The 50 most elite boarding schools in America

Phillips Exeter/Samantha Lee/Business InsiderAttending an elite boarding school sets students up for lifelong success. It can open doors to prominent colleges, place students in a powerful alumni network, provide a top-notch education, and create lifelong friends.

Prestige is derived from more than just strong academics though, so to determine the most elite boarding schools in America, we looked at the size of the school's endowment, how selective it is (based on its acceptance rate), and the average SAT score its students earn. To rank the schools, each metric was weighted equally.

Because of the scope of the list, we relied primarily on data from BoardingSchoolReview.com, a website that collects information on boarding schools directly from the schools themselves. Gaps in the data were confirmed with individual schools or taken from Niche, another organization that researches and compiles information on schools.

For the second year in a row, Phillips Exeter Academy earned the No. 1 spot on the list. Best known for pioneering the Harkness teaching method - a seminar-style class setting where the teacher and students sit around a table and freely discuss subjects - the school is highly selective with a 19% acceptance rate and touts an endowment of $1.15 billion, which is more than most colleges.

Read on to see the rest of the 50 most elite boarding schools in America.

Additional reporting by Andy Kiersz.