By Gus Saltonstall
An Upper West Side school was recently named among the 25 best in the United States, but it lost its position as the top-ranked private school in New York City, according to a list compiled by the school-ranking website Niche.
Trinity School at 139 West 91st Street was named the 23rd best private school in the country and the fifth best in New York City for the 2023-24 school year. While these are still impressive rankings, they are not as high as the Upper West Side school has received in recent years.
Niche named Trinity as the best private school in New York City for three years in a row from 2019 to 2022. Trinity school was also ranked as the sixth best in the United States for the 2022-2023 academic year.
Trinity School did not immediately respond to West Side Rag’s request for comment on its continued success, but drop-off in the most recent rendition of the ranking.
Here are the specific grades given to the Upper West Side school by Niche for the 2023-24 year.
- Overall: A+
- Academics: A+
- Teachers: A+
- Clubs & Activities: A+
- Diversity: A
- College Prep: A+
- Sports: B
Trinity has just over 1,000 students from grades K-12 and a student-teacher ratio of 6 to 1. Its tuition, without financial aid, is $64,100 for grades K-4, $64,350 for grades 5-11, and $64,600 for 12th grade, according to the school’s website.
Niche first started out in 2002 as a publisher of American college guidebooks, before it eventually pivoted to focus on college and K-12 rankings. The platform has grown in popularity in recent years and is now the second Google result when a person searches for “college rankings.”
You can read more about Niche’s school-ranking methodology — HERE.
Collegiate School, named as the 12th best in New York City, was the next highest-ranked Upper West Side private high school for the 2023-24 school year.
Here are the top 10 private high schools in the city, according to Niche, many of which are located on the Upper East Side.
- Riverdale Country School
- The Chapin School
- Horace Mann School
- The Brearley School
- Trinity School
- Lycee Francais de New York
- The Spence School
- Convent of the Sacred Heart
- The Nightingale-Bamford School
- The Dalton School
Niche’s rankings also includes public schools, as well as the best elementary, middle, catholic, charter, and boarding schools. You can check it out on the Niche website.
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What if they were ranked by how nice, well-behaved, considerate, fair and sensitive the graduates were?
As a New Yorker with some Familiarity, I couldn’t compare the excellent choices, but I think you might find more sharp elbows at Spence, Dalton, and Horace Mann.
I had a few students at HM work with me at my synagogue volunteering with the elderly. I thought they were lovely, well mannered teenagers. Super smart too.
Then Trinity would be first…..
Then they wouldn’t be successful in NYC. lol
I thought Ethical Culture was the highest ranking.
Hard to use. Hunter HS isn’t listed, or I can’t find it. Nor is the Special Music School
Those aren’t considered Private Schools. Hunter HS is chartered under the CUNY System and the Special Music School is also a public school. This list is just for Private Schools in NYC.
HCHS is notably absent from their *public* school rankings.
HCHS is really a charter school. It’s not under the Board of Education in NYC. It’s it’s own entity under CUNY. You can consider it one of the first Charter Schools before Charter schools were a thing. It is considered a public school since there is no tuition to attend the school.
Hunter College High School, from which I graduated, is NOT a charter school. It and Hunter College Elementary School are lab schools. They were created in the 1870’s by Hunter College, which at the time was an all-women’s college. Most of the students went into teaching, so they needed children to practice on.
Don’t know if “practice” is proper word, but never the less.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_College_High_School#History
Students of nursing, medicine and other health professions use hospitals as part of their training, so there you are.
My son went to HCES and HCHS and my daughter did too although she transferred to LaGuardia in 9th grade. It is like a charter school although not like a current Charter School It is NOT like the Lab School which is under the Bd of Ed. It is under CUNY and not the Board of Ed. It used to be an all Girls School way way back when it first started.
I graduated from from HCHS when it was all girls. If that was “way back when it first started,” I would be approximately 160 years old!
Hunter C
Wow! $64K + a year? I would like to know what tuition is at the other 9 top private schools in the city.
All are around the same
…according to what? Where is Little Red Elisabeth Irwin, a very progressive preK-HS school in the Village. I think they were looking for schools that send their alum to Ivy League…….what are your thoughts?
Progressive doesn’t necessarily mean good.
As someone who actually studies school rating systems, let me assure you that these Niche ratings contain very little information about a school’s quality, or whether a particular school is a good fit for a child. As is true for most school rating schemes relying on public data, they are good at identifying the schools that are highly selective in their admissions, and little else.
Trinity Diversity A? Yeah, right…
Columbia Grammar.