Rutgers Preparatory School is the oldest independent, college preparatory school in New Jersey. Founded in 1766, RPS today is a coeducational day school with programs from pre-kindergarten through grade twelve. In its origin, RPS represented the joint aspirations of Dutch and English colonists and it has sustained this remarkable tradition of multiculturalism throughout its history. This diversity is a strength celebrated at RPS.

There was quite a competition between Newark and New Brunswick during the 1760's to obtain a charter for the first college in the colony. Ultimately, New Brunswick succeeded in chartering Queen's College and Queen's College Grammar School (Rutgers Prep) because only here did both the Anglican and Dutch Reformed congregations join together in their petition to the crown. As advertised on August 15, 1768, the first master to give instruction here was Caleb Cooper of Nassau Hall (Princeton).

A boys' boarding school throughout most of its history, RPS has strong international connections, especially with Japan. In the middle of the nineteenth century, the first Japanese students to come to America studied at the prep school before attending Rutgers University and hundreds would follow them by the turn of the twentieth century.

During the Progressive Era, Rutgers Preparatory School was an innovator, being among the first schools in the nation to institute laboratory sciences, extracurricular activities, student publications and community service. This leadership was also reflected in an expansion of the curriculum and the inclusion of female students from 1892 through the 1920's. It was during this period that poet A. Joyce Kilmer '04 attended the school.

1952 was a pivotal year during which the school ended its boarding program, admitted women to the high school and eliminated the football team. When Rutgers University became the state university in the 1950's, the Board of Trustees decided to divest itself of the preparatory school. Between 1958 and 1962 RPS re-established itself as an independent school, taking its present form on the Somerset campus. The new Board of Trustees, lead by Headmaster David Heinlein, recreated the school with the support of current parents by purchasing the Wells Estate. In 1983 a fire destroyed the Upper School building on the new Somerset campus. This tragedy brought the school community together and classes resumed only three days later in improvised classrooms and trailers. In the last fifteen years RPS has added a new high school building as well as a second gymnasium, multi-purpose room, library/technology center, and music building.

Rutgers Prep typically enrolled about one hundred students in the high school in the early 1950's, and twenty-eight seniors made up the graduating class of 1962. Entering the 21st century the school had grown to seven hundred students with a graduating class of over seventy in 2009.