What Really Matters When Selecting a Private School

You can use our search feature to locate a specific school by name. You can also search by location to view our ranked list of schools in that particular area. By searching in this way you will view the schools in descending rank from best to worst.

Socratic’s rating system has two parts: an overall rating out of 5 and individual category ratings out of 10. Using a 1-10 scale for individual categories allows for more nuance and flexibility in rating and makes the 5 star rating a more complete rating. Once individual category ratings are determined the school receives a score out of a possible 50 points which is then divided by 10 to determine their overall rating.

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These individual categories and their criteria are as follows:
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Financial Health: Socratic assigns a rating based on the financial information in a school’s tax returns. A tax return clearly illustrates the school’s reliance upon fundraising and donors, their involvement with outside businesses via investing, as well as their fiscal responsibility. Socratic believes this information is closely linked to how a school operates culturally as well as how decisions are made that can effect students’ and parents’ experiences at the school. We look at this information because it can help answer the question: Who does the school value? 
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Leadership: This rating is based upon the current head of the school’s length of tenure and number of years overall in a leadership position in education. Additionally complaints, investigations and/or lawsuits involving either the school or leader themselves both at their current school as well as at former schools while they were in charge are taken into consideration. 
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Lawsuits and Complaints: When determining this rating Socratic uses court records searches and news sources to determine if there have been any lawsuits and/or complaints brought against the school or its leadership. 
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School Culture: Socratic bases this rating upon whether the stated culture/mission statement of the school is adhered to. This is determined by referring to the lawsuits and complaints section as well as all available journalism referencing the perceptions of the school and whether these align with how the school presents itself.
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Acceptance Rates at Top Colleges: College acceptance information is reported and available on most school websites. Socratic takes the number of Ivy League Acceptances and the size of the senior graduating class and determines the percentage of Ivy acceptance to determine this rating. . When unreported or in the case of elementary and middle school education this is not taken into consideration when rating the school.

Socratic uses a synthesis of pure data to determine ratings for each school. Our ratings are not crowd-sourced so cannot be review-bombed or gamified to manipulate results. Although you can view user-submitted comments and reviews of schools we do not use this information to determine our rating or the rank of the school.

Because our ratings are data-driven and carefully determined using bias-free research we believe they are more reliable than sites where ratings are determined by reviews of interested parties. Face it, no one bothers to review something unless they feel very strongly about it. These types of ratings are loaded with bias. Socratic believes that facts should be the basis of a rating, not emotion.