Valley Forge Military Academy and College

Valley Forge Military Academy and College

Valley Forge Military Academy and College is composed of three fully accredited schools, a middle school (grades 7-8), a high school (grades 9-12), and a two-year military junior college. Each of the schools offers commuting and residential options.

Valley Forge Military Academy (VFMA) is an independent, private school for grades 7-12 offering day and boarding options. Located in Wayne, PA, the school’s idyllic campus provides a safe, convenient, suburban location, 12 miles from Philadelphia. With cadets from 26 countries, VFMA is an international leadership academy providing its students with cultural interactions throughout their tenure, which equip them with the awareness needed to be responsible global citizen leaders and compete in our global economy.

Established in 1928, VFMA has a long tradition of fostering personal growth and instilling values to prepare tomorrow’s business, military, and political leaders.

A challenging curriculum, dedicated faculty, small classes, and individual attention, provide cadets with an environment conducive to attaining academic success.

Graduates of the Academy are accepted into top tier universities and VFMA alumni have forged successful careers as leaders in business, government, and the military.

Acceptance into the Academy is competitive as only half of all applicants are accepted each year.

Valley Forge Military College

With regard to the College, Valley Forge Military College – The Military College of Pennsylvania™ (VFMC) is a private, co-educational, two-year military junior college. Established in 1935, VFMC’s mission is to prepare educated, responsible, self-disciplined young men and women to transfer to quality four-year colleges and universities, with the personal motivation and time management skills they need to succeed.

VFMC offers programs leading to the Associate of Arts degree, the Associate of Science degree, or the Associate in Business Administration. Students attending VFMC hold themselves to a higher standard. The College builds leaders of character poised for success in their future academic pursuits and their professional careers.

History of Valley Forge

The Academy was founded in 1928 and was a single building school located in Devon, Pennsylvania. The school relocated to Wayne, Pennsylvania due to a fire that destroyed the original campus. The Academy’s original traditions and uniforms were modeled after the American Revolutionary War. Many of the buildings on campus are named after leaders such as George Washington, the Marquis de Lafayette, Anthony Wayne, and Friedrich Wilhelm Von Steuben. In the 1950s the Academy shifted to reflect British uniforms and traditions with West Point influences. Many of these traditions continue today.

Education

Academic excellence is one of five cornerstones at Valley Forge. Specific emphasis is placed on student’s success in the classroom. As a college preparatory leadership institute, Valley Forge seeks to educate, train, and equip students for excellence in college and future career success through a values-based, rigorous academic curriculum, focused on critical thinking, problem solving, and professionalism.

Small class sizes provide students with access to their teachers during class and during evening study hall, in addition to other instructional support opportunities.

As a college preparatory high school, VFMA students are able to enroll in Honors and Advanced Placement courses. For high achieving high school students, VFMA also provides students the opportunity to earn transferable college credit and experience actual college classes through VFMC.

Personal Motivation is another cornerstone at VFMAC. The academic structure and military model at VFMAC elicits each cadet’s innate drive and tenacity. By achieving personal goals, cadets gain self-confidence and the desire for continued success.

Other cornerstones are Character Development, Leadership, and Physical Development.

Enrollment averages 600 students between the College and the Academy, with average class sizes of 12. Valley Forge is accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, and by The Association of Boarding Schools, National Association of Independent Schools and a member of the Association of Military Colleges and Schools of the United States.

VFMAC competes athletically with other schools and colleges and is a member of the PIAA and the NJCAA.

Application and Tuition

Acceptance to the Academy and to the College is competitive. Applicants should have a record of academic accomplishment and letters of recommendation for the Academy and SAT or ACT scores for the College. Applicants must fill out an application form and are encouraged to schedule a personal tour and an interview. Fall semester deadline is in August and Spring semester deadline is in December.

Offering flexibility, the College and the Academy provide students and families the option to commute or to board for 5 or 7-days.

Tuition, room and board, and basic services fees for Academy residential students, which includes uniforms, laundry, equipment and haircuts is $39,885. For residential students in grades 9th-12th it is $41,385 a year. Tuition, meals, and basic services for day students in the Academy is $26,305 a year.

Tuition, room and board, and basic services fees for College residential students, which includes uniforms, laundry, equipment, and haircuts is $42,386. Tuition, meals, and access to the health center for commuting students in the College is $24,706 a year.

Overview

Valley Forge is one of only five military junior colleges and offers a direct commission into the army after only two years of study (through the army’s Early Commissioning Program). In essence, students at Valley Forge can begin their military indoctrination at a very early age and carry it through college.

The school offers a very intimate atmosphere due to the small number of students (compared with larger institutions) on campus. In total, Valley Forge has about 600 students, with a little over half of these being enrolled in the college.

Like most military schools, students are a part of a corps of cadets and abide by a strict, no-nonsense honor code. It’s interesting to note that the corps of cadets is described as almost completely autonomous. By this, it is meant that the student leaders within the corps are responsible for the day-to-day administration, discipline, training, etc. of the other students.

Cadets are required to live on campus and follow a very structured daily routine: formation, breakfast, cleaning details, academic classes until lunch and then more classes until mid-afternoon.

After classes, students participate in athletics and such, winding down to mandatory study halls from 7:30-9:30 PM. While this is fairly standard for any military school, Valley Forge has some unique characteristics that are wholly their own.

One is that unlike other military schools, Valley Forge follows very distinctive British traditions. In fact, they are the only school in the U.S. that maintains British Drill and military ceremonies. Almost the school’s entire faculty is either active duty or retired military personnel from both the United States military and the British military.

Valley Forge is also one of the few military schools in the nation that maintains a mounted battalion and that caters to all five branches of the U.S. military and all five service academies.

Valley Forge is a bastion of traditions that are both standard and unique, offering a level of education that is not only competitive, but personal and intimate because of its small size.