So much more than college prep.

Cate School combines the academic rigor of East Coast prep schools with the adventurous spirit of the West Coast. This was the vision of Curtis Wolsey Cate, a graduate of Roxbury Latin School and Harvard University, who crossed the country to found our beloved boarding school back in 1910.

Sure you could sum us up as a college-preparatory boarding school in California, but that fails to capture the spirit of the place, the community, and the culture. Where else can you wake up with mountain vistas and genuine excitement about heading to class? Feel both the ocean breeze and butterflies on your way to assembly to perform a skit on your recycling initiative?

No other school looks or feels like Cate, and the best way to know that is to be here and experience it.

For over 100 years, Cate has been combining the best of East Coast tradition and West Coast energy and innovation in the service of highly motivated, independent-minded kids. They come to this place of eucalyptus trees and Newtonian mechanics, this place of sunsets, ceramics, and Salinger, this Mesa between the mountains and the sea, and find it is the place for them. Maybe it is the place for you.