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.

Overview

Nightingale's Lower School includes 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 PE and the like.

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

Dorothy Hutcheson was head of Nightingale from July 1992 through June 2012. She was the longest serving head of school of any girls’ school in New York City. Paul Burke took over as head of school in July 2012.

Academics

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. In late September 2008, three NBS students were named semifinalists in the National Achievement Scholarship Program, which recognizes outstanding black high school students.

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 will be used to develop and market their winning app.

Advising

Joyce Slayton Mitchell, Nightingale's former college advisor, is the author of Winning the Heart of the College Admissions Dean (Ten Speed Press, 2001, 2005). Heather Beveridge is the college advisor.

Nightingale hosts the Manhattan College Fair for New York City Independent School juniors and their parents.

Admissions

Nightingale's admissions process has received some media attention in the past few years.

Financial aid

As of the 2008-2009 school year, 32% of the NBS student body received financial assistance with $2.8 million in grants being awarded.

Rankings

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.

Diversity

Nightingale-Bamford has a diverse community for an independent school with 26% 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.

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, and Browning.

Notable alumnae

• Millicent Fenwick, politician
• Shoshanna Lonstein Gruss, fashion designer
• Mandy Grunwald, political consultant and media advisor
• Sarah Thompson, actress
• Lisa Grunwald Adler, novelist
• Elizabeth Winthrop, novelist
• Sophie McManus, novelist
• Amina Gautier, fiction writer
• Olivia Palermo, socialite and fashionista

NBS in pop culture

• Nightingale-Bamford received mention in the Woody Allen film, "Everyone Says I Love You".
• In the Gossip Girl book series by NBS alumna Cecily von Ziegesar '88, the character's elite all-girls school Constance Billard School for Girls, is based upon Nightingale-Bamford and the lives of the girls who attend the School. "[Constance Billard] is completely based on Nightingale," von Ziegesar told ABC News. "But I exaggerated to make it more entertaining."
• Nightingale-Bamford is mentioned in the book How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff.
• Mentioned briefly in Bunheads by Sophie Flack

References

External links

• Official website