Prep school
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Prep school is an informal name for a "preparatory school." In the United States, it usually refers to a private secondary school, often a boarding school, which prepares students for college.
During the 1800s, most college curricula were centered around the classics, and a substantial mastery of Latin and Greek was a requirement for admission. Brown's 1836-7 catalog, for example, says that entrants must
- be thoroughly acquainted with the Grammar of the Latin and Greek languages, be able to construe and parse and of the following books, namely:—Jacob's Greek Reader, the Historical Books of the New Testament, or three Books of Xenophon's Cyropædia, Cæsars Commentaries, Virgil, Cicero's Select Orations, and translate English into Latin correctly.[1]
Most public schools did not prepare students to meet these requirements (those that did tended to be distinguished by names like "Boston Latin School").