A total of 315 new students will enroll for the 2014-2015 school year from a total of 1,094 applications across grades 7-11, Assistant Director of Admission Melanie Leon said.
Two new students were admitted for 11th grade, 15 for 10th grade, 80 for ninth grade, three for eighth grade and 215 for seventh grade. The 80 students joining the class of 2018 will be arriving from 66 different sending schools, as will the 215 students joining the class of 2020. The entire applicant pool came from more than 200 different sending schools, Leon said.
Although the office does not release official acceptance rates, Associate Director of Admission Scott Turner said that the acceptance rate this year has remained consistent with past years.
Leon, however, noted that the acceptance rate is most likely a lot lower than most schools in the Los Angeles area, which allows the school to remain competitive due to the number of applicants.
The school did not enroll more sophomores than usual despite originally expecting to do so. The 15 that will join the class of 2017 are a typical number and around the average in about the last five years, Turner said.
“We weren’t expecting to have such a low attrition in ninth grade this year,” Director of Admission Elizabeth Gregory said. “This year it’s so far a very small number of kids who are actually leaving. So, in order to keep the enrollment kind of stable we can’t admit as many students as I thought we were going to be able to.”
Gregory also noted that the addition of two students to the class of 2016 was unusual in comparison to past years, but also eliminated spots for students applying for 10th grade. This year’s high yield also contributed to this, she said.
“It was kind of incredible,” Gregory said. “That’s the other thing we’re not sure of, sometimes we predict a lower yield, then we’ll take more people. But the yield was so high we just had to stop.”
Leon and Turner both noted that the ninth grade pool was particularly strong.
“The new ninth grade class is always really diverse, which I think is something that the office is really proud of,” Leon said. “They all bring some amazing quality whether it’s athletics or performing arts or community service. They give back to the community in some way. They bring academics plus something more.”
Leon said that the number of siblings admitted was consistent to past years, but that more students tend to come in the seventh grade than the ninth grade. Although students remain on the waitlist, some will be released from it soon.
Some students who were on the waitlist, which will close towards the end of the summer, have been taken off and enrolled already, Leon said.
Recommendations were submitted online this year in a new change to the application process and the admission office website was translated into Chinese for the first time.
“Overall, I feel like it was one of the best years,” Leon said.
