Getting started
Motley turns the sprawl of NYC’s 262 neighborhoods and thousands of schools into clear answers for yourfamily. The more we know about who you are and what you’re weighing, the sharper those answers get. Here’s how to set up in a few minutes.
1. Create your account
Sign in with Google to get started — it takes one tap and keeps your family profile, saved schools, and neighborhood notes in sync across devices. You can browse a lot of Motley without an account, but signing in is what lets us personalize and save your work.
2. Run the onboarding wizard
The onboarding wizard walks you through a handful of quick steps: your children and their grades, the priorities that matter most, where you live now (or want to be), and how you feel about public, charter, and private schools. Each step saves as you go, so you can stop and pick it back up later.
3. Rank your priorities
This is the step that makes Motley yours. Instead of forcing you into a preset, we let you rank the things families weigh — safety, schools, commute, affordability, diversity, and parks. Drag the one that matters most to the top. Every neighborhood ranking you see is re-sorted against your order.
4. Set your family profile
You can fine-tune everything later under Settings — add or edit children, update your home address, change your school preferences, or adjust your scoring priorities. A complete profile unlocks the personalized features below.
What to do next
- Browse neighborhoods ranked for your family.
- Search schools and early education (3-K, Pre-K, NYCEEC).
- Try Smart Match to rank every school against your family in one pass.