Girls Preparatory School

It is during the middle and high school years—the developmental stage of adolescence—that a girl benefits most from attending a school for girls. She can flourish in an environment where teachers, mentors, and peers accept her, support her, and encourage her; she is free to be herself and free to try new things. She more easily resists the limitations that both she and society may place on her, and she can identify the negative stereotypes prevalent in popular culture and rise above them.

At GPS, we understand girls—how they develop and learn—and use that knowledge and experience to create a program and culture that are intentionally and purposefully designed for what girls need in order to thrive.
The foundation of our school is an academic program that equips girls with the knowledge and skills they need to be successful in college, but our mission reaches far beyond the classroom. At GPS, we support each girl in becoming her best and most fully realized self by educating and inspiring her heart as much as her mind.

GPS's Founders established a school rooted in the Christian tradition, and we remain true to that heritage by cultivating in our girls the values of honor, integrity and service. We believe that the development of faith and spiritual growth are vitally important in educating the whole girl—mind, body, and spirit.

The environment at GPS invites curiosity, encourages discovery, and celebrates diversity. Because we want our students to be leaders within a global community, it is important that they be self-confident young women with engaged minds as well as stimulated spirits. Therefore, we encourage and expect our girls to use their voices to articulate their own belief systems and to ask questions about the beliefs of others. We believe that inquiry not only gives a girl a greater understanding of the religious convictions of others but also strengthens her own faith.

Our students come from homes that express spirituality and faith in many ways, and we respect each family's religious traditions. We recognize that the development of a young woman's faith is critically connected to her family and faith community. Our faculty and staff support each girl in developing her own spiritual awareness within the context of a college preparatory academic program.

The Board of Trustees supports a diverse student and faculty population by actively seeking students, faculty, staff, and trustees of exceptional ability and promise who share in our commitment to excellence in teaching and scholarship and who represent a diversity of viewpoints and cultures. By diversity we are explicitly referring to economic differences, ethnicity, race, religion, and physical attributes. By incorporating a broad range of human experiences and a rich variety of human perspectives, we enlarge our capacity for learning, enrich the quality and texture of school life, and better prepare our girls for life and leadership in a pluralistic society.

As a community, we respect the dignity, individuality, and freedom of each member. At the same time, we strive to be a place where individuals and groups learn with and from one another. We aim to foster a sense of shared experience and common purpose along with a collective responsibility for each other’s well being and for the well being of the School as a whole.

Of all that Girls Preparatory School offers to students and their families, the most important is a fundamental promise to know and love every girl for whom she is. In fact, we could not do our job as educators without this knowledge and emotional bond. Our promise means we teach and mentor each student mindful of her interests, her strengths, and her challenges inside and beyond the classroom. It means that we help each girl on her way to becoming her true, her best, her most fully realized self. In keeping our promise, we develop a partnership with parents. Parents know their daughters more deeply than we ever can. And with more than a century of educating girls behind us, we know how they develop, learn, and achieve.

A rich and challenging academic program has been at the core of our school since its founding in 1906. While adolescent girls often tend to view their success and failure as the result of innate, fixed, unchanging factors, at GPS they begin to model what research shows, that effort and hard work are better predictors of success than intelligence alone. That growth mindset comes with a toolbox of valuable skills— time management, study plans, seeking help—which each girl will need when she’s beyond the walls of GPS, into college, and even in a career.

Beyond the traditional subjects of English, mathematics, science, world languages, and history, GPS girls fill their schedules with electives like computer science and engineering, fine and performing arts, health and wellness, and more, making the academic path for each girl her own. Taught by skilled, caring, and supportive faculty who are experts in teaching girls, our students dig deeper, stretch higher, and actively participate in their own education.