Charlotte Country Day School tuition

Charlotte Country Day School tuition for the 2026-27 school year is $24,515 for junior kindergarten, $25,725 for kindergarten, $30,375 for grades 1 to 4, $32,700 for grades 5 to 8 and $34,075 for grades 9 to 12, according to the school's tuition and financial aid page, read November 9, 2026. A deposit of 10% of tuition is due at enrollment.

How much is Charlotte Country Day tuition?

Charlotte Country Day charges five tuition rates for 2026-27, from $24,515 in junior kindergarten to $34,075 in grades 9 to 12. The rates are per student, per year, and they step up at grade 1, grade 5 and grade 9. The school's page gives no rate for 2027-28; the Wikipedia entry's 2025-26 range of $23,350 to $32,450 shows that both ends rose 5.0% this year.

Source: Charlotte Country Day School, Tuition and Financial Aid, 2026-27.

Charlotte Country Day is an independent day school for junior kindergarten through grade 12 with 1,746 students enrolled for 2026-27, per its admissions page. It opened in September 1941 with 18 students under headmaster Dr. Thomas Burton, according to its Wikipedia entry. The Cannon Campus at 1440 Carmel Road in south Charlotte sits on a 30-acre site donated in 1958; the Bissell Campus, home to grades 5 to 8, is the former Carmel Academy, which merged with Country Day in 1980, about four miles away.

What does Charlotte Country Day tuition include, and what costs extra?

$100 to $700 a year is the school's own estimate of what a family pays beyond tuition, depending on division: $100 to $200 in Lower School, $200 to $400 in Middle School and $200 to $700 in Upper School. The tuition page says the published rates cover the core educational experience including technology. Not covered: textbooks and supplies in grades 5 to 12, consolidated activity fees and athletic fees, and the optional services, before- and after-school transportation, extended day, enrichment and tutoring.

The deposit works differently from the two closest peer schools. Country Day requires 10% of tuition at enrollment, which is $2,451.50 for a junior kindergartner and $3,407.50 for an Upper School student, credited toward the total due. Providence Day and Charlotte Latin each take a flat $2,500. Financial aid applicants at Country Day pay a reduced deposit that is refundable if the award is not enough for the child to attend; the page does not state the amount. The balance is paid in full by July 15, in two equal installments in July and January, or through a 10-month automatic bank draft.

How does Country Day compare with Providence Day, Charlotte Latin and Charlotte Christian?

$34,075 for grades 9 to 12 makes Charlotte Country Day the least expensive of the three large secular independent schools in Charlotte for 2026-27: $2,250 below Providence Day School and $2,425 below Charlotte Latin School. The gap is widest in grades 5 to 8, where Country Day's $32,700 sits $3,625 under Providence Day's $36,325. Charlotte Christian School, a faith-based school, publishes a range of $21,300 to $27,055.

Sources: each school's 2026-27 tuition page, listed below. Country Day's junior kindergarten is $24,515, Providence Day's transitional kindergarten is $25,510 and Charlotte Latin's is $27,600. Charlotte Christian publishes only its lowest and highest rates as text, and adds a $1,500 deposit plus a $1,250 new family fee, per its tuition page.

The grade bands do not line up, and that matters for a family with a 5th grader. Country Day moves to its Middle School rate in grade 5, a year before Providence Day and Charlotte Latin raise theirs, so a Country Day 5th grader pays $32,700 against $32,960 at Providence Day and $32,600 at Charlotte Latin, within $360 of either. The rates also buy different things: Providence Day's includes textbooks, AP exam fees and a student iPad, while Country Day bills books and supplies from grade 5 and estimates up to $700 a year in Upper School extras. The Providence Day School tuition and Charlotte Latin School tuition posts carry each school's full fee schedule.

What does Country Day cost from junior kindergarten through 12th grade?

$438,840 is the tuition bill for a child who enters Charlotte Country Day in junior kindergarten and graduates in 12th grade, at 2026-27 rates with no increases. The arithmetic: one year at $24,515, one year at $25,725, four years at $30,375 ($121,500), four years at $32,700 ($130,800) and four years at $34,075 ($136,300). Starting in kindergarten cuts the total to $414,325. Upper School alone, grades 9 to 12, is $136,300.

The same arithmetic from the year before kindergarten puts Providence Day at $472,595 and Charlotte Latin at $469,800. Country Day comes out $33,755 below Providence Day and $30,960 below Charlotte Latin over 13 years, roughly one Upper School year at either school. Two children in Upper School at the same time means $68,150 a year in tuition before the extras.

Those totals are a floor. Wikipedia lists Country Day's 2025-26 range at $23,350 to $32,450; the 2026-27 range is $24,515 to $34,075, a 5.0% increase at both ends in one year. A family that applies the same 5.0% to each of the next 12 years pays well above $438,840; the school's page publishes no 2027-28 rate. For a household weighing that bill against a mortgage, the Charlotte luxury market page shows what the neighborhoods around the two campuses trade for.

How much financial aid does Charlotte Country Day give?

$9.4 million a year in financial aid goes to 341 students, approximately 20% of the student body, according to the school's tuition and financial aid page; the admissions page puts the count at 347. That works out to about $27,600 per aided student, which is not an average award the school publishes, only the division of the two figures it does. Applications run through the Clarity platform, carry a $65 fee paid at the end of the application, and need a 1040 tax return, W-2 forms and recent pay stubs.

Two deadlines are posted: November 1 for current families and January 15 for prospective families. Award decisions are communicated with enrollment contracts, so a new family hears about aid at the same moment it is asked to sign. Aid must be renewed every year; the school says awards stay generally consistent unless a family's finances change significantly. Divorced, separated or never-married parents, custodial and non-custodial alike, are expected to apply.

For scale, Charlotte Latin reports $3.25 million awarded in 2024-25 at an average of $17,900, Providence Day reports that approximately 21% of families receive some assistance without publishing a total, and Charlotte Christian caps grants at 50% of tuition. On the published numbers, Country Day's $9.4 million is the largest aid budget of the four schools.

Where do Charlotte Country Day families buy homes?

50 Mecklenburg County ZIP codes, plus Union, Cabarrus, Iredell, Stanly, Gaston and York counties, is where the school's admissions page says its families live. The Cannon Campus on Carmel Road puts the school between Quail Hollow, SouthPark and Foxcroft to the north and Ballantyne to the south, with Weddington and Marvin across the Union County line. The October 2026 closings report carries Canopy MLS figures for seven of those areas, covering the 180 days ending October 22, 2026.

Source: Canopy MLS closed residential sales by subdivision or town, April 25 to October 22, 2026, pulled by Mitch Boraski, MBA. Medians are withheld where an area had fewer than 10 sales.

Three readings. The streets closest to the Cannon Campus are thin markets: Quail Hollow logged 6 sales in 180 days, one of them the $15,000,000 record, and Foxcroft 9, with 7 above $1 million. A family that wants a short drive to Carmel Road is competing for a handful of homes a month. Ballantyne Country Club is the gated option to the south: all 16 of its sales cleared $1 million at a $1,567,500 median, though at 42 days it was the slowest market in the table. Across the county line, Weddington sold in a median 11 days at $1,586,921 and Marvin at $1,333,393, both with more than four in five sales above $1 million.

Mitch Boraski listed and sold two homes in the school's corridor: 1431 Runnymede Lane in SouthPark at $1,625,000 and 6217 Calley Glenn Lane in south Charlotte at $1,500,000. Families comparing all three large independent schools can use the Charlotte private schools and luxury real estate guide, and the best school districts guide covers the public alternatives.

When are Charlotte Country Day applications due?

$100 is the application fee, and the school's admissions process page posts eight dates between January 2 and April 16, 2027, for students entering in 2027-28. Junior kindergarten and kindergarten decisions come six weeks before decisions for grades 1 to 12, on the same calendar Providence Day uses.

Testing is by division. Applicants to junior kindergarten through grade 4 complete a standardized screening with a qualified psychologist, scheduled directly with the psychologist. Applicants to grades 5 to 12 take the Independent School Entrance Examination, with the school's testing day set for February 6, 2027, and international applicants take the TOEFL. A junior kindergarten applicant must turn four by December 31, 2026. The financial aid deadline for prospective families, January 15, lands on the same day as the grades 1 to 12 application deadline, so both files go in together.

That calendar sets the home search for a relocating family. A grades 1 to 12 decision on April 9 arrives in the middle of the spring market, with seven days to respond, and the closings report shows Weddington and Marvin selling in a median 11 and 15 days. The practical sequence is to file by January 15, get pre-approved the same month, and have a buyer's agent tracking Quail Hollow, SouthPark, Foxcroft, Ballantyne and the Union County towns before the decision lands. Mitch Boraski, MBA, handles that search for relocating families; the schedule a meeting page books a call.