Many of America's top preparatory schools are jacking up prices amid soaring demand. Some parents are taking on debt to ensure their kids received a rigorous education and a shot at admission to an Ivy League college.

Aside from the steep tuition fees at many elite schools, there's a dark side that goes beyond the drama depicted in popular media like Gossip Girl and Dead Poets Society. 

These stories include controversies over sex abuse, drugs, hazing and Israel-bashing.

'All you have to do is Google for "prep school scandal," and you'll see a few of them,' Parney Hagerman, the former head of Oldfields School in Maryland and other lauded institutions, told the Daily Mail.

'Sometimes they're quirky on the positive side, sometimes it's on the negative side.'

Despite the drama, about one in 10 US school students attends a private school. 

They became more popular during the pandemic, when some public schools shuttered and parents were left scrambling for alternatives.

Below, we take a look at life inside America's elite prep schools.

Phillips Exeter Academy, in Exeter, New Hampshire, is one of the top-rated schools in America, boasting a 700-acre campus and 147 buildings

Students at Lawrenceville School in New Jersey are devoted to various traditions. There is no suggestion of any wrongdoing at the school

The best education money can buy 

There are thousands of private schools across the country, but the spotlight is on the so-called 'Ten Schools,' a clique formed in 1952 made up of 10 college-prep boarding schools in the Northeast.

They are Choate Rosemary Hall, Deerfield Academy, The Hill School, Pottstown Hotchkiss School, Lawrenceville School, Loomis Chaffee School, Phillips Academy Andover, Phillips Exeter Academy, St. Paul's School and Taft School.

Other institutions, such as Groton School, are also highly rated. There are many well-regarded institutions beyond the Northeast, such as The College Preparatory School in Oakland, California, and St Mark's School of Texas, in Dallas.

The annual tuition for daytime schooling at these institutions - and others like them - rose about 7.4 percent to $49,284 on average last year, according to S&P Global Ratings. For boarders, prices climbed roughly 5.3 percent to $73,080.

Boarders at Woodside Priory School in California's Bay Area pay $90,000 a year, perhaps the costliest education in America.

Despite rising costs, business for these education hubs is booming. 

About 60 percent of private schools reported enrollment growth in fall 2024 compared to a year earlier. At 8 percent of private schools, that growth jumped more than 3 percent.

Even still, there's a lively debate about whether they're worth the cash.

Children may seem to fare better at private schools, but that may be because the schools handpick their students. Some experts say that smart kids from good families can perform just as well at public schools.

Hagerman says some private schools have more committed teachers than others, and the small class sizes (some with just a dozen students) make for more personalized and focused learning.

Hardworking youngsters at even a mid-ranking private school can 'really name your ticket for where you go for college,' she notes.

Gossip Girl followed the lives of students at a fictional Constance Billard School for Girls on the Upper East Side of New York City

The quirkiness of US elite schools has been captured in movies such as Dead Poets Society 

Meet your classmates 

America's elite private schools have a special place in popular culture.

They have been showcased in everything from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air to Gilmore Girls, and have even been utilized in literary works, like J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye.

As it turns out, these schools may be just as eccentric in real life as they appear to be in works of fiction.

Students at Lawrenceville in New Jersey are known to rub the toe of the 'Spinario' statue when they pass through the school's rotunda - a tradition believed to foster diligence and perseverance.

At The Peddie School, also in New Jersey, members of the decades-old 'Secret Society of Eight' perform random acts of kindness for classmates, including leaving them cupcakes, candy canes or other treats.

A 1931 edition of Fortune details how students at Foxcroft School for girls in Virginia used to sport pigtails and wear their clothes inside out in an elaborate initiation ceremony.

An unofficial group of students at Miss Porter's School in Connecticut went in the other direction, naming themselves the 'Oprichniki' after a torturous Russian attack squad, to allegedly harass and bully a fellow student.

Many independent schools utilize a group of staff members they dub proctors - they oversee clubs, maintain dorms and act as mentors. Hagerman says they mostly 'do wonderful things for their students,' but she also recalls darker days of proctor-led hazing in the 1990s. 

Reynold Buono, a former drama teacher at Milton Academy in Milton, Massachusetts, was accused of sexual abuse by more than a dozen of his students. He ultimately pleaded guilty to two counts of raping a child with force

Owen Labrie, a student at St. Paul's School in New Hampshire, was convicted of sexually assaulting a younger student

Private school predators 

Miss Hall's School is an upper-crust Massachusetts boarding and day school for girls, replete with glass conservatories, ivy-covered brickwork and Adirondack chairs.

It's also one of many elite schools rocked by claims of a predatory teacher. A lawsuit claims the teacher allegedly groomed students for sex, adding the behavior was aided by colleagues and a culture of 'physical intimacy' between staff and students.

Former student Melissa Fares, 32, sued the school and former employees late last year for allegedly keeping a teacher on staff despite being repeatedly warned about claims that he was targeting girls as young as 15 for sexual exploitation. 

She says she still struggles with 'feelings of shame and self-disgust' from her sexual encounters with Matthew Rutledge, the school's star history teacher, in the late 2000s. Rutledge has since resigned.

Fares says he repeatedly sexually abused and raped her on campus, including at his residence, until she graduated in 2010. On one occasion, he allegedly plied her with whiskey and raped her on a yoga mat in a school closet, the bombshell lawsuit claims.

In legal submissions, the Berkshires-based school says it lacks knowledge about many of Fares' allegations, and in December it applied to have the case thrown out. 

After the case was initially filed, the school said it would cooperate with an investigation by the Berkshire District Attorney’s Office and conduct its own review. 

The school is 'fully committed to learning the truth about what occurred so that we may extend support to any members of our community who was harmed,' a spokesman for Miss Hall's School told the Daily Mail.

According to Pennsylvania-based Edelstein Law, some 10 percent of students at America's more insular and reserved private schools experience sexual abuse, compared to 7 percent in public schools.

In 2023, Reynold Buono, a teacher at Milton Academy in Massachusetts, plead guilty to two counts of raping a child with force. He was accused of molesting at least 18 students, the Boston Globe reported, Complaints of abuse were raised by former students.

Then, in February 2005, five teenage members of the boys' hockey team were famously expelled in a separate case after it was discovered they had received oral sex from a 15-year-old sophomore girl, according to reporting by ABC News.

Robin Robertson, the school's principal at the time, called the incident a 'short and unfortunate pattern of behavior by a small group of students.' 

In 2024, Saint Ann's School in Brooklyn got mired in its own scandal after knowingly hiring a felon to teach math. 

Some parents and teachers complained about the teacher, Winston Nguyen, when he became unusually close to some students and exhibited increasingly bizarre behavior.  

Administrators stood by the teacher, who is Asian American, and slammed the parents and teachers who complained as 'racist or not progressive.'

Later in the year, Nguyen was arrested outside near the school and charged with soliciting lewd images and videos from students. He pleaded guilty to a felony and several misdemeanors in March.

Winston Nguyen, who was accused of exchanging lewd messages and porn with students at private schools, was hired by DEI staff at Saint Ann's School in Brooklyn, New York

The prestigious Saint Ann's School, in Brooklyn Heights, the most expensive zip-code in Brooklyn

Private schools and the culture wars 

In 2023, when the all-boys Browning School in New York City started accepting students who are trans boys as part of a new gender policy - a move that enraged some parents.

Conversely, other private schools have won students by offering classes free from race and gender theory curriculums.

In ultra-progressive San Francisco, private Christian schools including Donum Dei Classical Academy have opened in recent years, weaving tradition, faith and conservative values into the curriculum.

Along with institutions of higher education, many private high schools were roiled by activism around Hamas and Israel after the October 2023 attacks.

At its conference in Colorado last year, the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS), a club of some 1,700 institutions, welcomed a keynote speaker who slammed Israel as 'racist' and genocidal.

Jewish students attending the conference said they felt 'targeted' and 'unsafe' at the event, according to a letter from groups complaining of antisemitism.

NAIS president Debra Wilson later apologized and expressed 'profound remorse' over the event.

Choate Rosemary Hall was rocked by a cocaine smuggling scandal in the 1980s

A key player in the operation, Derek Oatis, escaped with five years probation and 5,000 hours of community service after a judge showed him mercy

John F. Kennedy (center) attended the elite Connecticut school in the 1930s, long before he became president 

Drug scandals abound 

Wil Glavin detailed 'apartment parties or penthouse parties' laden with hard alcohol and drugs in his book, The Venerable Vincent Beattie. The memories and secondhand stories come from his time growing up in the Manhattan private school sphere, he told the New York Post. 

Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Virginia, was the subject of a 2021 investigation alleging drug possession and distribution, ALXnow reported.

A 1996 article published in The New York Times told of an LSD drug bust at the Berkshire School in Massachusetts. According to the report, two students allegedly smuggled 200 doses of the hallucinogen and individually sold them to their peers.

Choate, an elite Connecticut school, is famous for educating a young John F. Kennedy in the 1930s.

But it's also known for an April 1984 scandal in which two students were arrested at a New York City airport. They were returning from Caracas, Venezuela, and trying to smuggle $300,000 worth of cocaine into the country in a talcum powder bottle and baggies.

Ultimately, 17 students were expelled from the school and prosecuted for their roles in the drug trafficking and dealing ring. 

In 2015, the incident was dramatized on film in The Preppie Connection.

A key player in the group, Derek Oatis, admitted smuggling cocaine and was sentenced to five years of probation and 5,000 hours of community service. 

He told CBS News in 2016 that widespread coke and marijuana use at the school was hardly a secret. 

'Everybody knew what was going on,' he said.