The Pingry School is a coeducational, independent, college preparatory country day school in New Jersey, with a Lower School (K–5) campus in the Short Hills neighborhood of Millburn, and a Middle (6–8) and Upper School (9–12) campus in the Basking Ridge section of Bernards Township. The school was founded in 1861 by John F. Pingry. The school has been accredited by the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Elementary and Secondary Schools since 1998 and is considered one of the most prestigious in the state and country. The school has an endowment of $86.9 million. Pingry's 177 full-time faculty have 27 doctorates and half have master's degrees, with an average tenure at Pingry of 13 years. A total of 73% of faculty have advanced degrees. Niche ranks Pingry 2nd on their list of 2020 Best Schools in New Jersey and 2020 Best Private High Schools in New Jersey. Student body The school currently enrolls 1,129 students; 288 at Short Hills and 841 at Basking Ridge; 270 in the Middle School and 571 in the Upper School. Students come from 100 area communities in twelve counties and over 90 municipalities in New Jersey. As of the 2017–18 school year, the school had an enrollment of 841 students and 118 classroom teachers (on an FTE basis), for a student–teacher ratio of 7.1:1. The school's student body was 48.5% (408) White, 22.0% (185) two or more races, 18.1% (152) Asian, 9.0% (76) Black and 2.1% (18) Hispanic. History Pingry School was founded by the Reverend John Francis Pingry, a Presbyterian minister, in Elizabeth, New Jersey in 1861 to provide both scholastic training and moral education for boys. The outbreak of the American Civil War that year caused enrollment to dry up at the Pingry Select School for Boys, an academy Pingry had founded in 1854 in Roseville. After learning that Elizabeth's only professional educator had decided to enlist in the Union Army, Pingry moved to Elizabeth where he founded the Pingry School. Although Pingry gave talks on Proverbs and used the Bible for instructional purposes, the school has never been affiliated with any church or denomination. The school moved from the Elizabeth schoolhouse to the Parker Road Campus in 1893. After Pingry retired in 1893, several headmasters with relatively short tenures held his position. In 1917, C. Mitchell Froelicher became headmaster, but he was pushed out in 1920 because of