How admissions works

San Francisco high school admissions feels overwhelming for one reason: it isn't a single process. It's a few separate ones running at the same time, each with its own rules and its own way in. Once you can sort the schools you're considering into the right track, the maze becomes a short list of things to keep straight. There are three tracks.

The public schools

Most of the city's high schools are SFUSD public schools, and they share one process. You don't apply to each one. You submit a single district application and rank the schools you want in order of preference. There are no attendance areas and no feeder patterns at the high school level, so any school in the city is open to any resident family, whatever your address.

Everyone calls this "the lottery," which isn't quite right. It's really a choice system: the district tries to place your student at the highest school on your list that has room, applies a fixed set of tiebreakers when a school is oversubscribed, and reaches for a random number only after those. None of it turns on your student's grades. The SFUSD application walks through the whole thing, tiebreakers and all.

The public round runs on its own calendar. Applications close in late winter, around the start of February. Offers go out in mid-March, and you accept within a couple of weeks. After that, a rolling waitlist round runs into the summer. Treat the exact dates as moving targets and confirm them on SFUSD's enrollment site each year.

The two selective public schools

Two SFUSD schools admit on their own terms instead of through the lottery. Lowell goes on academic record, weighing middle-school grades and test scores, with a smaller share of seats decided more holistically; its exact method has changed more than once lately, so check the current criteria when your time comes. Ruth Asawa School of the Arts (SOTA) admits by audition or portfolio in an art form, on an earlier calendar than everyone else. Both are free, and both are a separate application inside the public system.

The private schools

Independent and faith-based schools have nothing to do with the SFUSD application. Each runs its own process, with its own deadline (often early to mid January), its own test where one is required, its own interviews, and its own notification date. The Archdiocesan Catholic schools share one entrance test, the HSPT, while independents that test use the ISEE or SSAT.

So a family weighing both public and private is really running two races at once: one SFUSD application for the public schools, and a separate application to each private school. Taken all at once, it is a lot. So don't take it all at once. Sort the schools you're considering into their tracks first. The rest of the process then arrives a piece at a time, each with its own guide: visiting schools, testing, essays, interviews, financial aid, and the final call.