Why Roxbury Latin? - The Roxbury Latin School

What We Value Most

At Roxbury Latin, we emphasize character education and spiritual growth to prepare boys for life. Our principal goal is to imbue our students with a commitment to a life characterized by honesty, simplicity, respect, and concern for others.

The Head of School often addresses the student body regarding issues of character and morals, and faculty reaffirm those standards in every aspect of their relationship with students. Boys understand that honesty is expected in all dealings and that our community is based on an established culture of trust. Boys leave backpacks unattended and valuables in open lockers, knowing that their property is safe.

Our founder’s guiding principle was that the thrust of a man’s life should be public service, and we hope to instill a desire to live a life of noble purpose in the larger world. We encourage our students, who are broadly invested in academic, athletic, and other extracurricular pursuits, to demonstrate a generosity of spirit.

We care most of all what kind of person a boy is.

We seek to help our boys identify and address life’s deepest questions and discover who they are and what they wish to accomplish. When they rise for prayers in Hall, they are reminded that their lives are short, that they are called to a higher purpose, that life has meaning and is worth living.

Who We Are

In Pursuit of Excellence

Boys learn to respect and to applaud their classmates’ successes—in sports, concerts, plays, debates, and publications. A brilliant performance at the piano has brought an audience to its feet just as quickly as a touchdown pass caught in the end zone. Boys also learn to recover quickly from the disappointment of losing a starting position in sports or a coveted stage role and find other ways to contribute to the team or the production.

The faculty encourage boys’ inclination to compete against their own sense of excellence and to rise to standards set by their most talented classmates. As one boy’s success stimulates another boy to redouble his effort to accomplish something noteworthy, they both have strived together, and both gain.

Our goal is to have our students emerge both competitive and compassionate: tough enough to withstand the rigors of competition and endure the present pain of hard work in order to experience the joy of achieving something great, as well as empathetic and responsive to the needs and misfortunes of others.

Boys' School Advantage

Roxbury Latin is a school for boys who have the intellectual potential and the personal determination to do something great with their lives. A co-founder of the International Boys’ Schools Coalition, Roxbury Latin is a close-knit community focused on the needs and aspirations of individual boys. Our programs capitalize on the universal rhythms of boys’ development and the conditions required to help boys thrive.

Boys in a boys’ school are free to explore the full range of their personalities and potential and to engage in creative pursuits, and they can discover and express their capacity for compassion and for nurturing support. Part of our mission is to develop young men who can and will participate sensitively and collaboratively in the world beyond.

Our small community guarantees that each boy is known and loved. Teachers provide individual and personal support, encouraging each boy to explore new interests beyond the familiar and comfortable and to step into an activity he might not have chosen for himself. In accepting different challenges, a boy begins to cultivate deep interests that may turn into lifelong passions. In the process, he learns about the world, society, his peers, and himself.

Democratically Gathered

Roxbury Latin is a democratically gathered community, a school where individuals from a great diversity of backgrounds are brought together by shared goals and common ideals. Among those are a dedication to excellence and a desire to become men of character focused on public service.

We maintain a need-blind admission policy and need-blind enrollment policy whereby students are admitted and enrolled without regard to their parents’ ability to pay. True to Roxbury Latin’s roots, boys are enrolled today on merit. This commitment allows us to attract a hardworking and able student body drawn from dissimilar social, economic, racial, ethnic, and religious backgrounds. We encourage boys to discover the joy of knowing and understanding others whose circumstances, beliefs, and interests are unlike their own.

In order to maintain a richly textured student community, we also seek out boys with vibrant personalities and passionate interests who have a capacity for deep and broad involvement. We pride ourselves on accommodating the distinctive individual who is uninfluenced by the crowd, committed to his particular interests, and able to stand up for what he believes.

Roxbury Latin strives to transform a collection of disparate, distinctive, and independent individuals into a cohesive, collaborative community unified by a common mission and a common dedication to excellence but enriched and deepened by diversity of experience and outlook.