A Free Spreadsheet to Help You Choose NYC Middle Schools for Your 5th Grader
How NYC middle school applications work for your 5th grader: zone and district priority, key dates, and a free spreadsheet of up to 50 programs.
Choosing a middle school for your 5th grader means weighing the commute, class size, after-school care, and what your child wants from their next school. New York City admissions priorities add another consideration.
After Leto released its free high school spreadsheet, parents asked for a middle school version. The result is the NYC Middle School Fit Score: a free, editable spreadsheet of up to 50 public middle school programs, organized around the things your family cares about.
How the NYC Middle School Fit Score works
Leto's NYC Middle School Fit Score builds a free, editable spreadsheet of up to 50 NYC public middle school programs, each with a Fit Score based on what matters to your family.
Enter your child's current school district and your home address. The address helps measure distance and identify your zoned middle school, if you have one.
Then tell Leto what matters to your family:
- Distance from home and 6th-grade class size
- A free after-school program and extended day
- School uniforms
- Accelerated math and world languages
- Clubs and activities and sports
- A fully accessible building
You can mark each consideration Neutral or Important. Distance, class size, and a fully accessible building can also be marked Must Have.
If you'd like, you can add a few sentences about your child in your own words. Leto uses that description once to number the programs by how well they fit what you wrote and explain why in a sentence. It doesn't add or remove programs or change their Fit Scores.
Each program gets a Fit Score based on what matters to you. It does not rate school quality or predict admission.
What's in the spreadsheet
Your spreadsheet includes up to 50 NYC public middle school programs using information published by NYC Public Schools. If Leto can confirm which middle school your address is zoned to, the programs that list priority for your zone are always included, even if other programs have higher Fit Scores.
An illustrative sample of the Matched Schools tab. Your own spreadsheet fills in real schools and programs, scored on what you tell it.
There are four tabs:
- Matched Schools: the programs in your spreadsheet, their Fit Scores, and information to help you compare them, including zone and district priorities.
- About This Spreadsheet: guidance for understanding the spreadsheet and its information.
- My Priorities: the preferences you chose, which you can edit.
- Scoring Settings: the settings behind your Fit Scores, which you can also edit.
Change a priority you marked Important, or a scoring setting, and the Fit Scores recalculate. The list of programs stays the same, and the rows don't re-sort on their own. To change which programs are on the list, or to count something you left Neutral, build a new spreadsheet.
Use it to decide which programs to look into first, not to decide for you.
What "zone priority" and "district priority" mean in your spreadsheet
Where you live and where your child attends elementary school can affect admissions priorities.
Zone priority tells you whether a program lists priority for the zone associated with your home address. The spreadsheet says Yes only when the city's own address lookup and Leto's copy of the zone map agree. If the two disagree, which happens most often near a zone boundary, it says Check in MySchools instead.
District priority tells you whether a program lists priority for the district where your child currently goes to school or the district where you live.
These columns help you see which programs list a priority for your address or district. Check MySchools to see which priorities apply to your child before you submit your application.
Why Leto built this tool
New York City has hundreds of different middle school programs, across hundreds of schools. Each school has a unique set of programs, sports, extracurricular activities, and after-school programs, class size, and more. It's a lot for a parent to absorb, before you even get to the application.
Navigating all of the options and choices can be a stressful experience for parents. Leto helps parents keep up with school: it reads the school emails in your inbox and pulls out what you need to do and when. Leto also builds practical, free tools like this one, so parents have the information they need to decide.
How to use it to choose schools
Review the Matched Schools tab, then open MySchools to research programs. Attend an open house if possible and talk with your 5th grader about what matters to them.
Keep a few things in mind:
- A Fit Score reflects your preferences. It is not a school-quality rating, and it does not predict admission.
- Check zone priority, district priority, and program details directly in MySchools.
- Distance is straight-line distance from your home, not travel time, so think about the actual journey to school.
- Revisit the priorities in your spreadsheet as you learn more about different schools.
How many NYC middle schools should your 5th grader apply to?
There is no limit to the number of programs you can list on your middle school application, according to NYC Public Schools.
Remember that you apply to programs, not simply buildings. If a school has more than one program you're interested in, each is a separate choice.
Use your spreadsheet to identify programs you'd like to investigate. When you're ready, put the programs you choose in your true order of preference in MySchools. The spreadsheet helps with your research; MySchools is where you apply.
When are NYC middle school applications due?
For students entering middle school in fall 2027, the application opens October 14, 2026, and closes December 11, 2026.
You can see the current dates, admissions guidance, and application information on the NYC Public Schools middle school page.
If you have a 5th grader, build your free spreadsheet and share the tool with another family navigating the same process.
Where this started
Leto's founder, Keith Harper, has built a spreadsheet like this before.
"In 2017, when my four-year-old was applying to pre-K, I built a spreadsheet and shared it with other parents. Dozens of parents reached out, and nine years later parents are still downloading it. My once-little kid is now applying to high school, so we built a tool for high school applications. Now we're extending it to middle school." — Keith Harper, founder of Leto