Best private schools in NYC?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:https://www.brearley.org/college-advising/

Brearley’s stats are INSANE.

Considering they have about 60 girls per class, these are very impressive stats. 27 or about 8-10% per class just to Harvard alone 😮

[Anonymous]

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If your kid is actually smart, you wouldn't need TT schools to get in a good college. Yes, mediocre kids are sent here to pretend there is "rigor". What a joke.

What? Do you know how selective Trinity or Dalton is? The average IQ there is probably over 160. Not joke.

I can't imagine every sibling or legacy child has a high IQ... Trinity, Brearley, Spence, etc, classes seem to be at least 80% sib/legacy. At least Dalton seems more even-keeled...

This is BS. “Seem to be at least 80%”?! Seem how?? I have kids at one of those schools. Sibs + legacies are around 25-30% per grade. And my youngest child is just as strong, if not stronger than his older siblings.

I don’t know about IQ of over 160, but the kids in these schools are very intelligent, naturally curious and hard working. The school is not shy about counseling out underperfomers even if they happen to be sibs, legacy or very rich.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:From the below schools, can anyone rank which kids come out the most well balanced and happy?

Avenues
Brearley
Chapin
Collegiate
Dalton
Fieldston
Horace Mann
Riverdale
Spence
St. Ann’s
Trinity

The ones with solid parents. Don’t expect a school to do your job.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
St. Ann's . . .

Very impressive. Attending: Yale-5, Brown-5, Harvard-3, Cornell-4, Cu/Princeton/UPenn-4

Whoever said they are 4th tier is DELUSIONAL.

I am guessing the majority of these Ivy kids have declared art, theatre, music and dance majors. All colleges have to fill those disciplines too, and Saint Ann’s kids excel at them. Nothing wrong with that, just worth pointing out stats get skewed because of this. Same as at LaGuardia high school.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I'd move Collegiate up to Tier 1. Really top of the top are Trinity, Brearley, Collegiate.

I'd move Regis up (it's a school where unhooked kids get into HYP) to Spence level.

St Ann's is not as desirable as it was even 3 years ago.

What changed with St. Ann’s?

The recent scandal I would imagine? I would never send my children there after that.

They fired everyone involved, the catfishing felon teacher took a deal and will be in prison for a few years - but that plus the suicide case profiled in the NYT turned me off completely. I don’t believe their college rates are good because it’s a good school at all at this point, I think it’s past reputation, legacy donations, and other ineffable things. It never had a rep for rigor or high intellectual activity, did it?

St. Ann's is very artsy fartsy. Which is very attractive for some people. But I agree that it was never known for its academic rigor, and the recent situations have brought out into the open what it is. I am a Dem but I always found St. Ann's to be so performatively woke, and the effort to be super kind and forgiving to the horrible teacher blew up.

Ironically, I know a family that is now pretty Trumpy that sent their kid there, but the kid graduated pre-2015 so the world was a different place then.

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The top students at St Ann's learn more than any student at any other school in NYC or possibly elsewhere.

The reason is that the no grades policy plus the very long school day (7:30-6:15 with no lunch, if you are crazy enough to try) allows the students to take huge numbers of extra academic subjects and electives without having to worry about doing perfectly in each class. For self-motivated kids, this is perfect. There are tests, but there are far more research papers and project based learning exercises.

The class isn't as big as at Dalton, and there are considerably fewer STEM types, so kids can and do run out of classes.

They used to cater more to prodigies -- e.g. a 2nd grader taking calculus, but I haven't seen many of those lately

I am a moderate Dem who is to the left of the vast majority of America, but I find the school to be full of virtue-signaling wokeness. I despise MAGA Trumpers but I wonder if a traditional socially moderate, fiscally conservative conservative would have been treated with respect there.

I think your statement that they learn more than any student is hyperbole, though I appreciate that you qualified it as being top students. They actually do have pretty standard core requirements. I find the no grade policy to be not constructive at the HS level. Most top privates provide extensive narratives with grades. And most top universities know what the top private schools are and how to interpret their grading systems.

That being said, I just looked at their exmissions page and it is better than I thought. Like other schools, I'm sure there are a ton of legacies/minorities in there, but still impressive.

https://saintannsny.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/SchoolProfile24-25.pdf

I agree with your first statement -- the previous headmaster was pretty cynical about the DEI stuff and let the activists run wild. The worst ones have been fired, and there's less emphasis on it now, but a lot of the parents tell their kids not to talk about any of this stuff except as a mechanism for getting into college.

My statement about learning more is based on math and how kids learn:
-- there are only so many waking hours in a day
-- commutes are largely non-productive time
-- excessive sports are largely non-productive time
-- sitting in a class where you know the material is largely non-productive time
-- it takes significant rote memorization and time to go from mastery (95-97) to perfection (100). (e.g. memorizing tables of integrals, irregular verbs, vocabulary lists, etc)

So kids who live nearby, are intrinsically motivated, doesn't get distracted by their parents' social climbing / jet set vacations, and are prepared to work hard can take vastly more classes than at any other school. As an example, HM limits students to 5 core subjects plus a few non-core electives. St. Ann's theoretically allows 8+, but 6 is common (two languages or two sciences), and 7 is rare. Since there's no real competition, students can get a very broad education that is deep in some areas.

I think it turns them into good individual contributors, good writers, good researchers, but mediocre finance/office workers. Being forced to do well in your least favorite class teaches useful life skills that St. Ann's grads often lack.

you can set your own schedule by junior year. lots of kids dont even show up to school til 11 (or later)

[Anonymous]

How is admissions to St. Bernard’s? Doable? Or do they only accept at K?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How is admissions to St. Bernard’s? Doable? Or do they only accept at K?

I think they only accept at K and later grades is on the basis of attrition.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I'd move Collegiate up to Tier 1. Really top of the top are Trinity, Brearley, Collegiate.

I'd move Regis up (it's a school where unhooked kids get into HYP) to Spence level.

St Ann's is not as desirable as it was even 3 years ago.

What changed with St. Ann’s?

The recent scandal I would imagine? I would never send my children there after that.

They fired everyone involved, the catfishing felon teacher took a deal and will be in prison for a few years - but that plus the suicide case profiled in the NYT turned me off completely. I don’t believe their college rates are good because it’s a good school at all at this point, I think it’s past reputation, legacy donations, and other ineffable things. It never had a rep for rigor or high intellectual activity, did it?

St. Ann's is very artsy fartsy. Which is very attractive for some people. But I agree that it was never known for its academic rigor, and the recent situations have brought out into the open what it is. I am a Dem but I always found St. Ann's to be so performatively woke, and the effort to be super kind and forgiving to the horrible teacher blew up.

Ironically, I know a family that is now pretty Trumpy that sent their kid there, but the kid graduated pre-2015 so the world was a different place then.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The top students at St Ann's learn more than any student at any other school in NYC or possibly elsewhere.

The reason is that the no grades policy plus the very long school day (7:30-6:15 with no lunch, if you are crazy enough to try) allows the students to take huge numbers of extra academic subjects and electives without having to worry about doing perfectly in each class. For self-motivated kids, this is perfect. There are tests, but there are far more research papers and project based learning exercises.

The class isn't as big as at Dalton, and there are considerably fewer STEM types, so kids can and do run out of classes.

They used to cater more to prodigies -- e.g. a 2nd grader taking calculus, but I haven't seen many of those lately

I am a moderate Dem who is to the left of the vast majority of America, but I find the school to be full of virtue-signaling wokeness. I despise MAGA Trumpers but I wonder if a traditional socially moderate, fiscally conservative conservative would have been treated with respect there.

I think your statement that they learn more than any student is hyperbole, though I appreciate that you qualified it as being top students. They actually do have pretty standard core requirements. I find the no grade policy to be not constructive at the HS level. Most top privates provide extensive narratives with grades. And most top universities know what the top private schools are and how to interpret their grading systems.

That being said, I just looked at their exmissions page and it is better than I thought. Like other schools, I'm sure there are a ton of legacies/minorities in there, but still impressive.

https://saintannsny.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/SchoolProfile24-25.pdf

I agree with your first statement -- the previous headmaster was pretty cynical about the DEI stuff and let the activists run wild. The worst ones have been fired, and there's less emphasis on it now, but a lot of the parents tell their kids not to talk about any of this stuff except as a mechanism for getting into college.

My statement about learning more is based on math and how kids learn:
-- there are only so many waking hours in a day
-- commutes are largely non-productive time
-- excessive sports are largely non-productive time
-- sitting in a class where you know the material is largely non-productive time
-- it takes significant rote memorization and time to go from mastery (95-97) to perfection (100). (e.g. memorizing tables of integrals, irregular verbs, vocabulary lists, etc)

So kids who live nearby, are intrinsically motivated, doesn't get distracted by their parents' social climbing / jet set vacations, and are prepared to work hard can take vastly more classes than at any other school. As an example, HM limits students to 5 core subjects plus a few non-core electives. St. Ann's theoretically allows 8+, but 6 is common (two languages or two sciences), and 7 is rare. Since there's no real competition, students can get a very broad education that is deep in some areas.

I think it turns them into good individual contributors, good writers, good researchers, but mediocre finance/office workers. Being forced to do well in your least favorite class teaches useful life skills that St. Ann's grads often lack.

Are most of the St Ann's kids really self driven to do this kind of work?

Most of them who make it to hs are (by make it I mean don’t move to a different type of school) - I have a hs kid there and they are taking 3 languages, 6 art classes (between visual and performing) as well as seminars in philosophy and poetry, an extra science course and independent study in history. This is a pretty typical load for a SA high schooler. Some kids will take additional math or science, some take more art or language. But yes my kid is at school until 6pm twice a week. They also participate in an extracurricular activity on an international competitive level.

It’s not a school for everyone but the lower grades are much more traditional than they let on (very teacher-led) and the upper grades offer incredible choice for motivated kids.

Their exmissions are impressive and I know they aren’t only celebs getting into the ivys (less clear about legacies). There is wealth at the school but less than many other nyc privates. There is probably 1/3 of the school from manhattan or other boroughs. 1/3 from a walkable distance and the rest from farther out in Brooklyn. It’s a very diverse school in terms of geography, race, socioeconomic status… I think less so by political ideology but I do know some quite conservative families there.

[Anonymous]

St. Ann’s sends about 20% to Ivies, honestly all the top tier schools send about 20 percent to Ivies: Dalton, St. Ann’s, Brearley, Chapin, Riverdale, Horace Mann.

All have about the same with Brearley, Horace Mann, Dalton some years sending about 25%. Not sure about Spence and Collegiate as I couldn’t find their matriculation online when our family was researching schools. Avenues this year sent about 12%.

[Anonymous]

Anybody know about Fieldston? Their 'college destinations' page lists 10+ students matriculating at 6 of the 8 Ivies across the classes of 2018-23 (Dartmouth 5+ I presume more due to its political conservatism than selectivity, Harvard 1+ who knows why), so that sets a floor in the low teens percent-wise, but I'd be curious if anyone has any more detailed data and specifically any recent trend lines.

[Anonymous]

Old Etonian living in NYC, I’ve got two daughters (1 and 3 yrs old so just dipping into the cut throat NYC private school maelstrom, pre-school edition)! I mention my school as I felt it offered each student the best possible outlet and support for whatever interested him. There was a boy who joined my house in our third year who had previously gone to St Bernard’s, he was clever and fit in pretty quickly (no small feat considering we’d all been together for a few years at that stage and teenage boys are not necessarily known for their accepting ways). Anyhow, he spoke very highly of it and I didn’t really pay attention at the time but now I am in New York with kids that sentiment carries more weight. I also came across another boy at Uni who’d gone there and he left a good impression on me. Are there any girls’ schools in NYC that are similar? Is any school considered a “sister school” to it perhaps? Thank you in advance.

[Anonymous]

NYC is home to excellent girl schools. You have to tour them to get a feel for yourself and what kind of values you are looking for. Brearley, Chapin, Spence, Sacred Heart and Nightingale are the ones I’d recommend and all have brothers at St. Bernard’s.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Old Etonian living in NYC, I’ve got two daughters (1 and 3 yrs old so just dipping into the cut throat NYC private school maelstrom, pre-school edition)! I mention my school as I felt it offered each student the best possible outlet and support for whatever interested him. There was a boy who joined my house in our third year who had previously gone to St Bernard’s, he was clever and fit in pretty quickly (no small feat considering we’d all been together for a few years at that stage and teenage boys are not necessarily known for their accepting ways). Anyhow, he spoke very highly of it and I didn’t really pay attention at the time but now I am in New York with kids that sentiment carries more weight. I also came across another boy at Uni who’d gone there and he left a good impression on me. Are there any girls’ schools in NYC that are similar? Is any school considered a “sister school” to it perhaps? Thank you in advance.

It’s hard to compare the K-8 boys’ with the K-12 girls’. And whilst in my experience (or in the experience of friends with kids in these schools) all the below are excellent I would pair them like this:

Brearley - Collegiate
Spence - Buckley
Nightingale - Allen Stevenson
Chapin - St. Bernard’s
Sacred Heart - St. David’s

Subtle differences, but I’ve seen or heard wonderful things about each and every one of these schools. I also want to add Marymount and Browning, but don’t see them as a pair with each other. Any child would be lucky to be educated at any of them and based on what you describe you’ll find what you’re looking for for your daughter at all of them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Anybody know about Fieldston? Their 'college destinations' page lists 10+ students matriculating at 6 of the 8 Ivies across the classes of 2018-23 (Dartmouth 5+ I presume more due to its political conservatism than selectivity, Harvard 1+ who knows why), so that sets a floor in the low teens percent-wise, but I'd be curious if anyone has any more detailed data and specifically any recent trend lines.

Fieldston 2024 college destinations:

https://www.instagram.com/fieldstonseniors2024/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Fieldston 2024 college destinations:

https://www.instagram.com/fieldstonseniors2024/

Thanks - I count 18 Ivies out of 130, so more like mid-teens. So right in the neighborhood of what people here consider 2T.