India’s top-ranked — especially Ivy League — boarding schools provide boys and girls privileged to attend them, globally comparable mens sana in corpore sano education experience. This year, eight boarding schools with consistently high scores under critical parameters of primary-secondary education excellence have been conferred Ivy League status

Scindia Boys’ Ajay Singh & students: inevitable promotion

Much to the annoyance of leftists, communists, jholawallas and fellow travellers, many of whom have penetrated deep into post-independence India’s establishment, especially the neta-babu brotherhood, India’s small minority of elite boarding schools can justifiably claim parity with the best worldwide. In terms of providing advanced digital pedagogies including AI-driven administration and learning, discipline, co-curricular, life skills and sports education, India’s Ivy League and top-ranked co-ed, boys and girls boarding schools provide as good education as the best worldwide, Eton, Harrow and Andover included.

Indeed it would be justifiable to say that for sports education, Indian boarding schools, invariably located on sprawling campuses offer better facilities for field (cricket, football, hockey) and racket games (tennis, badminton, squash, table tennis) than their counterparts abroad for the simple reason they can be played year-round because of better climatic factors. For boarding schools as encapsulated in the victor of Waterloo’s cryptic statement that the “Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton” still holds good. Why they routinely produce club-level, but not Olympic, champions is due to a gamut of class and cultural factors which require a different conversation. Suffice it to say India’s top-ranked — especially Ivy League — boarding schools provide boys and girls privileged to attend them, globally comparable mens sana in corpore sano education experience.

Last year on the advice of Raymond Ravaglia, our US-based advisor, former Dean & Director of Stanford University Pre-Collegiate Studies and architect of the EW-Launchpad Ranking of America’s Best Undergraduate Universities, we introduced a new Ivy League category of “too close to call” Boarding and International Schools as “cluster-ranked” institutions differentiated, if at all, by insignificant decimal points.

“This rankings innovation — applied in the EW-Launchpad Rankings of America’s Best Undergrad Universities 2025 — acknowledges that selecting most suitable schools isn’t about fine-grained metrics but understanding the overall quality, focus and educational environments that excellent schools provide,” says Ravaglia.

Therefore, in EWISR 2026-27 Part I we again present league tables of 17 Ivy League schools selected from among 4,000-4,500 nationwide that have sufficient reputation and recognition for inclusion. Among co-ed, boys and girls boarding schools, eight — Mayo College, Ajmer; The Doon School, Dehradun; Pinegrove, Solan (Himachal Pradesh); Rishi Valley School, Chittoor (Andhra Pradesh); Chinmaya International, Coimbatore; Scindia Boys, Gwalior; Scindia Kanya Vidyalaya, Gwalior and Welham Girls, Dehradun — have been conferred Ivy League status.

Ajay Singh, a psychology postgrad of Benares Hindu University who began his career with the United Nations, before switching tracks to the academy and acquiring valuable teaching and admin experience in the blue-chip Mayo College, the superbly equipped Genesis Global School, Noida and Punjab Public School, Nabha before being recruited to head the residential CBSE-affiliated Scindia Boys School, Gwalior (SBSG, estb. 1897), in 2022, is delighted that SBSG has been conferred Ivy League status this year. “I can’t say that I am surprised. But given consistently impressive board results, support of our parents’ community, excellent sports education record and success of our alumni in all professions and vocations, I believed that this promotion was inevitable,” says Singh.

CIRS principal Rajeshwari: fit for life children

Singh is especially pleased with the high score awarded by the EW sample respondents to SBSG under the parameter of teacher welfare and development. “In SBSG we accord highest priority to teacher satisfaction and continuous professional development. We listen to them and sign them up for programmes of their choice to develop professionally and attain subject mastery, and encourage them to apply pedagogy innovations and learning design in our classrooms. This combined with provision of extensive sports education opportunities, has resulted in the high score awarded to us under the parameter of mental and emotional well-being of our students. In turn, it explains the top score for quality of alumni. In SBSG before students leave school with the help of our alumni network we familarise them with the needs of industry, markets and how to apply learning in workplaces, as also to develop important life skills such as networking and building human relationships. Students are also encouraged to work with their hands to develop vocational skills. Therefore, we are confident that our school-leavers are ready to take full advantage of higher education and excel in business and industry,” says Singh. Sited within the scenic and historic Gwalior Fort with extensive grounds, SBSG has 615 classes VI-XII male students, mentored by 58 teachers.

Shanti Krishnamurthy

Dr. Shanti Krishnamurthy, a maths and education alumna of Madras and Annamalai universities, former principal of the Tata Group-run Chinmaya Vidyalaya, Jamshedpur, Mahindra World School, Chennai and currently Director-General of Chinmaya International Group of 84 schools and nine colleges with an aggregate enrolment of 90,000 students, is also very pleased that the CBSE and International Baccalaureate (Geneva)-affiliated Chinmaya International Residential School, Coimbatore (CIRS, estb. 1996), has retained its Ivy League status for the second year consecutively, with the highest score under the parameter of teacher welfare and development.

“Our teachers are encouraged to create a spiritual and festival environment in CIRS. This means they are free to introduce teaching innovations and are provided way more than the 50 hours for professional development progammes prescribed by CBSE. As all teachers reside on the school campus and the teacher-pupil population is a mere 1:6, there is plenty of opportunity to experiment with knowledge application. Highest priority is accorded to the mental and emotional wellbeing of our children, sports, co-curricular and values education because we believe that mental and emotional wellness combined with values education inevitably results in good learning outcomes. In the latest CBSE class X exam, our students averaged over 90 percent and 16 students averaged a score of 39 out of a maximum possible 45  in the IB Diploma class XII exam,” says Dr. Krishnamurthy.

Adds Dr. Rajeshwari G, principal of CIRS: “We are very clear in CIRS that we don’t prepare children merely for exams. Our objective is to prepare confident children fit for life through provision of a wide range of academic and extra-curricular education options, so that children learn joyfully to develop into independent individuals ready to succeed in higher education and in life. And reports from our alumni indicate that we are on the right path.”   

EW Ivy League Boarding Schools national table

Pinegrove School, Solan’s Director Capt. A.J. Singh

Scindia Kanya Vidyalaya, Gwalior’s Principal Nishi Misra