Collegiate School | 2,171 followers on LinkedIn. Collegiate School, a day school for boys, is the oldest independent school in the United States. Tracing its origins to 1628, the school was established by the Dutch West India Company and the Classis of Amsterdam, the parent ecclesiastical body of the Dutch Reformed Church for the colonists of New Amsterdam. Beginning with Adam Roelantsen, twenty-eight headmasters have guided Collegiate "so that first of all in so wild a country, the youth be well taught and brought up."