School dossier · Davidson, NC
7 research areas · 48 documents distilled
An introduction to Davidson Day School, in the school’s own words. Press play to watch.
Davidson Day publishes no course lists, subject lists, or named curriculum programs for Early Childhood or Lower School. Verified against the live pages, their October 2025 Wayback captures, and the school’s full Issuu publication index. The Lower School runs an 8:1 student-to-faculty ratio.
Early Preschool (2s/3s), Preschool (3s/4s), and Junior Kindergarten (4s/5s) target cognitive skills, language development, motor skills, executive functioning, and social-emotional wellness.
Art, world language, library, physical education, and music, plus Lower School science and technology labs for hands-on experimentation.
No Middle School course catalog or curriculum guide exists. The math courses below come from the Upper School catalog’s progression chart; everything else on the Middle School page is marketing prose.
The entry point of the standard middle-school math sequence.
The accelerated entry track, taken in Grade 5 or 6.
The standard sixth-grade course following 5th Grade Math.
The accelerated course following Accelerated Math 1.
A compressed combined course on the fastest track.
The standard seventh-grade course following Math 1.
The accelerated course preceding Honors Algebra 1.
The standard eighth-grade course leading to Algebra 1.
Upper-School-credit algebra taken as early as Grade 7 on the fastest track.
Upper-School-credit geometry available in Grade 8.
Every Middle School student takes a study-skills course each year — "four years of building the tools for success."
Middle School students may take Upper School world language and mathematics courses; those credits count toward graduation but are excluded from Upper School GPA.
Accredited archaeological fieldwork opens in Grade 7, at Maya, medieval Spanish, and Roman Portuguese sites.
A survey of literary genres built on The Crucible, Romeo and Juliet, and Of Mice and Men, with sustained academic-writing practice.
The English I sequence at an accelerated, more intensive pace, entered by recommendation of eighth-grade teachers.
Study of Beowulf, Othello, and Animal Farm alongside short-story and poetry units, emphasizing deeper meaning and implication in texts.
Reads A Long Way Gone, Much Ado About Nothing, and Predictably Irrational, extending English II skills through scaffolded responses.
A literature-based course on 1984, The Stranger, The Great Gatsby, and Frankenstein, building literary analysis and argument construction.
First semester explores the literary voice of the American South; second semester is a seminar on Shakespeare’s comedies.
A writing- and reading-intensive study of rhetoric in which students learn to analyze and construct effective arguments.
Composition and literary analysis across genres, examining representative British and American novels and plays from the sixteenth century on.
An honors elective workshop in poetry, life writing, and fiction, culminating in portfolios and a self-designed final project.
Students produce the Revolution yearbook while learning journalistic writing, photography, interviewing, and ad sales.
Advanced yearbook students take leadership roles in theme, layout, staff training, and business campaigns.
Introduces the fundamental concepts of algebra and their multiple representations, including linear and quadratic equations and polynomials.
The Algebra I curriculum at an accelerated pace, entered from Accelerated Math 3 or Honors Prealgebra.
Classical Euclidean geometry — congruence, similarity, solid and analytic geometry, and right-triangle trigonometry — with emphasis on proof.
Geometry covered at a faster pace and greater depth, requiring Honors Algebra I and departmental approval.
Polynomial functions in depth plus rational, square-root, logarithmic, and exponential models, with graphing-calculator work integral.
The Algebra II curriculum with trigonometric functions added, requiring Geometry Honors and summer work.
Combines trigonometry, geometry, and algebra concepts needed for calculus, strengthening understanding of algebraic and transcendental functions.
College Board–aligned study of polynomial, rational, exponential, logarithmic, and trigonometric functions emphasizing modeling.
An advanced course covering limits, continuity, derivatives, the Fundamental Theorems, and integration techniques.
A college-level introduction to differential and integral calculus applied to change, motion, and accumulation.
Extends Calculus AB with parametric, polar, and vector functions plus sequences and series.
Semester courses extending calculus into higher dimensions plus linear algebra topics; weighted 1.0 like an AP.
Major concepts and tools for collecting, analyzing, and drawing conclusions from data, spanning sampling, probability, and inference.
A foundational humanities course rooted in constitutional principles, using research, position papers, and structured debate.
The Civics course with added analytical rigor, primary-source interpretation, and AP-style writing prompts.
The required sophomore world-history survey.
A college-level survey from roughly 1200 CE forward, covering global integration, industrialization, colonialism, and ideological conflict.
Surveys United States history from the peopling of North America to the present through diverse viewpoints and primary-source argumentation.
A college-level survey with substantially greater reading — primary documents, cartoons, maps, data sets — pushing students to work like historians.
Investigates significant European events and processes from about 1450 to the present.
Principles of economics applied to individual producers and consumers; offered 2026-2027 on an alternate-year rotation.
Principles of economics applied to the economic system as a whole; offered 2027-2028 on an alternate-year rotation.
The systematic, scientific study of human behavior and thought — learning, motivation, memory, neuroanatomy — with experimental design work.
Cultivates understanding of U.S. government through data and text analysis of constitutionalism, liberty and order, and civic participation.
A systematic overview of anthropology’s four subfields — cultural, physical, archaeology, and linguistics.
Waves, sound, and light, then mechanics and electric circuits, with mathematical models limited to Algebra I concepts.
The same physics sequence adding Geometry-level mathematical modeling.
Algebra-based introductory college physics covering kinematics, dynamics, energy, momentum, torque, gravitation, and fluids.
Algebra-based second-semester college physics covering fluids, thermodynamics, electricity and magnetism, optics, and modern physics.
Fundamental principles of chemistry — matter, atomic structure, reactions, stoichiometry, bonding, kinetics and equilibrium — with quantitative labs.
Chemistry with strong emphasis on critical thinking, independent lab investigation, and writing.
A college-level chemistry foundation covering atomic structure, intermolecular forces, kinetics, thermodynamics, and equilibrium.
Major principles of modern biology — organization of life, cell structure and division, DNA, genetics, evolution, and ecology.
Biology with greater depth and rigor, adding inquiry learning with current research data and independent experiment design.
College-level biology organized around molecules and cells, individual organisms, and populations, with significant independent work.
Inquiry-based study of the natural world organized around energy transfer, earth-system interactions, species interactions, and sustainability.
A comprehensive study of human body structure and function via medical case studies, microscopy, and dissection.
Beginning French developing the four skill areas in culturally appropriate contexts, with emphasis on interpretive skills before production.
Builds French vocabulary around family, education, food, travel, and daily routines using authentic resources.
Applies interpersonal, presentational, and interpretive skills through authentic texts, songs, and videos.
Works almost exclusively from authentic resources toward full communication in French, extending into the African Francophone world.
Typically taken as preparation for AP French Language and Culture, taught on a two-year rotation with the AP course.
The culminating French course organized around six themes and taught almost exclusively in French.
Introductory Spanish covering thematic and grammatical units, moving toward novice-level production with authentic songs and video.
Expands vocabulary through units on education, family, daily life, travel, and traditions across twelve Spanish-speaking countries.
Sharpens all four skills through units on travel, relationships, beauty, and health while adding advanced grammar.
In-depth cultural study using authentic resources and academic vocabulary, emphasizing conversation and complex written expression.
Explores in-depth cultural themes through authentic fiction, film, and documentaries, taught almost exclusively in Spanish.
Explores culture in contemporary and historical contexts, developing awareness of cultural products, practices, and perspectives.
Listed in the catalog contents and AP roster; the school publishes no course description for it.
Fundamentals of photography and the camera — composition, light, the exposure triangle, and Adobe Lightroom — culminating in a portfolio.
Continues photographic technique and post-production while developing individual point of view.
For serious student photographers mastering the digital SLR, advanced editing, and personal style, producing their own websites.
Introduces foundational concepts and skills across two- and three-dimensional artmaking, including observational drawing and ceramics.
Builds on Studio I with longer-term projects, regular critique, and written artist reflections as preparation for AP Studio Art.
Upperclassmen develop an individualized year-long project plan with the instructor in a medium or subject of their choice.
Students develop a portfolio of works representing a sustained investigation into a common visual theme for College Board judges.
A select company of actors researching, rehearsing, and performing challenging theatre, also appearing in school productions.
Davidson Day’s "School of Rock" — students learn and perform contemporary pop and rock music with parts adjusted to each player’s level.
A blend of history, musicology, and popular culture covering the last hundred years, with original composition in GarageBand.
Teaches film appreciation — history, genre, elements, cultural impact — alongside entry-level digital video editing and production.
Foundational Python programming covering variables, conditionals, loops, functions, and basic data structures with a faculty mentor.
Foundational computer-science ideas — computational thinking, algorithms, data, the internet, and the ethics of technology.
College-level object-oriented programming in Java covering classes, control structures, methods, arrays, and recursion.
Supervised muscular, cardiovascular, agility, and endurance training with emphasis on safe technique and lifelong fitness habits.
Fundamentals of sports medicine and its careers, covering anatomy, injuries, evaluation, and taping across two semesters.
Introduces how businesses operate and compete, financial and equities markets, and practical personal finance, with a Wharton competition.
A comprehensive introduction to business principles and personal finance through case studies, research projects, and applied simulations.
Applies business principles to social, environmental, and community challenges through project-based learning with local organizations.
Combines college-level academic study with sustained field-based service learning alongside local nonprofit partners.
Upper School students serve as instructional partners in middle-school classrooms and lead mini-lessons, with monthly pedagogy seminars.
A foundational Diploma Distinctions course teaching scholarly research through biweekly seminars, culminating in a formal Capstone abstract.
The senior-year component of the Diploma Distinctions program supporting the Senior Capstone Research Project.
Listed as a STEMM Distinction core option and in the school profile course grid; no course description is published.
A student-designed course of study with a faculty supervisor, requiring an approved abstract and syllabus; excluded from GPA.
A 100-hour immersive practicum behind every diploma distinction, and the first high school ever to partner with Davidson College’s Deliberative Citizenship Initiative. The smallest school in this comparison publishes the least overall — but its civic programming is specific, externally validated and genuinely unusual.
Every Diploma Distinction requires an immersive practicum of at least 100 hours — an internship, civic engagement, nonprofit leadership, medical shadowing or pre-collegiate program — plus quarterly Ethics Labs and a capstone at the Davidson Day Scholars Research Conference. Students apply at the end of sophomore year.
Davidson Day is the first high school ever to collaborate with the program. Thirteen Upper Schoolers completed two deliberation modules on social safety nets and constitutional rights, attending expert panels and two-hour small-group deliberations built around civil discourse rather than debate-to-win.
"Every Middle School student takes part in our hands-on service-learning program, partnering with local organizations," and every student participates in dedicated Service Days across the year.
Eight community partners are named: Champions House of Care, The Kindness Closet, Food for Days, Beds for Kids, American Foreign Academic Research (AFAR), the Davidson Public Library and the Davidson College Deliberative Citizenship Initiative. An Upper School Community Engagement Council is also described, though no roster or founding year is published for it.
A compact slate; Battle of the Books took regional first place. Open any row for the full research note and its source.
A reading-comprehension quiz competition; Davidson Day’s Middle School team is documented taking first place in a regional competition against several area schools — the school’s clearest competitive result in this area.
A confirmed National Honor Society chapter (28 members, Class of 2025), a Global Studies Diploma recognizing research and international study, and the Acclaim Scholars merit program. Chapter specifics are not published publicly.
The venue where Global Studies Diploma seniors present capstone research; some students also present at a collegiate archaeology conference.
A compact slate of academic, interest, and service clubs, alongside student life run through programs, councils, and traditions. Filter by category to see the clubs in each area.
A small, accessible arts program — a complete visual ladder to AP Studio Art, but one performing music ensemble and no named arts facility. Arts run from Early Childhood through grade 12. Only one fine-arts credit is required to graduate, and theater participation can satisfy the PE credit instead.
A legitimate, program-level Blumey record from a very small school — Best Ensemble/Chorus and Best Overall Direction nominations in 2023, three finalists in 2026. The Blumeys are Blumenthal Performing Arts’ Charlotte-region high-school musical-theater awards. Davidson Day’s external theatre identity runs entirely through them — no NCTC record exists.
Who runs it: No theatre director, musical director or drama teacher is named in any source, and the catalog does not attribute courses to faculty — notable given the school earned a Best Overall Direction nomination in 2023, which Blumenthal credits to the school rather than an individual. The Theatre Performance Ensemble is a select company; new students must audition, most class time is rehearsal, and there are after-school calls before performances. There is NO stagecraft or technical theatre course in the 2026-27 catalog — the nearest offering, Film Studies & Production, is video editing rather than stage tech. Students clearly build substantial multi-level scenery, and a Davidson Day student once won a scholarship for non-performing theater work, so backstage participation exists in some form; whether through a class, club or crew is unpublished.
Where performances happen is genuinely unclear — no venue is named, and the available photographic evidence suggests a gymnasium for the musical and the art studio for recitals.
Honest context: For a school this small, the Blumey record is real and better than the enrollment would predict — the 2023 nominations for Best Ensemble/Chorus and Best Overall Direction are program-level recognition, not just standout individuals. The flip side of small-school math is the upside for a student: mounting a full musical out of a very small student body means far fewer peers competing for a role. Two things a parent should note plainly: no NCTC participation, placement or award could be found anywhere, so the Blumeys are the whole external picture; and prior research attributing a production of "Matilda Jr." to this school was an error — that show was staged by the Davidson Community Players, a separate community theater company in the same town, so it is excluded here.
One performing music ensemble, and it is a rock band — open to any level with no audition, but there is no concert band, orchestra or chorus course at all. A contemporary/rock-band model rather than a concert-ensemble model. Parents expecting a traditional band-and-choir ladder should read that carefully.
Contemporary Ensemble is described as the school’s "very own School of Rock" — pop and rock with a dash of jazz, blues and funk, open to all levels, all instruments and vocalists, with guitars, bass, keyboards and drums provided in the classroom. Members must perform publicly at least once per quarter. Modern Music covers music history and production in GarageBand with no performance requirement. No concert band, symphonic band, marching band, orchestra, jazz band, chorus or vocal ensemble appears as a named Upper School course in the 2026-27 catalog. No band, choral or music-department director is named anywhere.
This is the clearest gap in the school’s published arts picture, and it is the reason the tour questions below matter more here than at a school that publishes everything. A student who plays violin or flute, or who sings classically, has no published ensemble to join in grades 9–12 — ask directly what they would join, and whether private lessons happen on campus.
The strongest part of the program — two parallel tracks, Photography I–III and Studio I → Studio II Honors → AP Studio Art, with Portfolio as a second route in. More depth than the enrolment would predict for a school this size. Photography is digital and Lightroom-based throughout; no darkroom is mentioned anywhere.
No visual arts, photography or AP Studio Art teacher is named in any source. The school states that students building AP portfolios "pursue admission" at schools such as the Savannah College of Art and Design, Rhode Island School of Design and Chapman University — note the careful wording, which describes where students apply rather than confirmed admissions. Whether the school supplies cameras is unpublished, though catalog photos show students with their own DSLR bodies. One adjacent honor worth knowing: sophomore Sims Skaff was named Photographer of the Year in the Private School Journalism Association contest, co-sponsored by Quill and Scroll, announced April 2025 — but that came through the yearbook and journalism pipeline, which the catalog houses under English rather than the arts department.
An accessible arts program, not a conservatory one — with a real Blumey record and a full visual ladder, but almost nothing about it published. Several of the gaps below may simply be unpublished rather than absent, which is exactly why the tour questions matter more here than at a school that documents everything.
35 teams across 13 sports on a 15-acre campus, with about 90% of students in grades 5–12 playing. Athletics start in grade 5 here — earlier than any other school in this comparison — and the school fields rowing on Lake Davidson.
Davidson Day moved up from 1A to 2A to 3A as enrollment grew, reaching 3A for 2024–25. It fields no wrestling, softball, field hockey or boys lacrosse — MaxPreps lists some of these, but the school’s own teams page does not, and the school’s page is treated as authoritative. Eight of the campus’s fifteen acres are given to fields and a wooded park with waterfront access to the Lake Davidson Nature Preserve, which supports the rowing program.
Seven state championships in 2023–24 — the most of any 2A school that year — then four, then one. This is a program in visible decline. Boys tennis is the only title survivor of 2025–26; three separate three-peats ended in the same year.
What they didn't win: volleyball (Wake Christian) · girls soccer (Gaston Christian) · boys basketball (Greensboro Day, which also eliminated Davidson Day in the semifinal) · both cross country titles (GRACE Christian of Raleigh) · boys soccer (Trinity Academy eliminated the Patriots in the quarterfinals).
2023–24: The peak. Seven state titles in one year — boys and girls soccer, volleyball, boys and girls cross country, boys basketball and boys tennis — the most of any 2A school in the NCISAA, plus the Wells Fargo Cup for all-sports excellence.
Boys Basketball: The historic peak was 2019–20: 30–1, ranked No. 5 in North Carolina, and the NCISAA 2A championship, led by senior C.J. Huntley. In 2025–26 the Patriots went 23–11 under new coach Gary Ellington and beat Oak Hill Academy 86–79 — handing that national program its first loss of the season — before losing the state semifinal to Greensboro Day.
2025–26: The decline. Three-peats ended in girls soccer and boys soccer, volleyball lost the final, and both cross country titles went elsewhere. Girls soccer fell from 14–2 champions to 3–11. Coaching turnover is the visible common factor: soccer changed hands after 2024–25, and girls basketball has had seven head coaches in eight documented seasons.
Ten documented commitments across 2024–26, nine of them Division I and three Power 4 — a remarkably high conversion rate for a 550-student school. Basketball drives it: four D1 commits including signees to North Carolina, Clemson and Dayton.
These are documented floors, not a census. The school published a full seven-athlete list for the class of 2025 but no equivalent for 2024 or 2026, and its official athletics site is dead — so non-basketball commitments in those years are almost certainly missing. The school states that more than 100 Davidson Day athletes have gone on to compete at 80 different colleges.
The unusual thing here is the ratio, not the volume: nine of ten documented commitments are Division I, where larger peer schools convert closer to a third. That reflects a small school whose recruiting story is concentrated almost entirely in one nationally-visible basketball program rather than spread across many sports — and it means the experience for an athlete outside that program looks very different.
Three four-star basketball recruits in consecutive classes. Cody Peck ’26 is ranked No. 82 nationally by 247Sports and No. 99 by ESPN — he transferred in from IMG Academy for his senior year and chose Dayton over Creighton, Tennessee and Miami. Isaiah Denis ’25 was No. 56 in the On3 Industry ranking and the No. 1 recruit in North Carolina before signing with UNC. Will Stevens ’26, a 6-foot-10 center, was No. 1 in NC per On3 and committed to Clemson over Vanderbilt and South Carolina.
The classes of 2024 and 2026 are under-represented because the school publishes no signing list for those years and its athletics website is offline. Level labels and conferences were added by the researcher from each college’s NCAA status.
An NBA two-way signing, a Heisman finalist quarterback, a WNBA draft pick and a NASCAR Cup Series driver. Unusually wide professional reach for a school of about 550 students — across three sports and NASCAR.
A 319-win, two-time state champion took over boys basketball in 2025 — and won 23 games plus a victory over Oak Hill in year one. Athletic Director: Chris Turner. Coaching stability is the sharpest dividing line at this school.
A genuinely significant hire for a school this size — two state titles, nine conference championships, eight Sweet 16 appearances and two North Carolina Basketball Coaches Association Coach of the Year awards. In year one at Davidson Day he went 23–11, reached the state semifinal and beat Oak Hill Academy. He also serves as the Upper School Strength Teacher, which is the only documented strength-training role on campus.
The longest verified head-coaching tenure at the school, and the clearest illustration of what continuity buys: he rebuilt boys soccer from 7–13 in 2019–20 to 17–4 and a No. 9 state ranking, winning three straight titles, while girls soccer took two more under him. Both programs collapsed in 2025–26 — girls soccer from 14–2 to 3–11 — the season after his departure.
Worth knowing: the school publishes no coaching directory, so head coaches for eight of its thirteen sports are undocumented — a consequence of its official athletics website being offline. Volleyball’s Catherine Glass and soccer’s Brad Laatsch represent long, title-producing tenures; basketball is the opposite, with at least seven boys head coaches since 2008 and seven girls head coaches in eight documented seasons. The 2024 title-winning coach, James Long, left for the college ranks a season later.
Across the six top-ranked NC public universities, Davidson Day School’s applicants were admitted at a pooled 59.4% over the last five entering classes — 177 acceptances from 298 applications. UNC-Chapel Hill is the hard one: 40.0% in Fall 2025 — 10 of 25 — against far higher rates at the less-selective universities. These are UNC-system figures published by the state, not the school’s own.
| Rank | University | Applied | Accepted | Admit rate from this school | 5-yr avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | UNC-Chapel Hill Flagship · Chapel Hill · the most selective of the six | 25 | 10 | 40.0% | 44.4%90 applied · 40 in |
| #2 | NC State University Flagship STEM · Raleigh | 21 | 9 | 42.9% | 42.4%92 applied · 39 in |
| #3 | UNC Charlotte Hometown campus | 7 | 6 | 85.7% | 86.1%36 applied · 31 in |
| #4 | East Carolina University Greenville · eastern NC · largest admit rates of the six | 6 | 6 | 100.0% | 100.0%28 applied · 28 in |
| #5 | UNC Wilmington Coastal · mid-selectivity | 9 | 7 | 77.8% | 69.0%42 applied · 29 in |
| #6 | UNC Greensboro Piedmont Triad | 3 | 3 | 100.0% | 100.0%10 applied · 10 in |
Read each row as a joint figure: the rate at which that university admitted this school’s applicants — not the university’s overall admit rate, and not a measure of the school’s own selectivity. Applied/Accepted are the Fall 2025 entering class; the 5-yr column pools Fall 2021–2025 as sum(accepted)/sum(applied), so a heavy year counts more than a light one. Counts travel with every rate because several cells are single-digit.
Davidson Day publishes its grading machinery in full — the scale, the weighting, and an unusually explicit list of what is excluded from the GPA — but no AP exam results and no National Merit record at all. The School Profile does the work test scores would otherwise do: full quality-point table, +0.5 Honors / +1.0 AP, a stated no-rank policy, and a three-point GPA distribution that discloses a 2.49 floor.
Two counselors for 198 Upper Schoolers — roughly 1:99, and about 1:24 across the 47 seniors — with the office’s stated start point in 9th grade rather than junior year. The small caseload is the credible part. What is missing is any written commitment about what the office actually guarantees: no published review-before-submission promise, no ED/EA stance, no recommendation protocol.
Applications and materials are submitted through Scoir. Note what is absent from that list: teacher recommendations appear only as a Scoir submission step, with no published policy on how many, how teachers are approached, or how the office supports them.
The Class of 2025 — 53 graduates — drew 258 acceptances, enrolled 100% at four-year institutions, and was offered more than $7.4M in merit aid. The big list below is a five-year cumulative acceptance list (2021–2025), not a matriculation list: 255 institutions, each of which admitted at least one Davidson Day student across five graduating classes.
| Tier | On list |
|---|---|
| Ivy League — Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth | 3 / 8 |
| “Ivy Plus” — absent MIT, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, Caltech | 8 / 17 |
| Top-75 National Universities | 44 / 75 |
| Top-75 Liberal Arts — includes 2 service academies | 26 / 75 |
| Power Four | 45 / 68 |
| HBCUs — Historically Black Colleges & Universities | 3 / 107 |
Counts are computed from the same 255-institution list you can filter at right, scored against the 2026 U.S. News tables — they are derived, not school-published. Two service academies rank as Liberal Arts Colleges in that system (Air Force #5, West Point #13), so the LAC figure should not be read as 26 civilian colleges.
252 college names link to their homepages.
The $7.4M is the school’s own wording — “offered”, not accepted, so it includes awards from colleges no student attended. The number of students receiving merit, the median award, and the accepted total are all unpublished, as are Morehead-Cain, Robertson, QuestBridge and ROTC outcomes.
Honest caveat: this is a five-year cumulative acceptance list, not a matriculation list. A college earns a place by admitting one student at any point across five classes, so the list measures breadth, not placement. Nothing on it is bolded or otherwise marked to show enrollment — the school reports that the Class of 2025 “selected 35 different colleges” but never names them. This window begins in 2021, two years before the 2023 floor the other schools here share: the 2025–26 profile still prints this single 2021–2025 block with no per-class breakdown, so the pre-2023 classes cannot be split off without discarding the list, and no narrower or newer named list is published.
For a 198-student Upper School, the spike-building machinery is disproportionate: real permitted archaeology abroad, and a Global Studies Diploma that sends a second transcript and profile to colleges. What the school cannot offer is institutional name recognition — so the leverage it does control is the Profile itself, rep-visit volume, and counselor access.
Required internship/capstone applies only to Diploma Distinction candidates — there is no school-wide required internship or senior project. Participation counts for AFAR ("hundreds", "150+", "200+") are all program-wide across many schools; how many Davidson Day students specifically have taken part is not published.
The disciplinary-reporting half of integrity signalling is undisclosed: whether suspensions or honor-code violations are reported on the secondary school report, and how a student may explain an incident, is not published.
Davidson Day withholds all SAT and ACT data by choice — “due to the popularity of test-optional policies, we will not be providing the testing profiles for the Class of 2026”. What remains is a three-point GPA disclosure, a genuinely staffed Learning Enrichment Center, and an acceptance list broad enough to show the middle of the class is served.
Three summary points is the entire disclosure — there is no quintile or decile table, so an admissions reader learns the range and the midpoint but nothing about the shape: how tightly the class clusters, how many sit above 4.0, or where the 25th percentile falls. Publishing a 2.49 low alongside a 4.60 high is nonetheless a transparency choice many peer schools avoid.
No LEC staff are named — no roster, titles, credentials or headcount — and whether services carry a fee beyond tuition is not stated.
A small, program-rich school whose strengths are process, access and spike-building — and whose weakness is disclosure. Every verdict point below is about what the school does. A family that evaluates schools on published outcome metrics will find less here than anywhere else in this set, which puts the burden of verification on the tour.
After-school care exists for Traditional Toddler through grade 8 — but the pages describing it have been removed from the school’s site, and no rate has ever been published. The dismissal times below are current and live. The program hours are recovered from a 2020 archive of a page that no longer exists, and they no longer line up with the current bell schedule.
STALEThe archived After School Care window of 2:45–6:00 p.m. for TT–8 comes from a capture dated 18 May 2020 — six years old. It no longer matches the current schedule: 2:45 p.m. is now only the Early Preschool–JK dismissal, while K–4 dismisses at 3:05 and grades 5–8 at 3:25. Whether older students are covered from their own dismissal is unknown.
PUBLICATION GAPThe Extended Care and After School Programs pages have been removed from the live site entirely — both re-verified as 404 in July 2026, and neither appears in the current site map. A 2026-27 family has no published description of the program at all.
PUBLICATION GAPNo summer program is published on the live site, and no summer page exists in the site map. An archived 2019 camp page and a third-party aggregator listing exist but neither is confirmed on any school-owned page.
PUBLICATION GAPWhether care runs on half-days or conference days is not published. The 2026-27 calendar does confirm the dates that would need it — half-days 18 Dec 2026, 15 Apr and 26 May 2027, and conference closures 14–18 Sep 2026, 4 Jan and 16 Apr 2027.
The program describes itself as "a safe, engaging, and nurturing environment for supervised play and homework completion" — in words captured from a page that no longer exists. No daily schedule, no current program description, and no enrichment catalog is published anywhere on the live site.
Students are "subdivided into age- and attendance-appropriate groups as determined by Extended Care staff" and "must be signed out… by a parent or other authorized persons as listed on the Extended Care Application." Notably candid, and unusual to see in writing: the school itself described the roughly 15:1 after-school ratio as "significantly higher than comparable Davidson Day classroom student-to-staff ratios," while noting it "complies with State of North Carolina standards." All of this is from the 2020 capture.
STALEEvery quotation above comes from an archived capture dated May 2020. The live site carries no program description at all, so none of it is confirmed for 2026-27 — including the 15:1 ratio.
PUBLICATION GAPNo enrichment catalog is recoverable. The archived page said the school "contracts with both internal and external providers… Programs are offered daily between 2:45-6 p.m., and fees vary by program. Sample offerings include:" — and the sample offerings resolve to three photo blocks with empty captions. No class name, day, grade range or fee survives, so none is listed here.
TO VERIFYThe Learning Enrichment Center is the only adjacent program with a live page, but it is tutoring, occupational therapy and speech — scheduled "during the school day, often during a study hall period" precisely so students can still do after-school activities. It is not after-school care.
A program that almost certainly works fine — and that a prospective family has no way to evaluate, price, or even read about before enrolling. Extended care is explicitly excluded from financial aid, which makes the missing price tag a real decision problem rather than a documentation quibble.
Unpublished ≠ deficient. "Not published" flags a transparency gap — never a judgement that the aid programme is small or unwelcoming.
Published ≠ current. The current-year table overwrites the previous one, so no rate history is recoverable. Undated figures are flagged, not guessed.
K–12 aid only. Tuition assistance while enrolled — not college aid. Not financial advice.
Meters show how fully each section could be answered from published evidence — a disclosure score, not a rating of the school.
The Early Childhood bar compares full-time rates only. Through 2025–26 that band was six separately priced options (half-day from $12,290); for 2026–27 it collapsed to one row, so anything but the full-time figure would be a false comparison.
Four division bands covering ages two through 12th grade, a $4,320 spread from lowest to highest. The school does not publish rate history, but archived copies of the tuition page carry 2022–23 onward — every division has risen about 4.5% a year since 2023–24. Half-day options, new-vs-returning rates, and what tuition includes are all unpublished.
A range built mostly from missing parts would look authoritative and mislead, so we have not built one. Extended care, athletics and arts are the notable gaps — all three are also named in the aid exclusions, so they are confirmed real costs a family pays on top of an award.
The deposit was $2,400 per student for 2022–23; the current amount is not published. The school states only that it appears inside each family's Enrollment Tuition Contract, behind the family portal, and is drafted immediately by bank transfer once the contract is signed. Refundability is not published either.
Uniforms are required (Early Preschool exempt); families buy from general retailers with the logo applied by a local vendor, so garment prices are set by vendors and not published by the school as a fee. No school-provided busing or transportation charge was found — most likely because none is offered rather than a price being withheld.
Clarity Financial Aid · $60 charged on submission (2025–26 cycle guide). Families create a new Clarity account the first time they use the system. Aid is an award, not a loan — it is not repaid. Late applications are processed if funds remain.
Each parent is expected to complete a Clarity application and supply tax returns. The only stated exception is a divorce agreement assigning sole responsibility for educational expenses to one parent.
No appeals or reconsideration process · no mid-year change-of-circumstance policy · no public position on whether admission is need-blind or need-aware · the committee's composition. Hazard: retired aid pages still in search results describe Acclaim as being for rising 8th-graders and Wolter for rising 9th-graders in 2025–26 — the current live page says Class of 2030 and Upper School applicants.
Neither is a pure merit award sitting on top of a need-based package — qualifying for need-based assistance is a precondition for each.
Acclaim Scholars marks the school's 25th anniversary and expects a strong academic profile and exemplary character. The Wolter Family Foundation Scholarship is externally funded by a Cornelius-based family foundation and asks for strong recommendations and significant demonstrated need. Both are contingent on the student remaining in good standing.
The school states no award covers full tuition and that maximum-award families pay $3,000 per year, per student (2026–27). Against published tuition that implies ceilings of $19,590 (Early Childhood) to $23,910 (Upper School) — our arithmetic, not a school figure. No share of students on aid, total aid budget, average or median award is published at all.
No sibling, military or clergy discount is published, and no indexed or sliding-scale tuition. The school runs a separate enrollment process and an eleven-month plan for employee parents, but whether any tuition remission accompanies employment is not on the public record. How many scholarships are granted each year, and their renewal criteria beyond "good standing," are also unpublished.
Deposit refundability · a family's financial obligation on withdrawal or mid-year departure. These terms live in the Enrollment Tuition Contract, which is issued to enrolling families through the portal and is not publicly available.
The school publishes no rate history — the current-year table overwrites the previous one — but archived copies carry 2022–23 onward. Every division has risen a near-flat ~4.5% a year since 2023–24, one of the steadiest patterns in this series. Early Childhood years are excluded from the run above because the number of years a child spends in that band varies.
The Early Childhood band was restructured, not merely repriced: six separately priced options through 2025–26 (half-day from $12,290) became a single row for 2026–27. Comparing the current row against the old half-day price would suggest an ~84% increase that never happened. The Section 01 chart compares full-time rates only.
A commercial service that digitises Form 990 filings reports $742,270 in grants and assistance to individuals for the fiscal year ending June 2024. We could not open the filed return to verify it, it sits two years behind the 2026–27 year, and it is not a school-published aid budget. It should not be read as one.
Each is unanswerable from published sources and materially affects what a family pays or receives.
| Division | 2022–23 | 2023–24 | 2024–25 | 2025–26 | 2026–27 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Early Childhood (full-time, through Junior Kindergarten) | $18,500 | $19,800 | $20,690 | $21,620 | $22,590 |
| Lower School (K–4) | $20,480 | $21,910 | $22,900 | $23,930 | $25,010 |
| Middle School (5–8) | $21,560 | $23,070 | $24,110 | $25,190 | $26,320 |
| Upper School (9–12) | $22,040 | $23,580 | $24,640 | $25,750 | $26,910 |
These are preserved for completeness; they are not comparable to the main Early Childhood series above and should not be charted against it.
| Option (as labeled that year) | 2022–23 | 2023–24 | 2024–25 | 2025–26 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Toddler (3 half days) | $12,290 | $13,150 | — | — |
| Toddler (3 full days) | $14,350 | $15,350 | — | — |
| Toddler (5 half days) | $16,390 | $17,540 | — | — |
| Early Preschool-5 half days | — | — | $18,330 | — |
Source: same snapshots listed above. Dashes mean the option did not appear in that year's published table, not that it was priced at zero.
| Fee | 2022–23 | 2023–24 | 2024–25 | 2025–26 | 2026–27 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Refund Plan Fee | 2.8% of tuition | 2.8% | 2.8% | 2.8% | 2.8% |
| Yearbook Fee | $70 | $70 | $70 | $70 | $75 |
| Technology Fee (gr. 7–12) | $450 | $450 | $450 | $450 | $500 |
| Field Experience Fee (gr. 4–12) | $350–$800 | $450–$850 | $475–$875 | $475–$975 | $500–$1,000 |
| Textbooks (gr. 7–12) | $300–$1,000 | $300–$1,000 | $300–$1,000 | $300–$1,000 | $300–$1,000 |
| Division | 22–23 → 23–24 | 23–24 → 24–25 | 24–25 → 25–26 | 25–26 → 26–27 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Early Childhood (full-time) | +7.03% | +4.49% | +4.49% | +4.49% |
| Lower School (K–4) | +6.98% | +4.52% | +4.50% | +4.51% |
| Middle School (5–8) | +7.00% | +4.51% | +4.48% | +4.49% |
| Upper School (9–12) | +6.99% | +4.50% | +4.50% | +4.50% |
These percentages are derived arithmetic from the sourced dollar figures and are clearly labeled as such; the dollar figures themselves are all directly sourced. Davidson Day has held very close to a flat ~4.5% annual increase since 2023–24.