Independent rankings of High schools in NYC, built from director interviews and verified data — never from school payments.
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Get your top 5 matches — ranked by grades, budget, location, and your child's strengths.
Looking for the best high schools in NYC? We track 119 K-12 options that serve high grades. Annual tuition ranges from $6.2K/yr to $145K/yr, with a median of $49.1K/yr across schools that publish a number. New York has the highest concentration with 53 schools, followed by Brooklyn (31).
High-school admissions usually require an ISEE or SSAT, transcripts, two teacher recommendations, and an interview. Application deadlines cluster in November-January for fall entry. 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: Pre-K, Elementary, Middle.
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.
Fresh Meadows·Queens County·Grades 9-12·~2,500 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.
Briarwood·Queens County·Grades 9-12·~1,560 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.
Brooklyn·Kings County·Grades 9-12·~1,100 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 9-12·~1,100 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.
Staten Island·Richmond County·Grades 9-12·~1,100 students
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.
Bronx·Bronx County·Grades 9-12·~945 students
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.
Staten Island·Richmond County·Grades 9-12·~900 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.
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Our 2-minute quiz factors in grades, budget, location, and goals to surface the best-fit schools from this list.