close

Back

Home

Uncommon Community

Uncommon Curiosity

Uncommon Opportunity

Commonwealth is a co-ed independent day school welcoming curious, highly motivated students in grades 9–12. Our close-knit community thrives on making meaningful intellectual and personal connections, while tapping into the opportunities surrounding our home in Boston’s Back Bay.

Meet Faculty and Students

Learn More

Anoushka-Menon-thumb

Commonwealth teachers will never put you in a box. They’re always very much trying to connect the ideas we learn in the classroom to what’s outside it. Like, in history class, if you're learning about politics in ancient China, you’ll also think and talk about politics right now. Commonwealth never keeps the learning inside the classroom...which is something I hope I keep with me for the rest of my life: that love of learning and knowing that it doesn't only have to happen when there's a teacher and a whiteboard. 

Anoushka ’28

Caro-Taylor

I feel so lucky to get to go to Commonwealth, and I am amazed at the quality of what happens here.... I never want to forget that this is not the normal experience for most people. One example is generative AI: I will meet other high schoolers, and I'm shocked at how much AI they use or they're encouraged to use, and I'm grateful that doesn't happen here, because I want to learn how to critically think.

Caro ’27

Commonwealth has opened up a path to relationships with both students and teachers that I hadn't really seen before. I have teachers that I can rely on, that I can ask questions of and meet with, and I want to continue having those relationships in the future with my professors in college and bosses at jobs. Commonwealth really built a strong foundation for that.

Tomi ’27

There are so many different kinds of people at this school with so many different outlooks in life. Even if you disagree with someone's views, I feel like here you can still have a respectful conversation. And I think that's a really important life skill: to be able to talk to people you don't necessarily see eye-to-eye with.    

Iris '27

Really exciting classrooms are where the student is part of the circuit and the electricity is jumping between them and the sources and the teacher. At the beginning of the Enlightenment unit, instead of saying, 'This is what the Enlightenment is.' We say, 'Here's Newton's laws of natural philosophy. Here's a poem about sinful bees. Here’s a little Montesquieu with a little Benjamin Franklin and a little Smith.' And then we try to figure out what they have in common.

Melissa Glenn Haber ’87, History Teacher

I get a real burst of energy when I’m able to help students navigate the complexities of the research process. I feel so lucky to have such an incredible patron base of high-level readers and thinkers in our students. 

Jake MacDonnell, Librarian and Registrar

There are all of these resources around us that we can take advantage of.… I like how part of your daily routine is going out into the city and still being with your classmates but in a completely different setting.

Felix ’27

By the Numbers

Learn More

161

students in grades 9–12

64%

self-identified students of color

$2.1 million

financial aid granted for 2025–2026

89%

teachers holding advanced degree

4:1

student-to-faculty ratio

2

all-school getaways each year

1510

average SAT composite score (Class of 2027)

Happening Now

View all news

A young woman with dark hair and a red sweater smiles at the camera while standing outside in Boston's Back Bay neighborhood
Meet Commonwealth Students: Anoushka ’28, Take Note

At sixteen years old, Anoushka is already a multihyphenate musician. She sings (a soulful and stirring alto). She writes (songs that find milestones in small moments, like having cherry-blossom trees stand in for the passage of time in a young person’s life). She plays (guitar and piano). She produces (at least ten hours a week in the tiny attic studio she designed and equipped herself). And she studies its very essence (digging into the neuroscience of music and how it impacts everything from our mood to our memories).

New Faces: Fall 2026
New Faces: Fall 2026

As a chill creeps into the air and just a touch of orange dots the leaves lining Comm. Ave., so, too, do the seasons change inside our walls. This fall, we’ve welcomed a cadre of new faculty and staff, each bringing with them a wealth of experience and enriching perspectives. Take a moment to meet some of them here.

Danny-McDonnell-why-I-made-it
Why I Made It: Titanium

Titanium is three things: experimental data from a research project given life, an exploration of abstraction, and an attempt at making real color. Each rectangle in the piece is a sample of titanium, its color changed using electricity.

A young woman with dark hair smiles at the camera while sitting outside on a bench
Meet Commonwealth Students: Sarah ’27, Journey of Letters

“I want to consecrate this moment or this thought in words,” says Sarah ’27, a senior from Brookline, reflecting on the reasons why she writes—everything from carefully constructed poems that evoke e.e. cummings to the science-fantasy novel she finished this past summer. But as deep and abiding as Sarah’s love of writing has been, it doesn’t confine her—at least, not any more. She once worried about the future and its unknowns; now, she only sees freedom to explore. And whether she follows her interests in biology or astronomy, history or art, she knows: “one way or another, [she’ll] always be writing.” 

grace-hopper-research-paper
History Research Paper Sample: Grace Hopper and the “Creative Destruction” of the Programming Community

Through our history curriculum, Commonwealth students learn how to be historians rather than passive absorbers of facts. They read and analyze primary sources from a variety of voices in their historical contexts. And they graduate knowing that a single textbook could never tell the whole story. Core to this discovery process is an annual research paper that hones students’ analytical and writing skills and challenges them to dig deep into a variety of sources on any topic of interest, whether it be debunking the “primitivist” myth around jazz, the impact of the breakup of the AT&T monopoly, or, as you will see in this recent example, where Siri '27 finds parallel fears over artificial intelligence in computer science today and the "automatic programming" introduced by Grace Hopper in the 1950s. In both eras, women programmers were—and are—the most vulnerable to extinction.

At Commonwealth, we’re looking for inquisitive, driven, and creative students from a wide range of backgrounds. We encourage you to visit us, talk with teachers and students, and see if Commonwealth is right for you.