ADMISSIONS / Why Grace?
A great education is one that challenges the whole child, welcomes them fully, and sends them into the world with both the skills and the character to do something meaningful with their lives and talents.
Families are attracted to Grace for many reasons, from our rigorous academic program, to our warm and vibrant community, to our championship athletics and vibrant performing arts programs, to the energy and centrality of downtown Manhattan. What they find once they arrive is that these are all expressions of the same core idea: that a great education is one that challenges the whole child, welcomes them fully, and sends them into the world with both the skills and the character to do something meaningful with their lives and talents.
“Our students are curious, motivated, and eager to engage, and we ask a great deal of them.”
–Camilla Campbell, Director of Enrollment Management
Intellectual excellence and habits of ethical virtue are not independent goals at Grace—they depend upon each other to find their fullest expression in good lives, well lived. Through a pedagogy of joy, our teachers foster the wonder of their students to inspire a lasting love of learning, grounding their approaches in evidence-based practices and a curriculum that is both rigorous and humane. We believe that curiosity, humility, kindness, and courage are rigorous ideals,and that developing them alongside genuine academic mastery is central to receiving a Grace education and to leading a life of purpose.
Our Episcopal identity calls us to recognize the inherent dignity and worth of every individual. That conviction shapes everything we do, from how we design our curriculum to how we build our community. We strive to be a place of broad welcome and deep belonging, where students encounter a wide range of perspectives and engage ideas with intellectual humility and genuine respect, and where every member of our community knows their own worth and is called to serve that of others.
Grace’s two campuses—on Fourth Avenue and Cooper Square, steps from Union Square and Astor Place—put one of the world’s great cities at our students’ doorstep, and we use it. The museums, institutions, neighborhoods, and communities of downtown Manhattan are not a backdrop to a Grace education, they are deeply woven into it. Students conduct field research, attend performances, visit houses of worship, and engage with the city as a living classroom—returning to their desks with the kind of firsthand experience that deepens both knowledge and meaning.
