Independent rankings of Independent (non-religious) Middle schools, built from director interviews and verified data — never from school payments.
Not sure which fits your child? Take the 2-minute match quiz.
Get your top 5 matches — ranked by grades, budget, location, and your child's strengths.
We track 212 independent (non-religious) middle-level schools across our active markets in Florida and New York. Annual tuition ranges from $115/yr to $145K/yr, with a median of $23.9K/yr across schools that publish a number. 100 of these schools accept Florida Step Up / FES scholarships — roughly 47% of the list — so families using state-funded scholarships have real choice here.
Middle-school admission is the most competitive transition point at many independent schools. Expect a standardized test (ISEE, SSAT, or in-house), a writing sample, and teacher recommendations from 4th or 5th grade. Every school is re-verified through direct outreach to admissions teams; data is refreshed on a 180-day cadence and timestamped on each profile.
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·~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.
Tampa·Hillsborough County·Grades PK3-8·~578 students
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·~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.
Clearwater·Pinellas County·Grades PK-12·~323 students
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.
Clearwater·Pinellas County·Grades PK-12·~279 students
State-licensed
Families like yours are admitted here most of the time.
Largo·Pinellas County·Grades PK-08·~273 students
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.
Combine filters to get a tighter shortlist.
Adjacent searches families often run from here.
Our 2-minute quiz factors in grades, budget, location, and goals to surface the best-fit schools from this list.