About Marlowe
A century of asking first
Founded in 1927 in a two-room chapel school, Marlowe Academy has grown slowly on purpose: one green, one ravine, and about as many students as its adults can truly know.
Our mission
Curiosity, practised until it becomes character
Marlowe Academy exists to turn children's natural curiosity into lasting character: the ability to pursue hard questions honestly, treat other people well while doing it, and finish what they start. We do this through small classes, long-serving teachers, real work with real stakes, and fourteen years of continuity from the first Portfolio page to the Senior Thesis defence.
We are an independent, non-denominational day school. We are selective but not exclusive, traditional in our fundamentals and unfussy about everything else, and honest with families to a degree that sometimes startles them. We think that's what the word independent is for.
Curiosity is taught
Wonder isn't a personality trait some children have. It's a habit every child can practise. We build the school day around questions worth chasing.
Character is rehearsed
Kindness, honesty, and grit show up when they've been practised a thousand small times. Advisory, service, and the way we run a hallway all count.
Small enough to be known
Every student at Marlowe is known by name by adults who aren't their teachers. That's not a slogan. It's a scheduling decision we make every year.
Honest with families
We publish tuition, explain aid plainly, and tell you what we actually look for in admissions. If we're not the right school for your child, we'll say so.
From the head of school
A letter to visiting families
Dear visiting families,
Every school website will tell you its students are curious and its community is warm, so let me try to be more useful than that. Marlowe is a small school on purpose. We enrol 612 students not because we couldn't find more, but because 612 is roughly the number of children whose names, projects, and rough weeks the adults here can actually hold in mind at once.
Our tagline, where curiosity becomes character, is a claim about mechanism, not magic. A child who is taught to chase a real question learns, along the way, to tolerate frustration, to argue honestly, to revise, and to care about something beyond themselves. That is what we mean by character, and we think curiosity is how you get there. The Portfolio, the ravine, the fabrication lab, and Thesis Night are the machinery.
Two honest notes. First, Marlowe is not the right school for every child, and our admissions team will tell you so rather than waste your spring. Second, we are a tuition-funded school that works hard not to be a school only for the wealthy: 28% of our families pay an adjusted tuition, and the aid page of this site explains exactly how that works. Come walk the campus. Bring your questions, and bring your child's.
Warmly,
Dr. Miriam Osei, Head of School
Head of School since 2018
The people
Teachers who stay
A school is only as good as the adults in the room. Ours tend to arrive on purpose and stay for years, which is why a Grade 12 student can still be greeted by their JK teacher.
- teachers across three divisions
- 68
- median time a Marlowe teacher has taught here
- 11 yrs
- college counsellor to Upper School students
- 1 in 40
-
Tomás Herrera
Chair of World Languages
- Dr. Priya Raman Head of Upper School Science
- Marcus Webb Lower School Lead Teacher, Grade 2
- Sarah Chen-Aldous Director of Arts
- David Oyelaran Director of Athletics & Outdoor Education
- Grace Müller Director of College Counselling
Our history
From two rooms to one green
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1927
Eleanor Marlowe opens a two-room school in the Chapel Green chapel with 19 students and a rule she wrote on the door: 'Ask first.'
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1948
Founders' Hall is built around the original chapel schoolhouse, and the school grows to a full elementary program.
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1962
A founding family gives the ravine behind the campus to the school. The Outdoor Classroom begins as Friday 'creek school.'
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1974
The Upper School graduates its first class of 22, and the Senior Thesis (then called 'the leaving essay') becomes the graduation requirement.
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1989
Barton Hall opens: 340 seats, a student-run booth, and the first Mainstage production (The Tempest, with a memorably real storm).
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2004
Indexed tuition replaces the old scholarship system: one confidential financial review, one fair price per family.
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2019
The Design & Fabrication Lab opens, and with it the wall of documented failures.
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2026
612 students, JK to Grade 12. The 'Ask first' rule is still on a door. We moved the door into the front hall.
The green is the best argument.
Ninety-nine years of history reads better with mud on your shoes. Come walk it.