Independent rankings of Private Pre-K schools in Manhattan, built from director interviews and verified data — never from school payments.
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AdmitCompass tracks 56 private pre-k-level schools in Manhattan. Annual tuition ranges from $6.2K/yr to $145K/yr, with a median of $63.1K/yr across schools that publish a number. New York has the highest concentration with 56 schools.
Private schools on this page set their own admissions criteria. Most ask for a school visit, prior records, and a family interview; competitive K and 6th-grade entry points often fill 6-9 months before the start of school. Every school is re-verified through direct outreach to admissions teams; data is refreshed on a 180-day cadence and timestamped on each profile.
See also: Charter.
We rank by how well each school fits your family — academics, cost, distance, and values. Never by size, popularity, or payment (schools can’t pay for rank). The coarse admission-likelihood band is always free.
New York·New York County·Grades K-12·~1,330 students
Director-verified · NCES
A stretch — we’ll show you how to make the application stronger.
New York·New York County·Grades K-12·~995 students
Director-verified · NCES
A stretch — we’ll show you how to make the application stronger.
New York·New York County·Grades K-12·~760 students
Director-verified · NCES
A stretch — we’ll show you how to make the application stronger.
New York·New York County·Grades PK-8·~200 students
Director-verified · NCES
Selective private school — we don’t have a verified acceptance rate yet. Similar schools admit a solid share of applicants. A general signal by school type, not a personalized estimate.
New York·New York County·Grades K-12·~220 students
Director-verified · NCES
Selective private school — we don’t have a verified acceptance rate yet. Similar schools admit a solid share of applicants. A general signal by school type, not a personalized estimate.
New York·New York County·Grades K-12·~430 students
Director-verified · State-licensed
Selective private school — we don’t have a verified acceptance rate yet. Similar schools admit a solid share of applicants. A general signal by school type, not a personalized estimate.
New York·New York County·Grades PK-8·~360 students
Director-verified · NCES
Selective private school — we don’t have a verified acceptance rate yet. Similar schools admit a solid share of applicants. A general signal by school type, not a personalized estimate.
New York·New York County·Grades PK-12·~230 students
Director-verified · NCES
Selective private school — we don’t have a verified acceptance rate yet. Similar schools admit a solid share of applicants. A general signal by school type, not a personalized estimate.
New York·New York County·Grades K-12·~180 students
Director-verified · State-licensed
Selective private school — we don’t have a verified acceptance rate yet. Similar schools admit a solid share of applicants. A general signal by school type, not a personalized estimate.
New York·New York County·Grades K-12·~165 students
Director-verified · State-licensed
Selective private school — we don’t have a verified acceptance rate yet. Similar schools admit a solid share of applicants. A general signal by school type, not a personalized estimate.
Built relationships, not scrapers. AdmitCompass ranks schools using a composite score that blends four signals: enrollment size (a proxy for stability and program breadth), tuition reasonableness within the local market, freshness of our most recent verification, and a small bonus for schools with full admissions detail published on their profile.
Public data comes from the Florida Department of Education (FLDOE), the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), and each school's own admissions pages. The information that actually matters to most families — acceptance rates, deadlines, what a director cares about — comes from direct interviews with school directors and admissions coaches across our active markets.
We do not publish scoring weights or per-axis thresholds. That keeps the moat intact: the rankings reflect actual conversations with people inside schools, not a formula anyone with a crawler could clone. Every profile is re-verified on a 180-day cadence, and the "last updated" date is timestamped on every school page.
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Our 2-minute quiz factors in grades, budget, location, and goals to surface the best-fit schools from this list.