The Nightingale-Bamford School | |
---|---|
Established | 1920 |
Type | Private, Girls |
Head of School | Dorothy Hutcheson |
Faculty | 92 (65 of which are full-time) [1] |
Students | 560 |
Grades | K-12 |
Location | New York City, NY, U.S. |
Mascot | Nighthawks |
Website | Nightingale.org |
The Nightingale-Bamford School is an independent all-female university-preparatory school founded in 1920 by Frances Nicolau Nightingale and Maya Stevens Bamford.[2] Located in Manhattan on the Upper East Side, NBS is one of the top ranked private schools in New York City[3] and among one of the country’s leading independent schools for girls.[4] Nightingale-Bamford is a member of the New York Interschool.
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Lower School Nightingale students include girls from grades K-4. Middle School includes grades 5-8, and Upper School includes grades 9-12. Nightingale holds a small size of 560 students, approximately 45 pupils per grade level. The student-faculty ratio is 7:1 and the average class size is that of 12 students for academic and up to 22 for P.E. and the like.[5] The school is popular with elite families in New York.[6]
Frances Nicolau Nightingale and Maya Stevens Bamford founded the School in 1920. NBS was originally named Miss Nightingale's School; officially becoming "The Nightingale-Bamford School" in 1929. Since 1920, NBS has graduated nearly 3,000 alumnae.[7] As of 2008, the School endowment is at $74.9 million.[8]
Dorothy Hutcheson has been head of Nightingale since 1992. She is currently the longest serving head of school of any girls’ school in New York City.[9] She has announced that she will step down at the end of the 2011-12 school year, which will be the end of her 20th year at the school.
75% of the NBS faculty hold masters and/or doctoral degrees [1].
The median SAT scores are 680 critical reading and 650 mathematics.[10]
In October 2008, the NBS Middle School literary magazine Out of Uniform was awarded the Gold Medalist Certificate from The Columbia Scholastic Press Association of Columbia University.[11] In late September 2008, three NBS students were named semifinalists in the National Achievement Scholarship Program, which recognizes outstanding black high school students. [12]
Joyce Slayton Mitchell, the Nightingale college advisor, serves on the Editorial Advisory Board for the College Board Review and on the school committee of U.S. News & World Report’s special college issue. She is the author of Winning the Heart of the College Admissions Dean (Ten Speed Press, 2001, 2005).
Nightingale hosts the Manhattan College Fair for New York City Independent School juniors and their parents.[13]
Nightingale's admissions process has received some media attention in the past few years.[3] The school has a 31% acceptance rate.[10]
The Nightingale-Bamford School gives advance consideration to Sibling and Legacy applicants who apply under the Early Notification plan.
As of the 2008-2009 school year, 32% of the NBS student body is receiving some form of financial assistance with $2.8 million in grants being awarded.[8]
In a Worth magazine study, Nightingale placed 77th out of 31,700 private and public high schools in the U.S. in placing its graduates in Harvard, Princeton and Yale.[14]
Nightingale-Bamford has a fairly diverse community for an independent school with 26% of the student body are students of color.[5] The school has a widely known program called Cultural Awareness for Everyone, or informally C.A.F.E. C.A.F.E. touches on the basis of not only race, but also class, religion, sexual orientation, gender, and age.[15]
Nightingale-Bamford closely works with the Buckley School, a private boys' school. The school also works with The Allen-Stevenson School, also a private boys' school. Nightingale-Bamford is also the sister school to St. Bernard's School.