Northfield Mount Hermon School Revenue and Competitors

Welcome to Northfield Mount Hermon (NMH). We give young people an exceptional academic experience taught by expert, caring faculty. NMH is a secular coed boarding and day school for 630 students in grades nine through 12 and postgraduate. Our wooded campus borders the Connecticut River in the beautiful Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts. Here, we challenge students to think critically and to channel their talents to do good in the world, inspiring in them a sense of purpose. At NMH, a constellation of adults will interact with and support students throughout the day. Classes are small (the teacher-student ratio is 1:7) and extended to allow students to explore each subject in depth. They take three major courses each semester for a total of six challenging college-preparatory courses per year. The school offers an extensive choice of sports teams (61 to be exact), performing arts groups (in a state-of-the-art facility), clubs, and study-abroad options. More than 200 students volunteer each semester in outreach activities. Students help run our working farm, which has been in operation since the school's founding in 1879. Speaking of the farm, our founder believed in the dignity of labor, and that tradition continues at NMH. Every student participates in the school's work program for four hours a week, whether they care for animals or pick asparagus on the farm, lead tours of the campus for visitors, or help with sugaring over spring break. All this helps students stay invested in the NMH community. The school's campus encompasses 1,100 scenic acres on the wooded banks of the Connecticut River and is near the borders of Vermont and New Hampshire, whose Mount Monadnock is visible from campus. Brattleboro, Vt. is 13 miles north of NMH, and Greenfield, Mass. is 10 miles to the south. The culturally-rich five-college region of Northampton and Amherst is a 40-minute drive south. New York City is 3½ hours south via I-91 and I-95; Boston lies 2 hours east on Route 2 or the Massachusetts Turnpike. Bradley International Airport, which serves Hartford and Springfield, is 1½ hours south on I-91. Northfield Mount Hermon was different from other private schools from the beginning, and we carry on our distinctions and traditions with pride. Founded by celebrated 19th-century evangelist Dwight Lyman Moody as two institutions (Northfield Seminary for Young Ladies in 1879 and Mount Hermon School for Boys in 1881), the schools aimed to educate young people who had limited access to education because they were poor. Moody hoped to create generations of committed Christians who would continue his evangelical efforts. While the Bible was the primary tool for instruction in the early days, the institutions were never dogmatic. Religious instruction was accompanied by a challenging academic program similar to that of other private secondary schools of the era. Another factor that distinguished the schools (and continues to do so today) was the manual labor required of all students. At Northfield girls worked ten hours per week helping with meals or cleaning dormitories. At Mount Hermon, boys performed janitorial, laundry, kitchen, and farm work. The work requirement has shrunk over the years (it is now four hours per week); while students still help in the dining hall and on NMH's farm, they also work in the library and in computer labs or give tours of campus. Moody's commitment to providing education to those who had been systematically denied it produced remarkable diversity among students. The schools matriculated students from all races and ethnicities: 16 Native Americans were among the first 100 students at Northfield, and Mount Hermon's first graduates included a former slave as well as students from China, Sweden, England, Ireland, Canada, and Japan. NMH maintains a commitment to diversity: Today, students of color make up 18 percent of our student body and 19 percent are from other countries. How Two Schools Became One After Moody's death in 1899, his eldest son, William, continued his father's work at the schools. The younger Moody pushed for consolidating the two schools into a single corporation called the Northfield Schools. Throughout the 20th century, a new Christian view stressing social justice and good works in place of personal salvation grew not only in the world, but also on the board of trustees. From the 1940s on, the schools worked to overcome educational inequalities, first establishing a relationship with the National Scholarship Service and Fund for Negro Students. In 1962, A Better Chance, now a national program, was born as Northfield and Mount Hermon leaders worked to find opportunities for students of color. A 40-year relationship with Upward Bound also serves as testament to this commitment to opportunity education. In 1971, Northfield and Mount Hermon became a single coeducational school and efforts grew to recruit international students and add study-abroad programs. The use of technology as a learning tool expanded, as well. The school consolidated to the Mount Hermon campus in September 2005.