Nightingale-Bamford School
The Nightingale-Bamford School is an independent all-female university-preparatory school founded in 1920 by Frances Nicolau Nightingale and Maya Stevens Bamford. Located in Manhattan on the Upper East Side, Nightingale-Bamford is a member of the New York Interschool consortium. Overview. Nightingale's Lower School includes grades K-4. Middle School includes grades 5–8, while Upper School includes grades 9–12. As of 2021, Nightingale enrolls 686 students, the student-faculty ratio is 6:1, and the average class size is 12 students. History. 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. As of 2008, the School endowment is at $74.9 million. Faculty. Paul Burke has been head of school since July 2012. He succeeded Dorothy Hutcheson, who was head of Nightingale for the prior 20 years. Academics. Nightingale has a traditional, rigorous curriculum. Like its contemporaries, the school has a preponderance of required courses until upper school, when electives are increasingly offered. In April 2013, a team of five upper school students won first place at Technovation Challenge , the world's largest tech competition for girls. The $10,000 prize was used to develop and market their winning app. The next year, a Nightingale team won first place in the middle school division of the 2014 Technovation Challenge and also sent their upper school team to the finals hosted by Intel. Nightingale has a debate program, which won second place at States in 2016. Admissions. Nightingale's admissions process has received some media attention in the past few years. Financial aid. As of the 2020–2021 school year, 20% of the student body received financial assistance with $5.9  million in grants being awarded. Rankings. Nightingale is typically ranked among the best all-girls private schools in the United States, and, like many private schools in Manhattan, is ranked as one of the most expensive. Diversity. Nightingale-Bamford has a diverse community for an independent school with over 30% of the student body being students of color. The school has a program called Cultural Awareness for Everyone, or informally CAFE. CAFE touches on the basis of not only race, but also class, religion, sexual orientation, gender, and age. To keep diversity at the school a priority, Nightingale recruits actively  from an inner-city program called Prep for Prep. Prep for Prep is a leadership development program that offers promising students of color access to a private school education based in New York City. Partner schools. Nightingale-Bamford has no official partner or brother school. However, the school has activities with St. David's and Allen-Stevenson (both boys schools) and is a member of Interschool, which organizes programs and activities for eight New York City independent schools: Trinity, Dalton, Collegiate, Brearley, Chapin, Spence, Nightingale-Bamford, and Browning.