In which U.S. state is Pencey Preparatory Academy located?

Pencey Preparatory Academy is located in Pennsylvania, according to the novel's fictional geography.

Holden describes Pencey as a boarding school in the fictional town of Agerstown, Pennsylvania. The setting helps make the opening feel recognizably American without tying the school to a real campus. Holden has been expelled before the Christmas break and is preparing to leave the school for New York City, where most of the novel's action will unfold.

The Pennsylvania setting also fits the book's movement between controlled institutions and the uncertain freedom of the city. Pencey represents an enclosed world of rules, sports, grades, status, and adult expectations. New York, by contrast, offers Holden anonymity and possibility, but also exposes his loneliness and emotional instability.

Readers sometimes assume that Pencey must be in New England because it is a prestigious boarding school, or they confuse it with the actual schools that may have influenced Salinger's imagination. The novel does not identify Pencey with a specific real institution. Its fictional town and school allow the setting to function primarily as a symbol of the conventional world Holden distrusts.