What are the admission requirements for a magnet school?
Admission requirements for magnets vary tremendously. They are public schools, so they are not really allowed to have admissions processes like private schools do. However, at the same time, a performing art magnet school can make you perform an admission audition to make sure that you're a good fit for that program. Some magnet schools are highly gifted magnets, so you have to have a certain IQ score or a certain score on a particular test in order to be admitted. It really depends on the specialization of the magnet school and on your district. One thing that's pretty true across magnet schools is they're hard to get into. Even if your child does qualify, you might not be able to get in. There's often a lot of planning and scheming that goes into the admission process, so again, it comes down to first come first serve and neighborhoods. Parents will wait in line, camp out, wait all night to make sure they are first in line for magnet school admissions. In Los Angeles, for instance, admission is a lottery system. You put in your application and they pull lottery tickets. However, the whole point of the magnet system is to keep a racial balance in the school system, so although it's a random draw, people from different ethnic groups have different odds of getting drawn. We may draw more kids from the Latino pool than the white pool in a predominantly white magnet school. If you have a predominantly black school, you may admit more Latino kids and more white kids than you will African American kids. It's interesting, and there are many ways in which parents can try to game the magnet admission system. They may apply to a school they know - or are pretty sure - they won't get into in order to get priority enrollment the next year in a magnet school they really do want to gain admittance to. You want to talk to your district about magnets, and you want to talk to other parents. You want to identify the parent at your school who's good at this admissions stuff and you want to try to pick his or her brain and find out all of the little tricks. There's someone at almost every school who knows how your district works and that's the person you want to try to talk to.
