A co-educational high school in Arnavutkoy, Istanbul, founded in 1863, with 1051 students from forty-nine Turkish cities. Teaching is bilingual: many courses run in English and some in Turkish as mandated by the Turkish Ministry of National Education, and students choose either French or German as a second foreign language. All students begin with a compulsory year of English Prep, in which a large part of the weekly schedule goes to English language and literature. The five-year high school programme was first approved by the Ministry in 1998 and has been re-approved several times since, and the course distribution chart was last approved in 2017; almost all of the electives were created by Robert College teachers and approved by the Ministry. The school states plainly that it is not an international school. Students run four publications - Marti, Bosphorus Chronicle, Kopru and Tarih - and the school counts over a hundred co-curricular activities.
Key facts
Programmes
National programme
Languages of instruction
English, Turkish
Languages taught
French, German
About the fees The school publishes no tuition figures: its fees and financial aid page describes only how aid works. It does give the share of supported students: of 1051 students from forty-nine cities, 26 per cent are on financial aid, and among boarders that share is 60 per cent.
Admissions Admission is based on the standardized high school entrance exam prepared by the Turkish Ministry of National Education and taken in Turkish during the eighth grade. The school says plainly that it is not an international school and that students who come to it score in the top 0.02 per cent on that exam. Financial aid is run separately: it is need-based only, with no merit scholarships, applications are made again each year within the dates the school announces, and the school's scholarship committee assesses them against criteria set in advance.
Stages and year groups A five-year high school: a compulsory year of English Prep, then Lise 9 to 12. Admission is to the Prep year only, after the eighth grade of Turkish school. The elective system in Lise 10, 11 and 12 lets a student choose ten courses in total - one in Lise 10, four in Lise 11 and five in Lise 12.
Address Kuruçeşme Cad. No:87, Arnavutköy - Beşiktaş 34345, İstanbul
Accreditations and programmes verified against official registries
CIS · membershipCollege Board · authorised programmeIn the CIS directory the school carries the status Not Required, which means accreditation is not required of it and it is recorded as a member rather than as an accredited school. A separate entry stands in the College Board AP Course Ledger for 2025-2026 under number 696220. The school names no AP courses on its own pages.
school 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
CISCouncil of International Schools
It accredits international schools and is a paying association at the same time. It examines governance and ownership, the curriculum, teaching, student wellbeing, staff and premises; a team of volunteers from other CIS accredited schools visits the school. Membership and accreditation are different things here, and schools confuse them more often than anything else.
What the badge means for this school. The school belongs to this organisation but has not been through its accreditation. The difference matters: membership is usually paid for and has no external inspection behind it. The entry is confirmed in the organisation's open directory.
Register to check for yourself, and the full guide →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.
Register to check for yourself, and the full guide →National programme
The state school programme of the country the school stands in: it is set by that country's ministry of education, which also licenses the school and awards the leaving certificate. That certificate is used for entry to local universities, and abroad it is matched to the local one.
What this means for this school. This entry does not count towards the score, and that is deliberate. Every lawful school in a country works to the national programme, so on its own it tells one school apart from no other - unlike the French, German or Russian programmes, which are carried abroad and confirmed by the register of their organisation. We show it because a parent needs to know what programme their child is taught and what certificate the child will get. Counting it would lift the whole ranking at once and still tell nobody apart.
Exams and destinations from the school's official website
The school publishes nothing about where its leavers go: no share going on to university, no exam results, no list of universities.
Facilities from the school's official website
·Swimming poolnot stated on the website
·Sports hallnot stated on the website
✓Laboratories
·Theatre or assembly hallnot stated on the website
✓Library
·Cateringnot stated on the website
·School transportnot stated on the website
✓Boarding
Campus: A historic campus on the Bosphorus shore in Arnavutkoy. The school keeps a fifty per cent for nature rule, so half of the campus stays as natural space, and learning happens in outdoor environments as well as in classrooms.
Clubs and activities: Community Involvement Program · Environment · Art · Music · Robotics · Philosophy · Sports · Festival and adventure trips · Martı · Bosphorus Chronicle · Köprü · Tarih
Teaching staff
The school publishes neither the number of its teachers nor their qualifications.
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%)60 Community rating (16%)no dataparent reviews are needed: the criterion switches on at the fifth verified one Exams and destinations (12%) scored on disclosed data55 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 data75 Clubs and activities (8%) scored on disclosed data78 Value for money (6%) scored at the median65 "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
Istanbul, Turkey · est. 1863 · Private