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In accordance with the Exam School Admissions Policy that was approved in July 2021, exam school invitations are distributed across eight tiers of census tracts grouped together based on socioeconomic factors.
City-wide census tracts are redrawn every ten (10) years, allowing for potential splitting, combining, or boundary corrections. The updated exam school tier computation for the 2024-2025 school year relies on the 2020 Boston census data, which is the most recent census tract data and includes 206 tracts with school-age children.
In total, one hundred twelve (112) tracts have the same tier compared to last year. Additionally, ninety-four (94) tracts changed tiers, with the shifts ranging from 0 to 3 tiers. These changes occurred because the 2024-2025 tiers use updated data from the 2022 American Community Survey (ACS) whereas the 2023-2024 tiers relied on 2020 ACS data.
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What is a tier?
A tier is a grouping of geographic areas in the city with similar socioeconomic characteristics, based on US Census Tracts. The socioeconomic characteristics include five characteristics: (1) Percent of persons below poverty; (2) Percent of households occupied by the owner; (3) Percent of families headed by a single parent; (4) Percent of households where a language other than English is spoken; and (5) Educational attainment.
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What is a census tract?
A census tract is a small geographic area within a city. Census tract boundaries are designed with the intention of being maintained over a long time so that statistical comparisons can be made from census to census. However, census tracts occasionally are split due to population growth or merged as a result of population decline.
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How are tiers calculated?
The tiers use data sourced from the American Community Survey, an annual survey conducted by the US Census Bureau. The data used are the most recent 5-year averages of the 5 characteristics outlined above published by data.census.gov. Each data point is downloaded from the US Census website and is converted to a percentile for each census tract in the city of Boston. The percentiles for each data point are then added together to create an overall score for the census tract.
Census tracts are ranked from the lowest score to highest score, and are grouped together to create tiers. The tiers are intended to be of relative equal size, based on the number of children in grades 5-8 living in each census tract.
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How does the admissions process work?
Students are assigned to one of eight tiers based on their home address and will only compete for exam school admissions with other students in their tier. If your family relocates, please make sure to visit a BPS Welcome Center as soon as possible to update your home address.
Each tier will be allocated approximately the same number of seats. Invitations will be awarded through multiple cycles to ensure all students across the city have equitable access to an exam school. The tier with the lowest socioeconomic score will go first in each round.
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How do I know what tier I live in?
The updated 2023 Tier Map was posted on January 2024, and is now available to the public. Please click this link for an interactive map where you can type in your address and determine what tier you live in. If your family relocates, please make sure to visit a BPS Welcome Center as soon as possible to update your home address.
