Blog · California · October 2, 2026
66 schools answer on March 12. Forty want your answer by the 19th.
On Friday, March 12, 2027, sixty-six California private high schools send out their admission decisions. All on the same day. Most of them in the afternoon.
Forty-five of those schools are in the Bay Area. Twenty are in Los Angeles. One is on the Central Coast.
So if your family applied to three or four schools, there is a good chance every answer lands in one inbox on one evening.
Most parents expect that part. Here is the part they do not.
One week later, on March 19, forty schools want your answer back. Signed enrollment contract, deposit, done. Several set a noon cutoff. One asks for it by six in the morning.
The real window is not a day. It is seven days. Inside that week a family has to compare aid letters, maybe visit one more time, and choose.
March 12 is not the only decision day, either. Twenty-eight schools answer a week earlier, on March 5. Eight answer March 10. Six answer March 11. If your list mixes those dates, your week gets longer, not shorter.
Three things worth doing now, in October, while this is still five months away:
- Put both dates on the family calendar for every school on your list — the day it answers, and the day it needs your answer.
- Ask each school in writing when financial aid letters go out. A decision without the aid number is half an answer.
- Agree in advance who makes the call if two offers arrive and you have five days to pick.
The last one sounds small. It is the one that saves the week.
Our California tracker carries the dates for 265 private schools. Every date comes from the school's own admissions page, with a link to where the school says it. We re-check them on the first of each month through the season, because schools do move dates.
Pick the schools your family is considering and it builds one timeline: application deadlines, entrance exams, open houses and decision days, in order.
It is free, and there is nothing to sign up for. You can find it at highschoolreach.com/california.