuition: $56,665

Enrollment: 492

The oldest Jesuit school in the country, Georgetown Prep focuses on helping each student build a strong mind, body, and spirit. The all-boys school provides ample opportunities for growth — in and out of the classroom — through numerous athletic teams, student publications, and extracurricular clubs, including speech and debate, chess, and student government.

Location: Groton, Massachusetts

Tuition: $56,700

Enrollment: 381

At Groton, students must take at least five full-credit courses per semester, including classes in expository writing, ethics, and foreign language. More than just academics, Groton also prioritizes its sense of community, a value emphasized by traditions such as morning Chapel Talk, daily check-ins, surprise holidays, and the school birthday dinner.

Location: Dobbs Ferry, New York

Tuition: $57,810

Enrollment: 490

The Masters School uses the Harkness method in all of its classes, so students learn through collaborative round-table discussions in place of lectures.

Or students can take advantage of other alternative-learning opportunities, such as CITYterm, a semester-long program in New York City, and High Mountain Institute, a semester in the Rocky Mountains where rigorous academics are combined with hands-on wilderness experience.

Location: Washington, DC

Tuition: $57,920

Enrollment: 575

St. Albans students excel academically, and the school has graduated 45 National Merit semifinalists since 2007 and 21 Presidential Scholars in its history. The all-boys school also partners with the National Cathedral School for girls to offer an array of coeducational opportunities, including art and drama programs, select sports, and the 160-voice Chorale.