Exam Schools Admissions Policy

To be considered for SY24-25 admission to one of the city’s three exam schools, students must be currently enrolled in grades 6, 8, or 9 and live in the City of Boston.

Families of students not currently enrolled in BPS must also verify their residency in the City of Boston in the fall of 2024 at a BPS Welcome Center.

• BPS grade 8 students currently attending an exam school are eligible to participate in the admissions process to apply for grade 9 at a different exam school.

• All applicants are required to meet the minimum GPA of a B or higher in order to be considered for an invitation to a BPS exam school. 

The student’s GPA will account for 70% of their admissions score. Students will need to have a Grade Point Average (GPA) of a B or higher to be eligible to apply.  Admissions for the 2024-2025 school year, the GPA will include marks from the previous year and current year.  Students must have grades in each subject for the GPA to be calculated.

The table below outlines which subject areas and grading terms are included for the 2024-2025 admissions cycle.

Additional Points

In addition to GPA and test scores, students may be eligible to receive additional points if they meet the specific criteria.

Students living in housing owned by the Boston Housing Authority, in the care of the Department of Children and Families, or experiencing homelessness will receive an additional fifteen (15) points regardless of the student’s socioeconomic tier number.

Students that attended a school in the year prior to application that has, on average over the past five years, an enrollment of 40% or more economically disadvantaged students, will receive between two (2) and ten (10) additional points, depending on the student's socioeconomic tier. The table below demonstrates the amount of additional points these students will receive based on their socioeconomic tier, for the admission year of 2024-25:

Additional points are not additive. If a student meets the criteria for both 15 points and the 2-10 points, only the highest (15 points) will be applied to their score.

To learn more about how the additional points are calculated for students who attend a school where 40% or more of the students enrolled come from economically disadvantaged families, you can view the Superintendent’s memorandum here. 

Grading Policy

BPS defines a marking period as any formal report card sent home in regards to a student's term grades. 

BPS grades student work in alignment with DESE’s curriculum frameworks. Furthermore, student behavior is not considered when assigning academic grades. Please review these frameworks that reflect student mastery of grade-appropriate standards. 

• ELA Frameworks 
• Math Frameworks
• Science Frameworks
• Social Studies Frameworks 

On July 2, 2021, Boston Public Schools named NWEA as the vendor to administer the admissions test for the three exam schools as one part of admissions criteria. NWEA’s Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) Growth test measures student achievement in math, reading and language usage. Items on MAP Growth are strongly aligned to the Massachusetts Curriculum Framework grade-level standards and test students on material they have learned in school. NWEA has provided compelling evidence that the assessment is valid for use with diverse student populations.

Many school districts in the Greater Boston area use MAP to evaluate student learning and inform academic instruction. The assessment also includes several built-in accommodations for students with disabilities and English learners. You may access a MAP Growth demo by NWEA, intended for students to become familiar with the testing platform, here. 

MAP Growth is a computer adaptive test, which means that it adapts the level of difficulty based on the responses provided by the student. The test will start at the child’s current grade level and adjust the difficulty based on their performance.

Students will have two opportunities to take the MAP Growth: Spring 2024 and Fall 2024. If the student tests twice, BPS will use the higher score in each subject area (Reading & Math) for the exam school admissions process.   Students must complete the entire MAP Growth test during a BPS test administration in order to receive a score. The student’s score on the NWEA MAP Growth assessment will account for 30% of their admissions score.

In July 2021, the Boston School Committee voted to approve a new admissions policy for the city’s three exam schools. Under the new plan, applicants will be ranked from highest to lowest based on their composite score (GPA and additional points if applicable) and assigned to one of the eight socioeconomic (SES) tiers based on their home address. Families are welcomed to view last admission year’s SES Tier Map. The SES Tier Map will be updated for the 2025-26 admissions season in the winter of 2024.

For more information about the calculation of the socioeconomic tiers, please click here.

A tier is a group of geographic areas in the city with similar socioeconomic characteristics, including:

• Percent of persons living below poverty level
• Owner-occupied households 
• Single parent households
• Non-English speaking households
• Education attainment
  
  

Each tier will receive a socioeconomic score which determines which tier has the highest need.  The tier with the lowest SES score (largest percentage of high need populations) will be considered first and the tier with the highest SES score (lowest percentage of high need populations) will be considered last in each round.

Each tier will have the same number of available seats.  Invitations will be awarded through 10 assignment rounds with 10% of seats available in each tier.  Students will be placed in a seat based on their preference.

Beginning with the 2022-2023 school year, BPS created waitlists for the three exam schools. Students who do not receive an invitation to their top-ranked exam school will be eligible to be placed on a waitlist for any exam school to which they did not get invited, though waitlists are capped at 100 students. 

Ordering of the waitlist will function as a continuation of the exam school invitation policy. Students will be ordered by their composite score and random number within their SES Tier. Waitlists will be created for grades 7 and 9 for all three exam schools, and for grade 10 for the O’Bryant school only. Waitlists will remain in effect until November 30 and will not roll over from year to year.