In order to receive a Putney diploma, a student must fulfill the following academic requirements, as well as live up to responsibilities in all other areas of the program. Each student is expected to participate fully in the Evening Arts Program, the land-use program, Project Week, the Work Program, afternoon activities, dorm life, assemblies, Sunday Night Meetings, and other special events where attendance is required. Long Fall camping trips are a nonacademic graduation requirement. The Putney faculty votes on each student’s eligibility for a diploma.

The academic program is rich in opportunity for intellectual exploration and discovery as well as creative expression. The courses are designed to encourage students to become authorities in their own right. Students approach the interpretation of literature, as writers do. The study of history is steeped in primary sources, and students, like historians, learn to create historical narratives, research, and interpret events. Students work in science class as scientists do and are encouraged to view the campus as a laboratory for discovery as well as develop an appreciation for the complexity and fragility of the environment. Math is taught as a language where phenomena can be expressed in numbers and problems solved elegantly. Spanish and French are taught with an emphasis on speaking, writing and appreciating the opportunity to achieve a more global understanding. The arts and the cultivation of creativity and the imagination are central to a Putney School education. The arts also inspire our students to value discipline in pursuit of their creative vision. Embracing skills and discipline to create meaning is the approach that characterizes the entire academic program.

To graduate from The Putney School, a student must earn a total of 20 or more course credits during his or her high school years. Seniors must pass all courses in the final trimester, in order to graduate. A student must earn 5 credits per year, distributed thus:
 

• 4 full credits of English (must be taken each year)
• 2 1/2 credits of history, including a full credit of U.S. History* and a half credit in the senior year (the senior history requirement will be waived for students entering the senior year with 3 full history credits)
• 1/2 credit in the senior year of a humanities course (typically English or history electives, but also designated courses in language or art (see descriptions))
• 3 credits of a modern language, normally through the third level (see the Language section for more detail)
• 3 credits of mathematics
• 3 credits of laboratory science including at least one year of biology and at least one year of physical science
• 1 credit of the arts
• Healthy Living course (for students who enter as 9th graders)
• Additional elective credits

* If a student is given credit for U.S. History at another school, they are required to take a senior history elective with a similar research project to the US History requirement.

All students must take classes in at least four departments each semester (that is, no student may take three of five courses in the same department in any semester).

Exceptions to or waivers of these requirements are granted only by special petition to the Educational Program Committee or its delegates.