09/11/2026
Come visit Hartsville if you don’t already live here!!
"The South Carolina Governor's School for Science and Mathematics was formed to serve the students who are highly talented, motivated, and STEM-focused. It opened in 1988 as a public high school and operated on Coker's campus until the early 2000s. When Milliken donated the land we are on now, we were able to build our own campus and expand from 128 students to 288 11th and 12th grade students.
Students enter the school in 11th grade and need to be a resident of South Carolina to apply. The application is very similar to college: teacher recommendations, an interview, essays. We usually have two to three candidates for every available spot, so it’s highly competitive to get in. Tuition is free upon admission. We have a meal fee, but there’s financial aid for it and about 30% of the students get it all waived. For that group of students, we’ll also pay for things like prom dresses, eyeglasses, and we’ll pay for their parents to go on the college visits with them.
100% of our graduates go to college, and 80% go to graduate school.
We’re just topping 3,000 alums with this graduating class around the world. Ninety percent of our faculty hold PhDs in their content area. We’re ranked number one in the state and number four in the country for public high schools. We partner with about 40 different businesses across the state, and between Junior and Senior year, our kids do six weeks of research in graduate-level labs like USC, Clemson, and MUSC.
This place is home for me — I was in the first graduating class back in 1990. I love everything about this school. The students are just awesome. We have two interviews going on today, one for a vice president position and one for a Spanish teacher and the best part is when the candidates get to eat lunch with the kids or get a tour. It’s just refreshing to see how motivated these kids are. They're talented. They’re well-behaved. It’s hopeful to be here. It’s hopeful for the future.
Many of the kids that come to us come from very underserved areas and education is the way out of poverty. Education is the way out of conflict, because you can learn to communicate. We have a big global component too, so students are learning how their education integrates into the rest of the world, too. This is a transformative education. It can be transformative in that our goal is not to create scientists or mathematicians. Our goal is to give students a great foundation academically and holistically and explore other interests. We have 16 sports. That understanding of how to meet a challenge, get knocked down and get back up again is invaluable in relationships, in work, and in life.
I think Hartsville has great diversity for a small town. You’ve got us and Coker, then Sonoco, Duke, attorneys, doctors, business owners, farmers. It’s a mix of people. We moved from Atlanta where I was a principal of a high school. Atlanta is massive, and we wanted to raise our four kids in a small, wonderful community. That’s Hartsville."
—Danny Dorsel, South Carolina Governor’s School for Science and Mathematics
