The mission of the Lawrenceville School is to inspire and educate promising young people from diverse backgrounds for responsible leadership, personal fulfillment and enthusiastic participation in the world.

We help students to develop high standards of character and scholarship, a passion for learning, an appreciation for diversity, a global perspective, and strong commitments to personal, community, and environmental responsibility.

Lawrenceville was founded in 1810 as the Maidenhead Academy and run under such names as the Lawrenceville Classical and Commercial High School for more than 70 years. It was not until its 1883 “refounding” that it became The Lawrenceville School and discovered its true and abiding identity. At that time, Head Master James Cameron Mackenzie devised Lawrenceville’s hallmark House System. The campus, now a National Historic Landmark, began to take shape when renowned American landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, the same man who laid out New York’s Central Park, designed the School’s famous “Circle” in partnership with Boston architects Peabody & Stearns. Just over 50 years later in 1936, Lawrenceville introduced its second distinctive feature—the Harkness system of teaching. Most classes today at Lawrenceville are still held around small oval tables to facilitate class discussions.