Cranbrook Schools

Cranbrook Schools is a PK-12 day and boarding school in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, about 20 miles northwest of Detroit, and boarding is limited to its Upper School, Cranbrook Kingswood Upper School (grades 9 through 12). The school was founded by George Gough Booth and Ellen Scripps Booth: in 1922 they organized a neighborhood school at Brookside’s Meeting House, Cranbrook School for boys was dedicated in 1927, and Kingswood School for girls followed. A reorganization that began in October 1984 and was completed the following autumn merged the upper grades of the two schools into the coeducational Cranbrook Kingswood Upper School. The school reports 1,674 students in all; the 2025-26 Upper School profile reports more than 810 Upper School students, of whom 33 percent are residential, with international students making up 16.9 percent and coming from 33 countries, and 54 percent of Upper School faculty living on campus. The 319-acre campus, planned with the architect Eliel Saarinen, includes the Cranbrook Institute of Science, the Cranbrook Art Museum, a natatorium and an ice arena. The school is accredited by the Independent Schools Association of the Central States (ISACS) and is a member of The Association of Boarding Schools (TABS); Jeff Suzik, Ph.D., is Director of Schools.

Cranbrook Schools offers two kinds of college-level courses in the Upper School, Advanced Placement (AP) and Advanced Topics (AT), and its 2025-26 school profile states that AT course rigor is at or above AP level and that no Honors or AP English courses are offered. There are 22 AT, AP or Honors courses in math and science and 15 in the humanities. The school caps AP and AT courses at one in grade 9, two in grade 10, three in grade 11 and four in grade 12; grades are weighted by 0.5 for Honors and 1.0 for AP and AT, and students are not ranked. Students take five academic courses each semester from at least four departments. Graduation requires four years of English, four years of math, a year each of biology, chemistry and physics, 2.5 credits of history and social science, two successive years of the same world language, one credit of arts and one credit of religion and philosophy, and every ninth grader takes Worldviews and Civilizations. Advanced Topics math courses cover analysis, Calculus II/III, differential equations, group theory, linear algebra and multivariable calculus; the language department teaches Chinese, French, Latin and Spanish, each through an AP course; and international students can take English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL). Cranbrook Kingswood is a founding member of Global Online Academy, and students may petition to supplement their schedule with online courses. The school reports an average Middle and Upper School class size of 16, with no more than 20 in a section.

Cranbrook Schools reports that the 217 graduates of the class of 2025 enrolled at 277 different colleges and earned $14.8 million in college scholarships, supported by six full-time college counselors. The colleges most frequently attended from 2021 to 2025 include Harvard University, Yale University, Princeton University, Stanford University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Michigan, the University of California, Berkeley, the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of Southern California. Neither the website nor the school profile publishes SAT or AP score distributions.

Applications to Cranbrook Schools for the 2027-28 school year are open. Families first complete the online inquiry form, then create an account and submit the application with a $50 fee. Applicants who live outside the United States, including U.S. citizens, must use the Standard Application Online (SAO) instead; the school accepts the SAO from all students but asks families not to apply through both routes. The Upper School checklist includes the application form completed by a parent, a student questionnaire, a parent questionnaire, an interview or visit, grades from the first marking period of the current year and the previous two years, and recommendations from the principal or counselor, the math teacher and the English teacher. Every Upper School applicant takes the SSAT (Secondary School Admission Test), school code 2650; the school notes that recent scores from other standardized tests may sometimes be used instead, after confirming with the admission office. Applicants whose first language is not English also submit the TOEFL or IELTS, with TOEFL code 8157. Interviews take place on campus or virtually: after applying, a student can book a full shadow day (typically 8:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.) following a current student and interviewing with an admission dean during the day; families can also book a 60 to 90 minute campus tour with an interview of about 30 minutes, or, after applying, a one-on-one virtual interview of about 30 minutes. Applicants attending school in mainland China interview only through Vericant.

Cranbrook Schools’ application and financial aid deadline is January 31, 2027. Decisions go out on a rolling basis beginning in February, and boarding applicants are notified no later than March 10; applications submitted from February 1 to August 31 are considered if space is available. The school generally has openings in every grade except grade 12, and grade 9 is the Upper School grade with the most new students. Qualified students for whom there is no space may join an unranked wait pool that is active only for the current season, and they must reapply the following year. The fall 2026 Open House is on October 18. The school does not publish an acceptance rate.

Cranbrook Schools publishes 2026-27 Upper School tuition of $63,000 for boarding students and $45,800 for day students. Families who pay in full by April 20 receive a 1 percent discount on net tuition, and four-payment and ten-payment plans carry an enrollment fee. Need-based financial aid is determined from a review of income, assets, investments and other financial resources and can cover up to 70 percent of Upper School tuition; aid for international students is limited to 50 percent of tuition. The school states that admission and financial aid decisions are made separately and communicated together, and that acceptance is based on merit without regard to the need for aid. Across the whole school, Cranbrook reports more than $13 million in annual financial aid, 34 percent of students receiving aid and an average grant of $22,357. New families apply through Clarity by the same January 31 deadline; aid is reviewed every year, and the school does not offer student loans.

Cranbrook Schools also offers merit scholarships that are not based on financial need, and new Upper School applicants from the United States are considered automatically on the basis of academic excellence, standardized testing, recommendations and personal qualities shown in the admission process. Awards open to boarding students include the Booth Scholarship, full tuition including room and board for one new U.S. boarding student entering grades 9 to 11; the National Crane Scholarships for new boarding students from across the United States, $30,000 for top applicants and $5,000 to $15,000 for other recipients; and the Slotkin Music Scholarships, which require an audition video and award $10,000 to top applicants. The school holds a financial aid webinar on October 13, 2026, and a merit scholarship webinar on November 17.

Cranbrook Schools’ deadline is January 31, and its application page lists SSAT dates of November 14 and December 12, 2026, and January 9 and January 30, 2027. January 30 falls one day before the deadline, so plan the final sitting no later than January 9 and complete at least one test by December 12. Shadow days and virtual interviews can be booked only after the application is submitted, so submit before December. About two-thirds of Upper School students are day students, and the website says little about dorm assignments, weekend programming or school breaks for boarders, so ask about them at the interview. Michigan is three hours ahead of California and about 1,960 miles from Irvine in a straight line, which means several cross-country flights a year; identify a trusted adult in the Detroit area. New U.S. boarding students are considered automatically for merit scholarships that weigh standardized testing, which is one more reason to prepare seriously for the SSAT. EDUBUS is based in Irvine and works on school selection, SSAT preparation and high school planning around this school’s published dates.