Palm Beach County has a short list of institutions that actually sort the community, and the real estate market follows them rather than leading them. Families who arrive from New York or San Francisco expecting to pick a neighborhood and then pick a school discover quickly that the order runs the other direction here. The schools are fewer, older, and more tightly held than the housing stock, and the admissions calendar is unforgiving.
This guide maps the full set by tier, lists the 2027-28 admissions deadlines now posted, and walks through the feeder patterns that determine where graduates actually go. It is built from each school's published 2026-27 and 2027-28 admissions materials, confirmed in October 2026. It is specific enough to plan the real estate decision around the school decision instead of after it.
The Schools That Matter
Not every school in the county carries the same weight. These are the twenty-two institutions that serious families short-list, organized by tier. The full profiles follow.
The Admissions Calendar
The private school year runs on its own clock. Families relocating mid-year consistently underestimate how early the cycle begins and how compressed the decision window is. What follows is the month-by-month sequence for a student starting the following August.
The Dec. 15 through Jan. 10 window is the most common inflection point for families with an uncertain school outcome. Families who wait for an acceptance letter before starting a home search consistently lose the house they wanted. By March, every other accepted family is bidding on the same properties. Families who contract in December while applications are in review preserve both optionality and leverage.
The K-8 Flagships
Three schools dominate the early-years private landscape in the core of the county. Palm Beach Day Academy sits on the island, Rosarian on the Intracoastal in West Palm Beach, and Gulf Stream School on the ocean south of Delray. Each has been educating Palm Beach County children for close to a hundred years. Each feeds into both boarding and day upper schools, with patterns that shift year to year but stay concentrated.
Palm Beach Day Academy is the oldest independent school in Florida. Its Lower Campus on South Flagler Drive in West Palm Beach serves pre-primary through grade three. Its Upper Campus on Seaview Avenue in Palm Beach serves grades four through eight. Tuition for grades 6 through 8 is $42,600 for 2026-27 and the application deadline is January 15, with rolling admissions thereafter. The admissions office opens on September 1 and the process is explicitly not first-come, first-served. The motto is "Work Hard. Be Kind."
PBDA's structural role in the county is as the default K-8 school for the island's old-line families. The school runs a formal Secondary School Placement process starting in seventh grade, including a late-September boarding school road trip to the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast. Graduates typically transition to one of the comprehensive upper schools: Benjamin, Oxbridge, Saint Andrew's or Pine Crest. Families with a boarding tradition go directly to Deerfield, Hotchkiss, Choate, or St. Paul's. The school reports 98% of eighth-grade graduates place at their first-choice secondary school.
pbday.orgRosarian is the oldest independent school in Palm Beach County and celebrated its centennial in 2025. The campus sits on North Flagler Drive directly across the Intracoastal from Palm Beach, five minutes from the Flagler Memorial Bridge. It is the county's only independent coeducational Catholic school, sponsored by the Adrian Dominican Sisters. Tuition for grades 5 through 8 is $24,400 for 2026-27, with rolling admissions and a $125 application fee.
Rosarian's curriculum accelerates through high-school-credit courses in Algebra I and II, Geometry and Spanish I at the middle school level. That positions graduates for advanced placement at upper schools including Benjamin, Oxbridge, Pine Crest and Cardinal Newman. The Adrian Dominican Legacy Scholarship covers the full cost of tuition for qualifying students entering grades 2 through 8.
rosarian.orgGulf Stream School sits a block from the ocean in the village of Gulf Stream, just south of Delray Beach. Its scale is intentional: fewer than three hundred students, small class sizes, and a campus that looks and functions like a family property rather than an institution. Tuition for 2026-27 ranges from $24,265 for PK3 to $39,300 for grades 6 through 8. Applications run from August 1 to February 15, with decisions in early March.
Gulf Stream's disproportionate influence on the Northeastern boarding school admissions map is one of the county's quieter facts. The school publishes its secondary placement list publicly. On the boarding side it includes Deerfield, Berkshire, Blair and Brooks. Cardigan Mountain, Eaglebrook and Darlington follow. It continues with Episcopal High School in Virginia, Christ School in North Carolina, Georgetown Prep, The Governor's Academy and Asheville School. The regional day schools appear alongside them: Benjamin, Saint Andrew's, American Heritage, Cardinal Newman and Grandview Prep. For families moving to the southern island or East Delray with a New England boarding school in mind, Gulf Stream is often the most strategic K-8 choice in the county.
gulfstreamschool.orgThe PK-12 Day Schools
Five schools in the corridor provide a full pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade day experience with the scale, athletics, and academic breadth that families relocating from comparable markets elsewhere expect. These are the largest private institutions in the county and its immediate neighbors. For most families relocating with children across multiple grade levels, the decision comes down to one of these five.
Benjamin is the default comprehensive day school for families living in Jupiter, Palm Beach Gardens, and North Palm Beach. Its Lower and Middle School campus sits on ten acres on Ellison Wilson Road in North Palm Beach. Its Upper School occupies a fifty-acre purpose-built campus on Grandiflora Road in Palm Beach Gardens. Tuition for the 2026-27 academic year ranges from $19,991 for half-day pre-kindergarten to $41,600 for the upper school. The application deadline is December 1, with rolling admissions thereafter.
Benjamin offers 23 Advanced Placement courses, a dozen honors courses, and the balance of strong athletics and arts programs that many relocating families prioritize. The trustees and parent body include several recognizable names in professional golf, reflecting the school's geographic center of gravity north of PGA Boulevard.
thebenjaminschool.orgSaint Andrew's is the only school in Palm Beach or Broward County with a full boarding program alongside its day school. Founded by the Episcopal School Foundation in 1961, the school sits on 81 acres in Boca Raton, five miles from the Atlantic. Day tuition for 2026-27 runs $35,000 for Pre-K, $38,500 for Lower School (K to 5), $43,000 for Middle School, and $46,750 for Upper School. Boarding is $79,500. Upper school applications close January 18, with a December 1 early deadline for grade nine and rolling admissions after.
Saint Andrew's is the regional option for families splitting time between Palm Beach County and another base. Its International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme is one of the most established in the state, paired with 24 AP offerings and post-AP coursework. National-level athletics programs in squash and tennis have drawn students from across the country, and the school's founding Episcopal mission remains visible in daily life through chapel and service requirements.
saintandrews.netPine Crest was founded in Fort Lauderdale in 1934 by Mae McMillan and absorbed the former Boca Raton Academy in 1991. The operational reality for Palm Beach County families is that the Boca campus serves PK4 through grade eight. Students then transition to the Fort Lauderdale campus, which itself runs PK through 12, for upper school. Tuition for 2026-27 runs from $39,010 to $49,670 by campus and grade, and admissions are selective.
Pine Crest is the southern Palm Beach County choice for families willing to trade a daily bridge between the Boca and Fort Lauderdale campuses in the upper school years. The return is academic rigor and athletic depth. Its college matriculation history skews heavily toward Ivy League and peer institutions, and it consistently lands on national rankings at the top tier.
pinecrest.eduAmerican Heritage operates on an unusual model: it is tuition-only, accepts no donations, and has no governing board. The school was founded in 1965 by William R. Laurie and operates two campuses in South Florida: Plantation (Broward) and Delray Beach (Palm Beach). The Palm Beach campus occupies 40 acres on Linton Boulevard and enrolls roughly 1,705 students from pre-kindergarten through grade twelve. Tuition for grades 9 through 12 reached $46,500 in 2026-27, and the published 2027-28 rate is $49,800.
The school's academic identity is built on outcomes. The Class of 2027 counts 30 National Merit Semifinalists, first in Palm Beach County and second in Florida. The Class of 2026 produced 11 Presidential Scholar candidates, the most in the county. The Science Research, Engineering, and Robotics building opened on the Palm Beach campus in 2019. For relocating families whose priorities lean heavily toward measurable academic rigor and STEM infrastructure, American Heritage is the default alternative to Pine Crest on the south end of the county.
ahschool.comSaint Edward's sits in Vero Beach on a 26-acre campus between the ocean and the Indian River Lagoon. It is the relevant option for families living on Jupiter Island, Hobe Sound, or further north along the Treasure Coast. Tuition for 2026-27 is $35,610 for grades 6 through 8 and $38,960 for grades 9 through 12, scaling down to $18,200 for PK4 and $9,500 for Little Pirates. Applications for 2027-28 are open, with deadlines posted by division and rolling review after they pass.
The school offers 28 AP classes and Harkness-table pedagogy in its upper grades. Its small size, waterfront setting, and marine science integration are structural rather than incidental features. The school leans into its geography more deliberately than its peers, and the proximity to the Vero Beach coastal communities draws a specific family profile that values the quieter setting.
steds.orgThe Upper-School Specialists
Two schools in the county operate only at the upper-school level. Both are specific choices for families whose children finished the K-8 years at an island feeder or a public school. Each offers a college-preparatory high school with a clear institutional identity.
Oxbridge is the newest serious entrant in the county, founded in 2011 with an initial $50 million donation from William I. Koch, now cumulative above $75 million. The campus sits on 54 acres in West Palm Beach and is the most heavily invested-in private school facility built in the region this century. Upper School tuition for 2026-27 is $45,600. Middle School is $37,900. Early decision applications are due November 2, with rolling review from early January.
Oxbridge's signature programs are the clearest identity marker in the regional landscape: the Free Enterprise Institute, Aviation, Artificial Intelligence and Cambridge Scholars, plus Independent Research and Study. More than half of graduates attend a top-100 U.S. university. The athletic program has rebuilt meaningfully since its 2018-2023 football hiatus and now fields 25 varsity teams with eight state championships in its history.
oapb.orgCardinal Newman is the Catholic upper-school option for Palm Beach County, founded in 1961 by the Diocese of Palm Beach. It uses a tiered-tuition model: $22,000 for affiliated Catholic families (those who are registered members of a Diocese of Palm Beach parish) and $23,500 for non-affiliated families for 2026-27. Applications are due in mid-November with rolling admissions after.
The school offers the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme alongside AP coursework, requires 25 hours of community service per year, and has graduated more than 12,000 students over six decades. It is the natural upper-school destination for Rosarian graduates and for Catholic families arriving in the county. The 2023-24 North Building renovation consolidated the campus footprint, and the athletic program spans over twenty varsity and junior varsity sports.
cardinalnewman.comThe Faith-Based K-12 Options
Three schools in the county offer a full kindergarten-through-twelfth-grade experience rooted in religious tradition. They are the Jupiter-specific Christian school, the county's flagship Christian school and the Jewish day school on the largest Jewish campus in the country. For families whose faith orientation is central to their educational decision, these are the three serious candidates.
Jupiter Christian School is the Christian K-12 counterpart to Benjamin for families living in Jupiter, Tequesta, and Jupiter Farms. The school opened in September 1963 and operates from three Jupiter campuses (including its West Campus at 700 S. Delaware Boulevard) with just over a thousand students. Tuition for 2026-27 runs from $20,750 at the lower grades to $23,250 for grade 12, before enrollment and technology fees. Applications for 2027-28 opened October 1, 2026.
JCS's distinctive feature is the Pathways Program, a three-year specialty course track for grades 10 through 12 that functions as a "major" alongside general education requirements. The four tracks are Fine Arts, Medical, Business and Computer Science. The school positions these pathways as magnet-style programs preparing students for specific college and career trajectories. For Jupiter-area families who want a comprehensive day school with a Christ-centered identity and competitive athletics, JCS sits alongside Benjamin in the serious consideration set.
jupiterchristian.orgThe King's Academy is one of the largest private schools in the county. The school adopted Continuous Enrollment in 2023, meaning that once a family enrolls, the seat is automatically held through twelfth grade. That approach reflects a 95% retention rate through graduation. Application testing for 2027-28 begins February 6, 2027 and runs monthly into May, with decisions about three weeks after each sitting.
TKA operates specialized magnet programs across Aviation, Business and Pre-Law, plus the Conservatory of the Arts. Sports Medicine, Engineering, Pre-Med and Digital Media complete the set. It fields 30 varsity teams and counts 50 state titles in its history. All graduates are accepted to four-year colleges. Because the faith orientation is core to the school's identity, families evaluating TKA should weigh fit on that axis before others.
tka.netDonna Klein Jewish Academy (DKJA) is located on the 100-acre Jewish Federation of South Palm Beach County campus, the largest Jewish campus in the country. The school was founded in 1979 and offers a kindergarten-through-twelfth-grade college preparatory program with 17 AP courses and signature programs in engineering, medicine, law, and entrepreneurship. Tuition for 2026-27 is $35,060 for grades 9 through 12, with rolling admissions.
Niche's 2027 rankings name DKJA the #1 private K-12 school and #1 private high school in Palm Beach County, and #3 among Jewish schools nationally. The school serves families across the spectrum of Jewish denominations, and its program integrates Jewish studies and Hebrew language alongside a secular college-preparatory curriculum. Average SAT composite is 1360. The ACT average is 30. For Jewish families relocating to South Palm Beach County, DKJA is the flagship institution.
dkja.netThe Specialty and Distinctive Options
Four schools in the region serve families whose priorities do not map cleanly to the comprehensive day schools above. Each has a distinctive program that makes it the right answer for a specific set of family circumstances. One carries an International Baccalaureate identity, one an equestrian-friendly hybrid model, one a project-based small school and one a 174-acre Treasure Coast campus.
The Pine School sits on 174 acres in Hobe Sound, just north of the Palm Beach County line, which makes it the largest private school campus in Florida. Founded in 1969 as St. Michael's School, the school now operates as an all-faith independent day school serving kindergarten through grade twelve. Tuition for grades 9 through 12 is $38,900. The school offers 22 AP courses and operates a flexible tuition program. The primary application deadline is December 15, with later files reviewed for April decisions and rolling review after March 20.
For Jupiter Island, Hobe Sound, and Tequesta families, The Pine School is the serious local alternative to Saint Edward's (thirty minutes further north) or Benjamin (thirty minutes south). The school has been recognized by the College Board's AP School Honor Roll with Platinum Distinction, and the school reports 100% college matriculation.
thepineschool.orgPalm Beach International Academy began in 1989 as a tutoring service for junior equestrians traveling the horse show circuit. It taught for years from the Wellington show grounds and now teaches from the Boca Raton Innovation Campus. The school remains built for children competing at the Winter Equestrian Festival, the Global Dressage Festival or the national polo circuit. Their academics travel with the season.
PBIA's model is self-paced and hybrid, combining small-group in-person instruction with online coursework (including AP and dual-enrollment options). Cohort tuition is $19,500 for half days and $29,500 for full days, with an independent-study track priced from the same floor. Stanza Education opened the Boca Raton campus in January 2025. Admissions are rolling. For the equestrian buyer evaluating homes in Mallet Hill, Grand Prix Village, or Palm Beach Polo, PBIA is almost always in the short list of two.
pbiacademy.orgGrandview is the boutique alternative for southern Palm Beach County. Standard tuition for 2026-27 is $29,350 for grades K through 5, $30,750 for middle school and $31,500 for the upper school. A variable tuition model adjusts for family financial profile. Admissions run on a rolling basis with a February 15 cutoff for mid-year transfers. The school competes well above its size in Florida 2A athletics.
Grandview's curricular emphasis is project-based learning and social-emotional wellness. The framework behind it runs to five Cs: communication, collaboration, critical thinking, creativity and character. Class sizes are small and the school leans into an identity distinct from the comprehensive PK-12 day schools. It is the right choice for families who specifically want a less institutional environment. It suits those who do not need the scale of athletics and arts that Pine Crest or American Heritage provide.
grandviewprep.netBoca Prep International School is the county's IB-identity school. Founded in 1997 and part of the SEK-IES international network, Boca Prep offers the full International Baccalaureate continuum at every grade from preschool through grade twelve. That spans the Primary Years, Middle Years and Diploma Programme. Its SEK network spans seventeen countries and fifty nationalities, and the school positions itself around the global-citizen framing that the IB organization defines.
The school's athletic model is unusual in the county. Boca Prep operates a Performance Program that lets student-athletes balance academics with professional-level training through partners including the Rick Macci Tennis Academy and Don Law Golf. An in-house soccer academy and RipTide volleyball round it out. Admissions run on a CAT4 entrance assessment, and 2026-27 tuition reaches $30,400 for grades 11 and 12 on the ten-payment plan. For families specifically seeking the IB curriculum, or for international families relocating to Boca, Boca Prep sits in a distinct category from its peers.
bocaprep.comFocused and Boutique Options
Five additional schools serve specific segments of the market with programs too distinctive to treat as comprehensive alternatives. Each is the right answer for a particular family circumstance. That may be a gifted child, a family rooted in the Palm Beach Gardens Episcopal community or a Jewish family preferring a smaller K-8 setting. It may equally be a student who learns differently or a family seeking a STEM-forward small school on the West Palm Beach side of the bridge.
The Greene School is a small, STEM-forward independent school in West Palm Beach that recently expanded into a full PK-12 program. Distinctive features include hands-on engineering pedagogy, a dedicated Flight Center and an Aeronautics Program covering Piloted Flight and UAS Operations. Class sizes are small, and the school attracts families who want rigorous STEM identity in a non-institutional setting.
thegreeneschool.comThe Weiss School is the only South Florida school dedicated exclusively to gifted education, admitting students with IQ scores of 130 or above, and it now runs through grade nine. Founded in 1989 by Elizabeth and Martin Weiss, the school offers a full-time accelerated curriculum with Centers of Excellence in aerospace, robotics, and other signature programs. Tuition for 2026-27 is $25,791 for grades 6 through 8 and $27,500 for grade nine, with rolling admissions. For identified gifted learners whose parents have run the standardized assessments, Weiss is the natural answer in the northern half of the county.
weissschool.orgSt. Mark's is the Episcopal K-8 parish school in Palm Beach Gardens, founded 1979. Tuition for 2026-27 is $26,384 for grades 6 through 8, and the application deadline is December 1. The school is a short drive from both Benjamin campuses and sits on the same road as Weiss. Graduates transition into Benjamin, Oxbridge, The King's Academy and other area upper schools, with what parents describe as strong admissions outcomes. The Episcopal tradition is present without being dominant. The school describes itself as welcoming to families of all faiths.
stmarkslionspbg.orgMeyer Prep is the Jewish community day school for the northern half of Palm Beach County, founded in 1973 on the Melvin J. and Claire Levine Center for Jewish Learning. The school combines a rigorous general-studies curriculum with Jewish studies and Hebrew as an authorized IB World School, with the IB programme in the middle school. Tuition for 2026-27 is $28,165 for grades 6 through 8. Every 2024 graduate was accepted to a first-choice high school. The list includes Suncoast, Oxbridge, Dreyfoos and The Pine School, plus Dwyer IB and American Heritage. Bus service runs from Boynton Beach, Lake Worth, Wellington, and West Palm Beach.
meyerprep.orgThe Batt School is an unusual institution in the county's landscape. It is a fully accredited independent school running a 1:1 teacher-to-student model, built for children with unique learning needs or traveling lifestyles that do not fit traditional settings. Founded in 1988, the school serves roughly twenty students with fully customized programming. Tuition varies significantly based on the individualized program. Batt is specifically for families who have decided that traditional classroom settings are not right for their child, and fit assessment through extended family conversations precedes enrolling.
battschools.orgParish and Neighborhood K-8 Schools
Beyond the flagship private schools profiled above, Palm Beach County supports a substantial network of parish and neighborhood K-8 schools that serve families with specific faith orientations or geographic ties. These schools are smaller in scale and typically priced well below the independent schools. They are an important part of the county's educational fabric for families whose priorities center on faith community and neighborhood proximity.
St. Vincent Ferrer Catholic School (Delray Beach, K-8, 475 students, founded 1953). St. Juliana Catholic School (West Palm Beach, PK-8). St. Ann Catholic School (downtown WPB, PK-8, adjacent to the Rosarian corridor). St. Clare Catholic School (North Palm Beach, PK-8, 360 students, serving the northern county). Holy Name of Jesus Catholic School (West Palm Beach, PK-8).
Katz Hillel Day School of Boca Raton: Orthodox Jewish K-8, adjacent to Donna Klein on the Jewish Federation campus. Hillel Day School of Boca Raton: separate Jewish K-8 option in Boca Raton.
Berean Christian School (West Palm Beach, K-12, ~780 students). Trinity Christian Academy (West Palm Beach, K-12). Hobe Sound Christian Academy (Hobe Sound, PK-12, adjacent to The Pine School). Trinity Lutheran School (Delray Beach, K-8 Lutheran parish school).
Several Palm Beach County public schools operate at a level that competes directly with the private schools profiled above. Alexander W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts (West Palm Beach) is a selective-audition public magnet high school for students pursuing serious arts training. A. D. Henderson University School and FAU High School (Boca Raton) are the FAU-affiliated K-12 laboratory schools, admitting by lottery and offering dual-enrollment pathways into FAU coursework. Suncoast Community High School (Riviera Beach) offers the county's most established public IB Diploma Programme. These are not replacements for the private schools profiled above, but for families whose children fit these specific programs, they are serious options worth understanding.
Where Graduates Actually Go
Two feeder relationships matter most in the county. The first is K-8 to upper school. The second is upper school to college. Both are concentrated in ways that can surprise families from larger metro areas.
PBDA's published 2019-2024 matriculation list is the clearest window into where Palm Beach County K-8 graduates actually end up. On the New England boarding circuit, the list opens with Deerfield, Hotchkiss and Choate Rosemary Hall. Lawrenceville, Phillips Exeter and St. Paul's come next. It runs on through Milton, Taft and Kent, then Brooks, Berkshire and Blair. Millbrook, Pomfret and Portsmouth Abbey follow. Salisbury, Suffield and Tabor are on it, as are The Hill School, Westminster (CT) and St. George's. Southern prep includes Baylor, McCallie and Woodberry Forest. Darlington, Episcopal High School (VA) and Christ School (NC) follow, with Hilton Head Prep. Junior boarding placements at Cardigan Mountain and Eaglebrook are represented. Girls' school placements include Marymount, Spence, Grace Church, and Miss Porter's. International destinations include Institut Le Rosey in Switzerland, Stowe School in the UK and Sotogrande International in Spain, along with Avenues: The World School and schools in Sweden.
Gulf Stream's published placement list mirrors the PBDA set on the New England boarding side. It carries Deerfield, Berkshire, Blair and Brooks. Cardigan Mountain, Eaglebrook and Christ School come next, with Episcopal VA and Darlington. To that it adds Georgetown Prep, The Governor's Academy, Asheville School and Hawai'i Preparatory Academy. On the day-school side, Gulf Stream sends students to American Heritage, Benjamin and Cardinal Newman, and to Grandview Prep.
On the regional Florida day-school side, both lists include Benjamin, Saint Andrew's and Oxbridge. The Pine School, American Heritage and Cardinal Newman appear too, plus Palmer Trinity and Ransom Everglades. The PK-12 schools internalize the K-8 to upper-school transition: Benjamin, Pine Crest, Saint Andrew's, American Heritage and Saint Edward's. That is one of their primary value propositions for families who do not want to run a second admissions process in eighth grade.
On the college side, the comprehensive day schools and upper-school specialists place the bulk of their graduates at selective national universities. The pattern runs to the Ivy League and its neighbors, the SEC flagships, the top of the UC system and the service academies. Oxbridge reports over 50% of graduates at a top-100 U.S. university. American Heritage leads the county in National Merit Scholars and Presidential Scholar Candidates. Donna Klein Jewish Academy reports 100% four-year college placement with average SAT of 1360. Pine Crest's Ivy League placement history remains strong. The King's Academy, Jupiter Christian, and the smaller schools report 95 to 100% four-year college acceptance but with broader matriculation distributions that include strong regional state universities alongside selective nationals.
The most important question a family can ask an upper school is the average caseload of the college counseling office, not its average SAT score or its most recent Ivy admission. At schools where the ratio exceeds forty students per counselor, the counseling relationship is administrative. At schools where it sits under twenty, it is strategic. The difference shows up in matriculation results, and it is the single best-kept operational signal of how seriously a school is taking the outcome its families are funding.
The Relocation Timing Playbook
The families who execute well run the home-buying decision in parallel with the admissions process, not after it. The families who wait for acceptance letters before shortlisting homes arrive at the spring market competing with every other newly-accepted family, at the time of year with the thinnest inventory. The practical sequence, phase by phase, is below.
Relocation Playbook (for a family moving for the following August)
Three sources reliably provide the best window into what is actually available for a family pairing a school placement with a home search. The first is the admissions director at the school. The second is a buyer advisor who has placed recent families in the neighborhoods beside the school. The third is a local college counselor or educational consultant with no incentive to steer the family anywhere in particular. Any two of those, working together, produce a realistic picture. Any one of them in isolation does not.
Bottom Line
The twenty-two schools in this guide function as the actual structure of the county's luxury family market. Serious families run the home search and the admissions process in parallel. The alternative is a compressed six-week spring transaction in which competition for homes is highest and seller leverage is strongest. The decision is less about finding the "best" school and more about fit. Match the child, the family geography and the school's feeder patterns to a realistic home search inside a small number of neighborhoods.
For families relocating in the next 12 months: Identify the school short list by September of the prior year. Draw the neighborhood short list around the school short list. Begin off-market property outreach by November. Contract on a home by mid-December, ahead of the March decision window.
For families with a 3-plus year horizon: The decision that matters most is the K-8 feeder choice, not the upper school. PBDA, Rosarian, Gulf Stream, St. Mark's, and Meyer Prep all set trajectories that carry through upper school and college. The upper school admission is largely a function of the K-8 admission, more than most relocating families realize.
The point most families miss: The "best ranked" school is rarely the best fit. The best outcomes in this market happen when the school, the child, the family's faith and cultural orientation, and the family's geographic life align. That alignment cannot be judged from a Niche score or a list of Ivy acceptances. It comes from touring, from reading the matriculation lists, and from talking to families a year or two ahead of yours.
FAQ
Tuition for comprehensive PK-12 day schools starts near $35,000 at Saint Andrew's for Pre-K and tops $46,750 for its upper school day program in 2026-27, with boarding above that. Pine Crest publishes a 2026-27 range of $39,010 to $49,670 across its two campuses. The K-8 flagships, Palm Beach Day Academy and Rosarian Academy, run from about $24,400 to $42,600 at their highest grades.
The earliest deadlines come in November, with Oxbridge early decision due November 2. Benjamin and St. Mark's close December 1 and The Pine School December 15. Palm Beach Day Academy closes January 15 and Saint Andrew's upper school January 18. Most schools continue rolling admissions after their deadlines, space permitting.
Three schools dominate the K-8 private landscape in the county: Palm Beach Day Academy (founded 1921, the oldest independent school in Florida), Rosarian Academy (1925), and Gulf Stream School (1938). Palm Beach Day Academy runs the most established secondary school placement program, sending graduates to Northeastern boarding schools including Deerfield, Hotchkiss, and Phillips Exeter. Gulf Stream's concentrated boarding placements include Cardigan Mountain and Eaglebrook junior boarding alongside New England day-school equivalents.
Grandview Preparatory has a formal February 15 mid-year transfer cutoff, but most Palm Beach County private schools accept rolling admissions after their priority deadlines. Jupiter Christian, Donna Klein Jewish Academy, and Oxbridge Academy all accept applications on a rolling basis. Families relocating mid-year should contact admissions directly to confirm grade-level availability before contracting on a home.
Saint Andrew's School in Boca Raton is the only full boarding program in Palm Beach or Broward County, offering boarding tuition of $79,500 for 2026-27 on an 81-acre Episcopal campus. The school enrolls approximately 1,335 students from pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade, with over forty countries represented. Its International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme and nationally competitive squash and tennis programs draw boarders nationally.
Families living in Jupiter have three primary private school options. The Benjamin School runs PK3-12 across campuses in North Palm Beach and Palm Beach Gardens with 1,312 students. Jupiter Christian School runs PK-12 on Delaware Boulevard in Jupiter with 1,066 students. The Pine School runs K-12 on a 174-acre campus in Hobe Sound just north of the county line. Benjamin is the largest non-sectarian day school serving Jupiter families. Jupiter Christian offers a Pathways Program with specialty tracks in Fine Arts, Medical, Business and Computer Science. The Pine School offers 22 AP courses and has earned AP Platinum Distinction.
Upper schools in Palm Beach County require standardized admissions testing, typically the Secondary School Admission Test (SSAT) or Independent School Entrance Examination (ISEE) for grades 6 through 12. Testing registration opens in September with peak testing dates in October through December. The King's Academy uses its own proprietary testing, scheduling sessions from February into May for the 2027-28 cycle.
Families moving to Palm Beach County for the following August should identify their school short list by September of the prior year, fourteen months ahead of enrollment. Tours and open houses begin in September, SSAT and ISEE registration opens the same month, and applications close between November and January depending on the school. Families who wait for an acceptance letter before starting a home search end up competing with every other newly accepted family. That collision lands at the time of year with the thinnest inventory.
Tuition figures, application deadlines, and enrollment counts reflect each school's published 2026-27 and 2027-28 admissions materials, confirmed in October 2026. All figures are subject to change. Confirm directly with each school's admissions office before making decisions.
