6TH GRADE ADMISSIONS PROCESS

The DOE uses a lottery system in addition to each student’s ranking of choices. For more information on this process, please refer to this page.

There are two priority groups:

Diversity in Admissions: 50% of our seats will go to students who qualify for FRPL

Sibling Priority: Students with a sibling currently in 6th through 11th grade at I.C.E. will have priority. You must indicate this on your myschools application.

9TH GRADE ADMISSIONS PROCESS

The admissions process is outlined on myschools.nyc. Consortium Schools (including I.C.E.) have a common assessment. This assessment must be submitted in myschools under Additional Material. For information regarding this assessment see below.

For more information, refer to this page on the DOE website.

Please note that on average there are usually only 5 to 15 open seats in 9th grade.

Instructions

To apply to I.C.E. as well as some of the other Consortium Schools, answer one of the two prompts below in 500 words or fewer. Submit this essay on myschools.

  1. How do you think a school with this approach to learning will help you grow academically, personally, and creatively? What do you think you have to offer a school community like this?

  2. We admire students who are flexible in their approach to learning and willing to take intellectual risks that move them out of their comfort zone. Reflect on a time when you were intellectually challenged, inspired, or took an intellectual risk––inside or outside the classroom. How has that experience shaped you?

Consortium Schools believe that students thrive when they are given the opportunity to study topics in-depth and apply their learning outside of the classroom. Instead of taking tests, our students demonstrate their skills in practical terms: they design experiments, make presentations, write reports, and defend their work to outside experts.

Some General Information About Our School:

  • The Institute for Collaborative Education (ICE) is a progressive, academically rigorous public school for grades 6 - 12 on the edge of the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Our students come from all five boroughs, all ethnicities and socio-economic backgrounds. 

  • ICE is a small learning community of 480 students. 28 % of our students are eligible for free lunch, 53 % of our students identify as non-white, and 98 % of our students attend College.

  • ICE uses collaborative and project-based learning in ALL subjects.

  • Students spend their classroom time 

➤Discussing, debating, asking questions, and listening to peers and teachers

➤Formulating research questions, experimenting to test hypotheses

➤Reading good books as a class and of their own choosing

➤Writing creatively to communicate ideas, not to fit into a five-paragraph structure

➤Building and designing creative projects that demonstrate understanding

➤Working in pairs or small groups as well as alone

➤Reviewing, editing, and critiquing their own and their peers’ work

  • ICE KIDS do projects like build model roller coasters (to learn physics), film a day-in-the-life in Spanish, work in the hydroponic garden, design and implement independent projects in neuroscience, write poetry, drama, graphic novels and literary analyses, write and perform original songs, and much more. 

  • For the last four years, 80-90 % of ICE middle school families have OPTED OUT of the state standardized tests. As a seven year program, these assessments are not useful or necessary. Families who attend ICE should be aware that no time is set aside to prepare for the state tests and ICE’s curriculum does not necessarily conform to state test subjects. The assessments designed by ICE teachers are considered to be more rigorous and demanding than state assessments.

  •  ICE high school students take only the ELA Regents exam but produce PBATs for literature, history, math, science and Spanish. 

  • What is a PBAT? A Performance Based Assessment Task is a complex project that students present before panels of teachers, experts in the field and peers. PBATs require significant instruction and preparation, high level reading, writing, thinking, revision, and presentation skills. They require students to demonstrate subject mastery that indicates readiness for college.

  • ICE cares about intellectual achievement, but also social and emotional development and commitment to social justice. Race, class, gender and sexuality are all topics that come up in classroom discussions as part of inquiry on history, literature, language, and science.

  • ICE teaches math, literature, science, social studies, and the arts AT THE SAME TIME AS problem-solving, social skills, self-awareness and evaluation, cooperation, and civic responsibility.

  • ICE teachers encourage students to use original sources, question whose perspective is being communicated in a text, and connect the subject to students' lived experiences.

Testimonials from new families

“Creative approach to learning” “Kindness, warmth, feels like family”

“Focus on process over product” “A place for curious kids to thrive”

“Warm community for LGBTQ, differences are welcomed”