The Northwest School is an independent day-and-boarding school on Seattle's Capitol Hill, in the Pike/Pine corridor, serving roughly 450 students in grades 6-12. The main school building is a registered National Historic Landmark dating to 1905 and now houses classrooms, a black-box theater, photo lab, ceramic studio, dance studios, and library on a vertical urban campus. Founded in 1980, it is the only Seattle private school with a coeducational international boarding program.
In the Seattle independent landscape, Northwest occupies a distinct slot from the academic-intensity-driven peers (Lakeside, Overlake, EPS, UPrep). It is most often grouped with Seattle Academy / SAAS as the two arts-leaning urban K-12 options — Niche has ranked Northwest #1 in WA for Best High Schools for the Arts (2026), and Social Justice, Environmental Sustainability, and Global Perspective have been published curricular pillars for over 40 years. The interdisciplinary humanities-and-arts orientation, combined with the boarding program, gives the school a different applicant pool than the math-and-science-forward Eastside independents.
Reported indicators: 100% graduation rate, average GPA 3.74, average SAT 1320, average ACT 30. Tuition is $67,190 at the highest grade. PolarisList ranks Northwest #43 in WA for Harvard / Princeton / MIT placements — a measurable but modest signal, consistent with the school's stated emphasis on liberal-arts colleges and arts conservatories over Ivies.
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