Blog · Behind the data · August 12, 2026
The Bay Area's Top 10 High Schools for UC Admissions
These are the ten Bay Area high schools whose students earned the most admissions to the six most selective University of California campuses last year, measured per 100 graduating seniors.
1. Harker School, San Jose — 126
2. Valley Christian High School, San Jose — 96
3. Notre Dame High School, San Jose — 94
4. Lynbrook High School, San Jose — 86
5. Monta Vista High School, Cupertino — 85
6. Bishop O'Dowd High School, Oakland — 81
7. Henry M Gunn High School, Palo Alto — 79
8. Cupertino High School, Cupertino — 78
9. Saratoga High School, Saratoga — 73
10. Lowell High School, San Francisco — 71
UC Reach Score counts admissions to Berkeley, UCLA, San Diego, Santa Barbara, Irvine and Davis per 100 graduating seniors. A student admitted to several campuses counts at each, which is why a strong school can score above 100 — it is a measure of how much selective-UC admission a class generates, not the share of students who get in somewhere.
The scale is easier to feel with the raw counts. Harker's 195 seniors earned 245 admissions. Lowell's 642 seniors earned 453. Both are remarkable classes; Harker's is smaller and denser, Lowell's is nearly three and a half times the size and still lands in the top ten.
Six of the ten are public. Santa Clara County holds eight of the ten spots, which is less about any single school than about who lives there and what they ask of their schools.
A note on how the list is built: a school needs at least 100 graduating seniors to be ranked. Small cohorts swing wildly — one exceptional class at a school of forty produces a number that says more about the sample than the school — so they are ranked separately rather than mixed in here.
Two of these ten were missing from this list a few weeks ago. Gunn existed in our database twice, its UC outcomes on one record and its enrollment on another, and the query that builds the rankings needs both — so it dropped out silently. Notre Dame San Jose had been blended with four other schools that share its name. We re-audited all 3,929 California high schools, found 220 in that state, and repaired every one.
If your school looks wrong to you, tell us. That is how we found these. The full ranking for every California high school is in the rankings, and if the next question is what these numbers mean for your own student, build a free Family Decision Report.
This story also runs on the Test Prep Gurus blog, where we write for families working through admissions decisions right now: prepgurus.com/blog.