Smart Match, lottery odds & reports
Three Pro tools do the heavy lifting once you know roughly what you’re looking for. All three need a reasonably complete family profile — see the note at the bottom.
Smart Match
Open Smart Matchfrom the rail. Pick which child it’s for, then pick a scope — a district, a borough, or the whole city, either from the presets or by choosing districts on the map. Smart Match then ranks every school in that scope against your family and explains why its top picks are its top picks, rather than handing you a number with no reasoning.
It reads everything you’ve told us: your children’s grades, your ranked school priorities, your school-type preference, distance from home, and any special-education needs. Every completed run pins itself to Saved → School Matchautomatically — there’s no save step to forget. You can come back and ask the Intelligence to re-weight the priorities and run it again.
Lottery Simulator
Most NYC seats are allocated by lottery, and the honest question is “what are our chances?” The Lottery Simulatoranswers it from DOE offer data, for four entry points: Pre-K, Kindergarten, Grade 6, and Grade 9. Build the list you’re considering ranking and it gives each school a band — from Very Likely down to Long Shot — so you can see whether your list is actually balanced before you submit it.
For elementary it already knows your district and zoned school from the home address on your profile, so the first slots come prefilled. If that’s not right, say so once — “not my zone” sticks, and we won’t keep suggesting it.
These are estimates from past offer rates, not promises. Priorities, sibling status, and seat counts move year to year.
PDF neighborhood reports
Reports builds a printable neighborhood report you can take to a showing, send to a partner, or read on the train. Choose your anchor — the home on your profile, or search any address or neighborhood — then pick which of the six sections you want: Schools, Safety, Green Space, Transit, Budget, and Community.
If you’ve already personalized that neighborhood, your family’s read is folded into the PDF too. Reports aren’t stored on your account, so save the file when it downloads — generating another one is cheap, but the copy is yours to keep.
Why these ask you to finish your profile
All three rank things against yourfamily, so they need enough to work with: at least one child with a grade, your ranked priorities, a borough or some neighborhoods you’re interested in, your school-type preference, and whether each child needs special-education support. If something’s missing you’ll get a prompt naming exactly what — tell Intelligence, fill it in at Settings, or use the form. No other part of Motley is gated this way.