Prep School Stats - 2026 Rankings

Prep School Admissions
1
Boarding Rank (of 441) School Private HS Rank (of 4917) State
1 Hotchkiss 1 CT
2 Exeter 2 NH
3 Choate 3 CT
4 Lawrenceville 5 NJ
5 Groton 6 MA
6 Andover 7 MA
7 St. Paul’s 10 NH
8 Noble & Greenough 16 MA
9 Lake Forest 21 IL
10 Cate 22 CA
11 St. Andrew’s 24 DE
12 Oak Crest 25 CA
13 Loomis 26 CT
14 Peddie 28 NJ
15 Deerfield 29 MA
16 Milton 34 MA
17 Amer. Heritage (Broward) 35 FL
18 Elite Prep 37 NJ
19 Village School 42 TX
20 Princeton International 43 NJ
21 Concord 52 NJ
22 Veritas 58 VA
23 Middlesex 59 MA
24 Taft 62 CT
25 St. Mark’s 64 MA
26 Mercersburg 66 PA
27 Madeira 67 VA
28 Blair 79 NJ
29 Cranbrook 80 MI
30 Sierra Canyon 81 CA
31 Washington Prep 91 WA
32 United World College 99 NM
33 Hill 101 PA
34 St. Stephen’s 104 TX
35 Indian Springs 108 AL
36 Amer. Heritage (PB) 122 FL
37 TMI Episcopal 130 TX
38 Hackley 132 NY
39 Belmont Hill 133 MA
40 Georgetown Prep 144 MD
41 Overlake 148 NJ
42 Thacher 149 CA
43 Athenian 151 CA
44 Stony Brook 154 NY
45 Woodberry Forest 156 VA
46 Miss Porter’s 159 CT
47 St. Albans 161 DC
48 North Broward 162 FL
49 Gunn 163 CT
50 Pioneer 164 NJ

Source: Niche

2

Niche is nonsense.

6 Likes
3

Nice to see my school is top 10

4

Honestly, Hotchkiss should not be first for sure.

1 Like
5

Agree. Makes the entire list suspect.

Probably better to group schools by size:

The top large prep boarding schools might be:

Andover, Exeter, Choate, Lawrenceville, & Deerfield.

The top smaller boarding schools might be: Groton, St. Paul’s School, & Hotchkiss.

6

Unless Deerfield has gotten bigger in recent years, I don’t think there is much of a size difference between Hotchkiss and Deerfield. Groton seems quite a bit smaller than both especially given it is spread over 5 years instead of 4 –though I realize the 8th grade class is pretty tiny.

1 Like
7

Or,
THE HUMUNGOUS: Andover and Exeter

The BIG: Lawrenceville, Choate and Milton

The Middle-sized: Deerfield and Hotchkiss

the small: groton, st.paul’s and lake forest (how do you mess with fonts on this thing?)

Regardless, Niche is nonsense.

2 Likes
8

The massive moves make no sense. So Harvard -Westlake was a top ten school last year and is now 40th? Schools don’t change that quickly .

1 Like
9

If it said, “Source: My Butt,” it would be equally useful and accurate. :rofl:

2 Likes
10

Exactly!

11

Agreed.

12

Congrats to Hotchkiss for achieving the #1 spot.

Maria Hotchkiss, the school’s founder, would be incredibly proud. George Van Santvoord aka “The Duke” and Head of School at Hotchkiss from 1926 to 1955 deserves a huge amount of credit for helping Hotchkiss become the premier prep school in America.

13

One point that may hurt some schools (unnecessarily) is the weight that Niche puts on AP classes and student scores. Some schools actively discourage students from taking AP classes, so they are negatively impacted even though the academics are equally rigorous.

Any other weird points that Niche over/underemphasizes?

https://www.niche.com/k12/rankings/methodology/

1 Like
14

Well, for their Academics score (which is probably one of the more important scores for readers of CC), 55% of the score is “Self-reported by Niche users”.

Source: https://www.niche.com/about/methodology/private-high-school-academics/

Garbage in, garbage out.

1 Like