Secondary schools in NYC

[Dexter77]

Hello,
we are relocating to New York in summer ‘25. My oldest will need to start secondary school there (currently year six).
I’ve been looking at private schools in primarily Manhattan, but we may well end up buying a house in Brooklyn, so great Brooklyn schools would also very Much be of interest.
I’m finding it a bit hard to read between the lines of the various descriptions and reviews of the well respected schools. I suppose we’re looking for a well-regarded “elite” school with excellent, humanistic academic focus and well-rounded pupils who are natural strivers, but equally we’re not keen on an overly discipline-focused school where children learn in perpetual fear of the next bollocking.

I gather from various reviews etc that many of the best private schools are either “progressive”, “child-led”, “social justice focused” and all about nurturing, which doesn’t fill me with confidence regarding the academic side entirely, and make me worry they’ll be too woke; or very strict, elitist, rigid, offering Latin etc but not very caring at all.

I suppose we’d ideally like something in the middle, if that exists at all? I believe in good discipline and hard work but not harsh punishments for a laughing or slightly unkempt child, would like strong arts and social sciences rather than a big focus on STEM (because of my daughter’s natural interests), some pastoral care from engaged staff in small classes who care, but minus all the talk about “the system” oppressing you and decolonisation and so on.
Does such a school exist in NYC?

My child is bright and curious, excellent in writing and reading etc, struggling a bit in maths but mostly owed to Covid, quite sensitive, very hard working but on occasion discouraged or buckling under stress - eg when she feels unprepared for a test or when the classroom becomes very loud and rowdy, or when bullying occurs.

Any advice from parents who have experience of any NYC private schools would be greatly appreciated!

FWIW, I’m currently interested in Nightingale-Bamford and Dwight, followed by Dalton and Columbia prep, followed by British international, Calhoun
and Leman probably. Plus a few others.

Many thanks in advance, and apologies for the long post!

How very interesting! Especially the comment saying you won’t need APs if you’re a strong applicant from a renowned school. Shows just how much a school‘s reputation still counts I suppose!

Probably not ideal, this alternative private school system, if your child doesn’t know years in advance whether they want to go to a US college or apply in the UK or Europe, where more standardised results are required. Many thanks for the heads up!

We relocated for a year to NYC but our kids were in primary school. this was nearly 10 years ago, but I did a huge search. If you are going private, I would try and find a school first, then figure out where you're going to live based on the child's commute. Don't underestimate that. I looked at so many when I was there and my priority was not only academic, but that all 3 of my kids would be at the same school which was more complicated that you think as some schools had different sites for different grades (Calhoun for one which I really liked and goes through year 12) If your child is year 6, they will be entering middle school, so you have a choice of going to a school that goes through year 8 or going to a school that goes through year 12.

You've listed some really good schools, but it is highly competitive so I would just find out who has places available first and who is willing to consider your child or children. Usually if you are paying, you will find a place.

I ended up choosing St. Hildas' and St Hughes' up near Columbia and it was a great school. I highly recommend it. Really nice families, well run, nice staff, good teachers, great environment. Couldn't have been a better experience. The school only went through 8th grade back then, but they help you apply to High School and kids go all over the city to very good schools both state and private. We have moved back to the UK but are still very close with a lot of the families we met at that school. Like anywhere, people move, so you should be able to find something you like. Good luck!

Much of that FB commentary is baloney.

Strong applicants are strong because they have a lot of AP coursework and good AP exam results under their belts (APs are marked on an ascending scale of 1-5).

A school's reputation doesn't count as much at all as that contributor says it does, apart from a highly select few schools, and even then, the admissions committee at any given university might decide in any given year to bypass the schools like Groton or whatever, and concentrate on strong applicants from public schools in remote rural areas. Private universities can establish whatever admissions criteria they want to. Even state schools have a good deal of leeway, though they tend to make offers to in-state applicants first.

Admissions counselors at universities look at schools in each district from which applications come, and investigate the syllabus offered by the district. They also look at the curriculum offered by private schools from which they have received applications. They are aware of strong curricula in certain schools (this is the only bit where reputation comes in), and can cross reference to AP results for the school to determine the calibre of the courses and by extension the honours level courses that feed into the AP level, since AP coursework is a national curriculum and the students are up against an entire nation of others.

Yes, everyone can be on a different level.

Classes as such, based on age cohorts, do not exist, and this isn't a matter of small schools combining classes. It is very different from the British system.

AP classes are actual class groups, not just harder papers, in which the students are prepared to tackle the exams, with the class GPA counting for the school GPA. AP classes are not all about the exams therefore.

Your child would be nuts and incredibly ill-advised to stick to the straight graduation requirements and graduate from high school with only the local or state requirements.

The requirements are a minimum of credits/ hours. Students hoping to go to university choose honours courses and AP courses, and students hoping to go to selective universities do honours maths courses and (AP) calculus, for more than the state or city or district minimum required credits.

As an example, a student who has finished the state requirement of three years of mathematics but who wants to go to Harvard to ultimately study MFL should do an AP calculus class, and the full four years of maths, English, MFL, sciences, and humanities, with as many AP courses as possible, as well as electives, because so many very selective universities want you to do a core course of studies for your first two years, including sciences, mathematics, philosophy, history, English, and more. You need to be well able to keep up. Your GPA in university matters too.

Thanks for your message, I mistyped earlier in the thread - my daughter is currently year 5 so will need to enter year 7 in NYC.
And yes, we are currently planning to secure a school place first and figure out where we’ll live then.
Can I ask you re faith schools such as St Hilda’s - do they admit children from other faiths at all?
What stresses us out the most atm is that school admissions appointments (eg tours, interviews) seem to be taking place all over the place between September and January.
Makes it much harder for us as we’d have to fly in for each appointment. Or do schools offer remote ones, does anyone know?

Interesting, thanks for that. This kind of does not tally with the fact that many countries allow pupils now to completely drop maths during A-levels, and they end up still getting offers from US elite unis.
Hoe can that be then, that a US applicant wanting to study say English or Spanish has to have done AP maths courses, but oversees applicants are allowed to drop them at age 15 or 16?

Interesting re pupils being grouped together by activity, I don’t quite understand how that would work in practice, because surely pupils of different ages will be working on different projects and topics?

Students are not "grouped by activity".
What happens is that they often make friends in whatever activities they join, be they sports, wheel-throwing, summer musical, glee club, band, service clubs, Japanese society, etc. Student activities are a great way to make friends and find your tribe.

We are, like many other parents, extremely worried about wokeness. We’re not homophobes, but totally reject gender ideology and would take our children out of any school teaching that trans women are women, or that you can change sex.
I don't think any school in NYC is going to be free of gender ideology, apart - perhaps - from RC schools (all are private) and possibly those run by other organised religions that tend to be on the conservative side - this category is few and far between.

We are also totally opposed to all the decolonisation and anti-truth lived experience nonsense, and don’t think children should be taught in that spirit.
Decolonisation is a historiographical argument and as such has its place in the curriculum. Your child will be encouraged to think critically, not just learn off dates or facts in studying history, government, civics, etc.

'Anti-truth' is in the eye of the beholder to a large extent, in western society. As a practicing Catholic, I get what you're saying, but it is hard to find a school that will tick all the boxes. Good enough is sometimes the best you can hope for, with care taken to maintain the parent-child relationship.

Just as a piece of parenting advice, and I don't mean to patronise at all - in the context of schools, your child is going to be exposed to a lot of different thought, different arguments, different philosophies, etc, throughout his or her teenage years, certainly in grades 6 to 12. Your child may even actively seek out viewpoints that contradict yours. Your parenting relationship will survive all of this if you are prepared to bite your tongue a lot, and to engage in constructive and friendly conversations. I have sent five kids through both a RC K-8 and a public high school in an area that falls over itself to be as woke as woke is, and we have all come through that experience agreeing to disagree in some cases or on some topics, but still a solid family unit.

Don't hold your breath waiting for lawsuits to play out. Deal with life as it is, not how it should be.

Switching from middle school to high school can be a very good thing. You get to grow and learn new things about yourself at an age when you're ready to do so.

My own experience is of students going all the way from kindergarten to 8th grade together, then on to high school, and imo that is the best option. My kids and their peers in the RC elementary-middle school developed rock solid friendships that saw them through high school and beyond. In the K-8 school they were given leadership opportunities in 6th, 7th, and 8th grade that they would never have experienced in a separate middle school or a school that went from 6-7th to 12th grade. These opportunities were priceless foundations in leadership and confidence. They entered a much bigger high school feeling confident and valued by their wider church-school community.

UK students eyeing the US as their university destination will have chosen their A level subjects to coincide with the all-rounder academic (and extracurricular) expectations of elite American universities.

UK students thinking of US universities start their planning early. They will often choose mathematics, English or MFL, a science/ geography/ economics, and possibly some subject like history/ philosophy/ religious studies, aiming for a broad range, in hopes of showing strong all round potential, the ability to write, to reason, and to learn across a broad range of subjects.

Even from the pov of practicality, too go to a US university from abroad, you have to plan ahead. It's not done on a whim in your final year of A levels. There is a huge amount of cramming for the ACT also needed, and financial planning that should begin well ahead of making the application.

Students whose countries offer much broader curricula in secondary school, like Ireland (usually seven subjects studied for the Leaving Cert), also apply for and are admitted to American universities.

You would need to contact each school you're interested in to see what they offer.

You should try to visit in person imo. You will get a far better feel for NYC and for its schools by spending some time there.

Faith schools do admit children of other faiths. There is usually a priority order when it comes to admissions, though. In the case of RC schools, it is usually parish member families first, with others in various categories in order.

https://catholicschoolsny.org/regions/manhattan/

You might like to take a look at Catholic schools - this page has links to other areas of NYC and burbs.

St Hilda's admits kids from all faiths or zero faiths. It's more the ethos of the school. Just remember that year 5 in the UK is actually Year 4 in the US if you want them to be in their age group. I think it's hard enough moving schools and moving countries etc to then be the youngest by a year in your class as well as showing up with a British accent. We had the option and chose to put our kids with their age group, and my kids did coast for that first year, but they really had a great learning experience and it allowed them to settle better into a totally different curriculum.

There is the British School in the East Side if you want to keep them in the English system. It's near the UN

@mathanxiety I like you 😂 agree with everything you've said. Although I still wouldn't send my kid to a school in Brooklyn 😂

Just to counter, I am an ex-New Yorker and I know loads of Families in Brooklyn with great kids who have gone on to great universities. Brooklyn is great. There are a lot of great areas and neighbourhoods throughout the city. Don't knock it.

Thanks for your input.

Students are not "grouped by activity".
I didn’t mean extracurricular activity by “activity”, I meant area of study.

Decolonisation is a historiographical argument and as such has its place in the curriculum. Your child will be encouraged to think critically, not just learn off dates or facts in studying history, government, civics, etc.
**
'Anti-truth' is in the eye of the beholder to a large extent, in western society. As a practicing Catholic, I get what you're saying, but it is hard to find a school that will tick all the boxes. Good enough is sometimes the best you can hope for, with care taken to maintain the parent-child relationship.

Decolonisation is a trend ideology and was until recently not on any curriculum. It has nothing whatsoever to do with teaching critical thinking. A critical thinking exercise would be to ask pupils to consider why the West is suddenly gripped by a moral panic and trying to replace large chunks of the traditional enlightenment-led curriculum with “intersectionality” and “meditations on racial injustice” and so on…

We know nothing is ever perfect but are not prepared to let our children become indoctrinated with such nonsense. We’re not waiting for anything, we simply don’t care about the supposedly great reputation of a school if it actively teaches this kind of stuff uncritically, we won’t be sending our children there.

Just as a piece of parenting advice, and I don't mean to patronise at all - in the context of schools, your child is going to be exposed to a lot of different thought, different arguments, different philosophies, etc, throughout his or her teenage years, certainly in grades 6 to 12. Your child may even actively seek out viewpoints that contradict yours. Your parenting relationship will survive all of this if you are prepared to bite your tongue a lot, and to engage in constructive and friendly conversations. I have sent five kids through both a RC K-8 and a public high school in an area that falls over itself to be as woke as woke is, and we have all come through that experience agreeing to disagree in some cases or on some topics, but still a solid family unit.

I’m not worried at all about my children being exposed to different people and thoughts - they have been growing up in central London all their lives, you can’t live in more diverse communities than we do. We have frequent disagreements and I wouldn’t expect otherwise. But as parents, we also have a responsibility to draw some lines and make decisions about some of the environments they will grow up in, and for us, the line is teachers preaching woke nonsense that has neither real meaning nor any value.

If we won’t like any of the schools in NY, we’ll find another solution. Perhaps boarding school in Europe.

That’s good to know, thank you. We’ll take a closer look at some of them though it would be a last resort.

We know NYC very well, but yes, we would like to view as many schools as possible. Given we may have to apply to many, we probably won’t be able to visit them all though, we could probably fly out two or three times for a few days each, and each school has its own dates ofc. Certainly doesn’t make it easier to do all this from overseas.

What about one of the Friends schools? Friends Seminary or Brooklyn Friends. Our child is thriving at a Friends school even though we are not religious in the slightest.

Year 5 in UK is year 4 in US? 🙈

What does that mean in practice? Do US kids just start a year later? Would a UK child need to go from year 6 to year 6 in US in terms of academic progression or would the natural academic progression be to go from year 6 in UK to year 7 in the US?

Reading your OP and follow up posts, it really doesn't seem like the NYC/Brooklyn environment is what you're looking for. My suggestion would be the deep south or midwest. Seriously.

Oh we love Brooklyn overall, have stayed there for entire summers and have friends there also, but it overall feels v v v woke and while we wouldn’t really mind this in daily life, it is a consideration with regard to schools.
The Israel Palestine conflict is another issue re Brooklyn - our daughter is currently suffering quite a bit because many pupils in her current school are rabidly anti-Israel and this is clearly a dynamic in many areas of Brooklyn also.

Deep South or Midwest? My husband is a born and bred New Yorker and there are millions of people like us in New York, silent majority etc.
We aren’t Trump voting cowboys, just rational thinking politically moderate liberals who grew up with the West Wing era of Democrats, not blue haired ideologues sharing their lived experience instead of consulting facts 😉

I haven’t looked into these, but good to hear you are happy with your school! We’re also not religious at all, will check it out!

That all makes sense. Will be interesting to see what will happen with applicants from countries such as Germany or Austria, where pupils have up to 12 subjects jn their A-levels, but can now drop maths, which loads do, so they can do say 3 languages instead.
My eldest is ok at maths but doesn’t love it and would probably not enjoy studying very difficult AP maths courses. Though hard to predict this now.

@Dexter77 Don't discount hard AP maths courses. My niece loooves the US maths system. The UK system is spiral so they always go back to a topic and you're expected to learn all of maths at once. The US one is much more accessible to maths averse kids I feel as it's one specific area of maths at a time. Eg algebra, pass that and you're done etc.
It does obviously have it's pros and cons but I feel it's a way better system than the UK one, at the middle and high school level anyway!