Admissions Essentials · High schools
California charter and magnet high schools ranked by UC admissions
UC admits per 100 seniors at every California charter and magnet high school with 50 or more seniors, measured against the same line as every other public school.
SourceUniversity of California Information Center, fall 2023 to fall 2025; California Department of Education, 2022-23 to 2024-25 school years; California Department of Education, School Directory, October 2026 snapshot.
Charters and magnets, measured against the same line
Charter schools are public schools run under their own charter, often by a nonprofit; magnet schools or programs are run by a district and draw students from beyond the neighborhood. Both are flagged in the state’s school directory, and we use those flags as they are. We compare each one with what schools with the same share of low-income students get at UC, using the same model as our ranking of every public school.
Of the 190 charter high schools we could compare, 126 sit above that line. The furthest above is Preuss School UCSD in La Jolla: 69.6 UC admits per 100 seniors over fall 2023 to 2025, where schools like it get 17.1. Of 136 magnet schools, 71 sit above it, led by Design Science Middle College High in Fresno (74.9 against 20.9).
Find your school
Switch between charter and magnet schools, choose a campus, narrow to your county, or type a name.
Actual UC admits against what schools like it get
Every school, Any UC campus
209 schools. Tap a column heading to sort. The rank is statewide, by how far a school sits above what schools like it get.
| 1 | Preuss School UCSDLa Jolla, San Diego | 115 | 75.7 | 69.6 | 17.1 | +52.5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | Stockton Early College AcademyStockton, San Joaquin | 95 | 74.7 | 69.6 | 20.6 | +49.0 |
| 3 | Animo Pat BrownLos Angeles, Los Angeles | 142 | 64.8 | 62.8 | 16.2 | +46.6 |
| 4 | AIMS College Prep HighOakland, Alameda | 83 | 57.8 | 66.4 | 20.8 | +45.6 |
| 5 | Math and Science College PreparatoryLos Angeles, Los Angeles | 130 | 71.5 | 63.9 | 19.6 | +44.4 |
| 6 | Alliance Ted K. Tajima HighLos Angeles, Los Angeles | 113 | 68.1 | 59.8 | 16.3 | +43.5 |
| 7 | Animo Leadership HighInglewood, Los Angeles | 152 | 57.2 | 56.1 | 16.8 | +39.3 |
| 8 | Ednovate - Esperanza College PrepLos Angeles, Los Angeles | 123 | 58.5 | 55.8 | 17.7 | +38.2 |
| 9 | Alliance Gertz-Ressler Richard Merkin 6-12 ComplexLos Angeles, Los Angeles | 140 | 50.7 | 53.8 | 16.7 | +37.1 |
| 10 | Chula Vista Learning Community CharterChula Vista, San Diego | 87 | 57.5 | 57.0 | 20.2 | +36.9 |
| 11 | Alliance Margaret M. Bloomfield Technology Academy HighHuntington Park, Los Angeles | 113 | 49.6 | 52.4 | 16.5 | +35.9 |
| 12 | KIPP San Jose CollegiateSan Jose, Santa Clara | 111 | 63.1 | 55.6 | 19.8 | +35.8 |
| 13 | Gompers Preparatory AcademySan Diego, San Diego | 152 | 60.5 | 53.1 | 17.9 | +35.2 |
| 14 | Alliance Dr. Olga Mohan HighLos Angeles, Los Angeles | 126 | 45.2 | 51.6 | 16.5 | +35.1 |
| 15 | Making Waves AcademyRichmond, Contra Costa | 136 | 46.3 | 52.8 | 18.4 | +34.4 |
| 16 | Environmental Charter High - LawndaleLawndale, Los Angeles | 103 | 51.5 | 52.9 | 19.0 | +33.8 |
| 17 | Ednovate - USC Hybrid High College PrepLos Angeles, Los Angeles | 120 | 55.0 | 53.1 | 19.5 | +33.7 |
| 18 | KIPP San Francisco College PreparatorySan Francisco, San Francisco | 63 | 63.5 | 50.7 | 17.3 | +33.5 |
| 19 | Ednovate - East College PrepLos Angeles, Los Angeles | 92 | 63.0 | 51.0 | 18.2 | +32.9 |
| 20 | University Preparatory Value HighLos Angeles, Los Angeles | 115 | 55.7 | 49.7 | 16.9 | +32.9 |
| 21 | Animo Jackie Robinson HighLos Angeles, Los Angeles | 137 | 53.3 | 48.5 | 16.5 | +32.0 |
| 22 | KIPP Navigate College PrepSan Jose, Santa Clara | 69 | 49.3 | 50.5 | 18.7 | +31.8 |
| 23 | KIPP King Collegiate HighSan Lorenzo, Alameda | 158 | 50.0 | 50.5 | 19.4 | +31.1 |
| 24 | Pacific Collegiate CharterSanta Cruz, Santa Cruz | 78 | 69.2 | 59.4 | 28.2 | +31.1 |
| 25 | Oakland Charter HighOakland, Alameda | 77 | 46.8 | 47.6 | 17.8 | +29.9 |
| 26 | Ednovate - Legacy College Prep.Santa Ana, Orange | 115 | 62.6 | 48.9 | 19.3 | +29.6 |
| 27 | Alliance Patti And Peter Neuwirth Leadership AcademyLos Angeles, Los Angeles | 149 | 42.3 | 44.8 | 16.2 | +28.7 |
| 28 | Health Careers AcademyStockton, San Joaquin | 83 | 56.6 | 46.8 | 18.3 | +28.5 |
| 29 | University Preparatory Academy CharterSan Jose, Santa Clara | 114 | 54.4 | 53.0 | 25.8 | +27.2 |
| 30 | Aspire Ollin University Preparatory AcademyHuntington Park, Los Angeles | 79 | 50.6 | 42.8 | 16.4 | +26.4 |
Figures are UC admits per 100 seniors. A dash means UC left a count blank because it was under 3 in at least one fall, so the figure cannot be computed; we do not guess it.
Each dot is a school, placed by what schools like it get (across) and what it actually got (up), in admits per 100 seniors over fall 2023 to 2025. Dots above the diagonal beat schools like them. 10 schools are flagged both charter and magnet and appear under each. Only schools with 50 or more seniors in 2024-25 are ranked.
Read the flags with care
The state flags a whole school as magnet when it houses a magnet program, so some large comprehensive high schools appear here because of one program inside them, and their numbers are the whole school’s. A charter’s seniors chose to enroll, and many charters admit by lottery from families who applied, which a share of low-income students cannot fully capture. Early college high schools, where students take college courses alongside high school, sit near the top of the charter list, as middle college schools do on the public list.
How we decide what “schools like it” get
“Schools like it” is our own model, fitted in the open. For each measure we drew the straight line that best fits admits per 100 seniors (fall 2023 to 2025) against the share of the school’s students the state counts as socioeconomically disadvantaged, across all 1,203 ranked public schools, traditional, charter and magnet together, by ordinary least squares. We also tried the share of English learners and kept it only where its effect was at least twice its standard error, which happened for UCLA only. A school’s expected figure is its point on that line; “vs. expected” is its actual figure minus that.
| Measure | Intercept | Low-income share | English learner share | R² | Schools |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Any UC campus | 29.62 | -13.68 (±1.60) | left out (-9.26 ±5.17) | 0.06 | 1,161 |
| UC Berkeley | 4.66 | -3.01 (±0.34) | left out (0.09 ±1.27) | 0.10 | 673 |
| UCLA | 3.37 | -1.06 (±0.30) | -4.30 (±1.03) | 0.11 | 657 |
Shares are fractions from 0 to 1 of the school’s whole 2024-25 Census Day enrollment; the ± figure is the standard error. Example, any UC campus: a school where half the students are low-income is expected to get 29.62 − 13.68 × 0.5 = 22.78 admits per 100 seniors. An R² of 0.06 means family income explains about 6% of the differences between schools on that measure; the rest is everything else, from the school itself to how many of its seniors apply. Schools whose Berkeley or UCLA count UC left blank in any year are not in that campus’s fit, which leaves out mostly small schools with few admits, so those two lines sit a little high for small schools.
Admits, seniors, blanks and the matching of UC’s schools to the state’s are exactly as described on the public school ranking, including the pairs we checked by hand.
Where every number comes from
- Admissions by source school, University of California Information Center. Covers fall 2023 to fall 2025.
- Census Day Enrollment (2023-24, 2024-25) and Enrollment by School (2022-23), California Department of Education. Covers 2022-23 to 2024-25 school years.
- California School Directory (public schools download), California Department of Education, School Directory. Covers October 2026 snapshot.
We downloaded these files ourselves and computed every figure on this page from them. Where a publisher left a value blank for privacy, we left it blank too.
The odds for everyone, and yours
The numbers tell you the odds for everyone. A counselor tells you yours. Talk to one of ours, free.