The Upper East Side picture
Six schools, roughly ten blocks apart
Between East 83rd Street and East 92nd Street sit six of the schools that shape private-school admissions in Manhattan: Brearley, Chapin, Spence, Nightingale-Bamford, Dalton and Convent of the Sacred Heart. A family walking their child to an open house can cover four of them on foot in an afternoon. Nowhere else in the city is the receiving end of the ISEE this concentrated.
The practical consequence is that Upper East Side lists are rarely short. A family applying to one of the girls’ schools is usually applying to three or four, because the campuses, the entry grades and the admissions calendars all overlap. Very few of our UES families arrive with a single school in mind.
That matters for testing, because the ISEE does not work the way a school application works. Your child sits the test once per testing season, and the ERB sends the same score report to every school on the list you nominate. There is no per-school version of the score. So the list is not four separate admissions problems — it is one score that has to satisfy the most demanding reader on it.
Where Upper East Side families apply
Schools on a typical Upper East Side list
The Brearley School
610 East 83rd Street
All-girls, K–12. An admissions test is required, and the ISEE is accepted.
The Chapin School
100 East End Avenue
All-girls. For grade 5–12 applicants the interview, student essay and teacher recommendations sit alongside the test score.
The Spence School
22 East 91st Street
All-girls. On East 91st Street since 1929.
Nightingale-Bamford School
20 East 92nd Street
All-girls, K–12.
The Dalton School
108 East 89th Street
Co-ed, K–12. The High School has occupied 108 East 89th Street since 1929.
Convent of the Sacred Heart
1 East 91st Street
All-girls, pre-K through 12.
Addresses verified in open sources on 3 September 2026. We list schools our families actually apply to; we do not publish admission rates or score cut-offs, because no school publishes a reliable one and the numbers that circulate online are guesses.
We keep dedicated prep pages for Brearley and Dalton, and the full programme sits on our ISEE prep page.
How we work here
What a multi-school list changes about the prep
The test is the same everywhere in New York. What changes from one neighborhood to the next is the shape of the school list — and the list is what the plan is built around.
We prep to the top of your list, not the middle
One sitting, one score report, several readers. We set the stanine target against the most demanding school on your list rather than the average of it, because a score that comfortably clears three schools and narrowly misses the fourth has, in practice, missed the one you were prepping for.
The admissions autumn is what squeezes the prep
Between September and the winter deadlines, a family with four schools on the list is running four sets of tours, interviews, classroom visits and teacher recommendations. Prep is invariably the thing that moves when that calendar tightens. We build the schedule backwards from your application deadlines rather than from the test date, and we say early when a testing season has stopped being realistic instead of selling sessions into it.
The calendar is the constraint, not the content
One sitting per testing season means the family who tests early keeps a second window in reserve and the family who tests late does not. We pace the program backwards from the season you intend to use, so your child peaks the week of the test rather than in the middle of the fall.
Getting here
From Upper East Side to 928 Broadway
Our center is at 928 Broadway in the Flatiron District, between 21st and 22nd Street. From the Upper East Side that is a one-seat ride: the 6 runs local down Lexington Avenue and stops at 23rd Street, two short blocks from the door. Families coming from 86th or 77th Street generally budget twenty minutes, door to door, and use the ride for vocabulary review.
Sessions run after school on weekday afternoons and on weekend mornings. If the commute does not fit the week you actually have, the same program runs live online with a shared whiteboard and the same full-length timed practice tests — several of our Upper East Side families run in person during the fall and switch to online in the weeks the school calendar gets crowded.
- 6From 96th, 86th, 77th or 68th Street. One seat to 23rd Street (Park Avenue South), then two blocks west to Broadway.
- QFrom 96th, 86th or 72nd Street (Second Avenue). To 14th Street–Union Square, then a short walk north up Broadway — or one stop on the N/R to 23rd Street.
- 4 / 5From 86th or 59th Street. Express to 14th Street–Union Square, then north up Broadway.
Before you book a sitting, check the ISEE test dates — the testing seasons, the one-sitting-per-season rule and the registration cut-offs. Session rates are on the pricing page.
Upper East Side FAQ
What Upper East Side parents ask us
We are applying to four Upper East Side schools. Does my child sit the ISEE four times?+
No. Your child sits the ISEE once per testing season and the ERB sends the same score report to every school you nominate. That is why we set the target against the most demanding school on your list rather than against the average — there is no separate score for each school.
Which ISEE level does my child sit for these schools?+
The level follows the grade your child is applying to enter, not their current grade or age: Lower Level for entry into grades 5 and 6, Middle Level for 7 and 8, Upper Level for 9 and above. Upper East Side lists usually cluster around a single entry point, which keeps this simple — but confirm with each admissions office which cohort it is admitting your child into before you register.
Do you tutor at our apartment on the Upper East Side?+
Our one-on-one sessions run in person at 928 Broadway in the Flatiron District, or live online. We do not run in-home tutoring. The 6 puts most UES families twenty minutes from the door, and the online program is the same tutor, the same materials and the same timed practice tests.
When should an Upper East Side family start, given how many applications are in play?+
Three to six months before the sitting you intend to use. Families with several schools on the list tend to start at the longer end of that range, not because the test is harder but because the fall calendar fills with tours, interviews and school visits — and prep is the thing that gets squeezed when the calendar tightens.
What does it cost?+
Sessions are $125 each after a one-time $150 diagnostic, billed session by session with no package and no contract. Every figure is on our pricing page.
Some schools on your list may ask for a different admissions test instead — boarding schools in particular. If that is your situation, start on our SSAT prep page. For the whole admissions picture — timeline, feeder schools, borough trends — read the ISEE prep guide for NYC parents.
Other neighborhoods
ISEE prep across Manhattan
Take the next step
Ready to start ISEE prep on the Upper East Side?
Begin with a diagnostic. We evaluate your child's current level, set a stanine target against the school list you actually have, and write the prep plan around it.