← Back to homeElite Academy
Istanbul, Turkey · est. 2018 · Private
Illustration · Istanbul
Elite Academy is a private international school in Esenyurt, opened in 2018; it teaches an American program in English and carries children from kindergarten through grade 12. The school names more than 400 students from over 25 countries and more than 60 teachers, and a campus with a half-Olympic pool, an ice rink, a gym, STEM and robotics labs, a music and arts hall and an amphitheater. Languages are a particular strength: besides English the school runs an Arabic-English immersion program and keeps Arabic and Turkish clubs. It names its graduates by name and with their universities: medicine at Medipol and İstinye, engineering at Yıldız Teknik and İstanbul Teknik, dentistry at the European University of Tbilisi. The school does not publish tuition, but it sets out its discounts in detail - up to full exemption from fees for a result on its own entrance test or a high SAT score. The school names neither a child protection policy nor a counseling service: the only safety measure named is the “White School Protocol” sanitary protocol.
Key facts
Programmes
AP · American programme
Languages of instruction
English
Languages taught
Arabic, Turkish
About the fees The school does not name a price on its site. It gives the payment terms and the size of the discount in person: in the enrollment letter the family receives after visiting the school.
Admissions Admission takes three steps. First an application through a form, after which the school arranges a meeting with the family - with the head of the school and an education consultant. On the day of the meeting the child sits a test in mathematics and English. Within three working days the family receives an enrollment letter with the payment terms, the size of the discount, a list of documents and a contract. In the school's words: “The student will not be officially enrolled unless he / she takes his / her entrance exams”.
Stages and year groups Grades to grade 12. The school writes about admission “from Kindergarten to Grade 12”. The on-site campus in Esenyurt is held by three licenses - primary, middle and high school. Separately the school has an online branch, Elite Online School: grades 1-4, 5-8, 9-11 and grade 12 as the diploma year.
Address Zafer Mah. 169. Sk. No: 11-13, Esenyurt, İstanbul
Accreditations and programmes verified against official registries
College Board · authorised programmeschool is in an official registryconfirmed by a school document, by membership or by taking part in a networkclaimed by the school, no confirmation, not counted in the scoreGuide to all organisations → What stands behind each entry
College BoardCollege Board, the AP programme
An American organisation that allows a school to put the letters AP on a pupil's transcript. The permission is granted course by course and tied to a particular teacher, it has to be renewed every year, and College Board reads the course syllabus before granting it.
What the badge means for this school. The school is allowed to run advanced AP courses - not the school as a whole, but one by one: by subject and by teacher. Governance, safeguarding and the primary years are not part of that check. Which subjects are actually approved is visible in the ledger. The entry stands in the organisation's public register - anyone can check it. Authorisation here runs a year at a time: the register lists the school for the 2025-2026 school year.
Register to check for yourself, and the full guide →AP
Advanced Placement: American advanced courses for the senior years. The exam for a course is set and marked by the College Board, not by the school. A good result is counted by American universities as a first-year course already passed, which saves a student time and money.
What this means for this school. A school does not get to call a course AP automatically: the College Board reads the course syllabus and approves it separately for every subject and every teacher, and the permission has to be renewed each year. Every approved school in the world is listed in the open AP Course Ledger, and this school's entry there stands as a line in the accreditation block above. How many courses a school is approved for, and in which subjects, the ledger does not show in its general listing. AP has no leaving certificate of its own: it sits on top of the school's main programme rather than being a separate system.
American programme
The American school programme, with the High School Diploma at the end. It usually comes together with AP courses, which the College Board stands behind, and with an American accreditation - MSA, NEASC or Cognia.
What this means for this school. The diploma is written out by the school itself: the American programme has no common leaving exam, and the content of the senior years is set by the school. Outside checking therefore rests on two things here - the accreditation of the school, and the AP exams if the school runs them.
Exams and destinations from the school's official website
Exam results The school gives no average scores and names individual results of its students: SAT scores of 1490 and 1490, an SAT score of 1440 and 800 on an SAT subject test.
Where leavers go: Medipol Üniversitesi · İstinye Üniversitesi · Ankara Üniversitesi · Yıldız Teknik Üniversitesi · İstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi · Bahçeşehir Üniversitesi · Kadir Has Üniversitesi · Middle East University · European University, Tbilisi
Facilities from the school's official website
✓Swimming poola half-Olympic swimming pool
✓Sports halla gym and a basketball court, indoor and outdoor sports grounds
✓LaboratoriesSTEM, robotics and science labs
✓Theatre or assembly halla 3D cinema hall
·Librarynot stated on the website
·Cateringnot stated on the website
·School transportnot stated on the website
·Boardingnot stated on the website
Also on site: Sports ground or field · Art studio
Campus: On the campus the school lists indoor and outdoor sports grounds, a gym, a basketball court, an ice rink, a cinema hall, a half-Olympic pool, a canteen, science, robotics and STEM labs, prayer rooms, a music and arts hall and an amphitheater for performances. Students in grades 5-12 are each given a Chromebook.
Clubs and activities (18): Intensive English · Intensive Arabic · Intensive Turkish · Qur'an · Islamic studies · Leadership · Health · Life skills · Drawing · Theatre · Music · Swimming · Robotics and STEM · Ice skating · Fitness · Archery · Chess · Cookery
Summer camp: the school runs its own camp; whether it takes children from outside is not stated on the website
The summer school is the school's own, on campus: catch-up courses in English and mathematics for grades 1-12, five weeks of four days each, free for students already enrolled. Separately the school recruits for a summer club for children from 4 to 12 - 25 programs in two seasons, Monday to Friday - and has announced trips to Manchester and Sarajevo.
Teaching staff from the school's official website
·Teachers listed by namenot published
·Teacher qualificationsnot stated
·Number of teachersthe school does not say
·Students per teacher or class sizenot stated
The counter on the home page gives “60+ TEACHERS”. Clubs, the school says, are run by the teachers themselves. By name the school lists only the owner and the leadership: Sümeyye Yörük - owner of the school and president of ISA, Yasir Mesut - general manager of ISA and director of Elite.
Safety and wellbeing from the school's official website
The school says nothing on its website about security, medical care or pupil support.
Reviews
No reviews yet. The community rating counts towards the score once a school has five verified reviews - until then we do not show a zero, so as not to mislead.
Criteria breakdown criterion weight in brackets
Academics and programmes (16%)75 Community rating (16%)no dataparent reviews are needed: the criterion switches on at the fifth verified one Exams and destinations (12%) scored on disclosed data80 Safety and wellbeing (12%) scored on disclosed data55 Accreditation and verifiability (10%)85 Teaching staff (10%) scored on disclosed data55 Facilities (10%) scored on disclosed data80 Clubs and activities (8%) scored on disclosed data78 Value for money (6%) scored at the median64 "Scored on disclosed data" stands where we count only what the school has written about itself on its own site: exams and destinations, safety and wellbeing, teaching staff, facilities, clubs and activities. A low score here means the school does not write about this, not that the school does not have it: a school with good security and a sparse site will score low. A school can fill in its profile, and the score will be counted again.
The score is counted from 7 of the 9 criteria.Only those with checkable data count: programmes and accreditations from official registers, the fee from a published price list. Where it says "scored on the median", the school has no data and the middle of the list is put in its place, so that a gap gives no advantage. Admissions, teaching staff and reviews come in as their data arrives.
The full methodology → Similar schools in the country