Research · California counties · October 2026

Where Orange County High School Graduates Go to College: 93 Schools, Fall 2025 UC Data

As of October 2026: Most Orange County graduates stay in California, and the University of California system is the single biggest draw: 93 county high schools had UC admit data for Fall 2025, and the top school on our board, Pacific Academy Irvine, posted a UC Reach Score of 161 with 50 top-6 UC admits. Only 8 county schools print a public list of where their graduates were admitted or enrolled.

A county-wide look at UC admits, published college lists, and what the numbers do and do not tell a family.

Analysis: Test Prep Gurus (High School Reach, highschoolreach.com), October 2026. Figures and the table may be quoted with attribution to Test Prep Gurus.

Orange County's 40 highest UC Reach Scores, Fall 2025

This board ranks county high schools by UC Reach Score, which counts top-6 UC admits per 100 seniors. A single student admitted to four campuses is counted four times, so a score can pass 100. College-going rate is not reported for any school in this set.

UC Reach Score = top-6 UC admits (counted at each campus) per 100 seniors; it can exceed 100. Source: UC Information Center (Fall 2025 first-year admits by school) plus CDE College-Going Rate, via highschoolreach.com. 40 of the 93 county schools with UC data are shown.

The 8 Orange County schools that publish a college list

These schools print their own counts of where graduates were admitted or where they enrolled. We report what each school prints and do not grade it. The years and the kind of list differ by school, so the columns below matter as much as the names.

An acceptances list runs about three times an enrollment list; never add the two. Absence from this table means the school publishes no counted list, not that its graduates go nowhere.

Where do Orange County high school graduates go to college?

They go mostly to California public campuses, and the University of California system is the anchor. We have UC admit data for 93 Orange County high schools for Fall 2025.

The published lists in our second table point the same way. Portola High School in Irvine printed 397 acceptances at Irvine, 378 at Riverside and 246 at Fullerton across the Class of 2020 - 2024. Yorba Linda High School printed Fullerton Collage (42) and Santiago Canyon College (36) at the top of its enrollment list. Santa Margarita Catholic High School printed Saddleback College (31) first for the Class of 2025.

Private schools lean a little farther out. Sage Hill School printed New York University (25) and Stanford University (16) at the top of its 2023-2025 list. St. Margaret's Episcopal School printed Indiana University, Bloomington (4) among its Class of 2026 top six.

For a family, the pattern is simple. The most common first stop after an Orange County high school is a UC, a Cal State or a local community college. A named private college shows up in the counts, but in smaller numbers at almost every school that prints a list.

Which Orange County schools send the most students to the top UCs?

By raw admit count, Troy High School in Fullerton leads with 464 top-6 UC admits. Arnold O Beckman High School in Irvine follows with 443, then Northwood High School with 427 and Portola High School with 421.

Those four are large public schools. A big senior class produces a big admit count even when the share per student is ordinary. Troy's UC Reach Score is 72 and Beckman's is 66, both well under the county's top scores.

Orange County School of the Arts in Santa Ana sits at 378 top-6 admits with a Reach Score of 96. Its UC admit rate is 33.4%, one of the highest in the top ten by count. University High in Irvine shows 385 admits and a 21.9% admit rate.

If you want the school that moves the most students into selective UC campuses, count admits. If you want the school where the average senior has the best odds on this measure, read the Reach Score column instead. The two columns answer different questions, and the table lets you read both side by side.

What does a UC Reach Score of 60 mean for my child?

A UC Reach Score of 60 means the school earned 60 top-6 UC admits for every 100 seniors, counted at each campus. One student can be counted at each campus that admits them. That is why the score can pass 100.

Pacific Academy Irvine scores 161 and Sage Hill School scores 151. Neither number means every senior got into a UC. It means a modest group of students each collected several UC admits, and the school has a small class.

Fairmont Preparatory Academy in Anaheim scores 101 and Magnolia Science Academy-Santa Ana scores 100. Below them the board falls off fast. Oxford Academy in Cypress scores 84 and Middle College High in Santa Ana scores 80.

What a parent should take from a score near 60 is this. The school has a real pipeline to selective UC campuses, and students who apply with strong records are often admitted. The score does not promise a seat to any one student. It describes a pattern across a whole class, and your child's record still does the work.

Which school has the highest UC admit rate in Orange County?

Crean Lutheran High School in Irvine posts the highest UC admit rate on our board at 36.5%. Magnolia Science Academy-Santa Ana and Samueli Academy each post 34.0%. Pacific Academy Irvine is at 33.8% and Sage Hill School at 33.7%.

The admit rate and the Reach Score do not always move together. Samueli Academy in Santa Ana shares the 34.0% admit rate but has a Reach Score of 40 and 55 top-6 admits. The school admits a strong share of the students who apply, and fewer of its seniors apply broadly.

At the other end, Legacy College Prep in Santa Ana shows a 16.6% rate and Canyon High School in Anaheim shows 16.1%. Irvine High School shows 18.2% even though it recorded 216 top-6 admits.

The rate tells you how often an application turned into an offer. The admit count tells you how many offers the school collected in total. A family comparing two schools should look at both columns, plus the size of the senior class, before drawing any conclusion.

Where do graduates of the Orange County private schools enroll?

Sage Hill School in Newport Coast printed New York University (25) as its most common enrollment across 2023-2025. Stanford University (16) came next, then University of California, Berkeley (15), University of California, Irvine (15) and University of Southern California (15), with University of California, Los Angeles (14) close behind.

St. Margaret's Episcopal School in San Juan Capistrano printed a flatter list for the Class of 2026. University of San Diego (6) and University of Southern California (6) tied at the top. Chapman University (5), New York University (5), Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo (4) and Indiana University, Bloomington (4) rounded out the top six.

Santa Margarita Catholic High School printed Saddleback College (31) first for the Class of 2025, then University of Utah (26) and Texas Christian University (16). Whittier Christian High School in La Habra printed an acceptances list from the Class of 2020 led by University of California-Riverside (21).

The takeaway for a parent is that private school outcomes spread wider than UC alone. Out-of-state names like Utah, Texas Christian and Indiana appear in real numbers. So do community colleges. The printed lists are the school's own record, and we report them as printed.

How many Orange County schools publish where their graduates enroll?

Eight. Of the 93 Orange County schools with UC admit data, only 8 print a counted list of admissions or enrollments that we could read and record.

Those 8 are Pacific Academy Irvine, Sage Hill School, Orange County School of the Arts, St. Margaret's Episcopal School, Portola High School, Yorba Linda High School, Santa Margarita Catholic High School and Whittier Christian High School. Five print enrollment counts and three print acceptance counts.

Many other schools in the top-40 table say they publish something but do not attach counts. Troy High School, Corona Del Mar High School, Mater Dei High School, Garden Grove High School and La Quinta High all show an acceptances or matriculation label with no college counts recorded. Those entries are not reported in the second table.

Absence from the published list table means the school prints no counted list. It says nothing about the strength of the school. A family that wants that information from a school with no list has to rely on the UC board, which is built from UC's own counts.

How many Orange County graduates go to college at all?

We cannot answer that from this data, because the college-going rate is not reported for any of the 93 schools in our set. The column exists on the board and sits empty for every row.

That is a real gap, and we name it plainly rather than fill it with a guess. The California Department of Education publishes a college-going rate file, and it is listed in our sources. It did not carry a usable value for these schools at the time of this page.

What we can say comes from the lists that do exist. Community colleges appear high on several enrollment lists. Yorba Linda High School printed Fullerton Collage (42), Santiago Canyon College (36) and Santa Ana College (9). Orange County School of the Arts printed Orange Coast College (16) in its top six.

That pattern suggests the local two-year system carries a large share of county graduates. We stop short of a county-wide percentage, because the number is not in front of us. A parent who needs that figure should read the CDE file we link rather than treat our tables as a stand-in.

Why do some schools score over 100 on the UC Reach Score?

Because the score counts each UC campus separately. Pacific Academy Irvine scored 161 with 50 top-6 admits, and Sage Hill School scored 151 with 223 admits. Fairmont Preparatory Academy scored 101 with 158 admits.

Picture one strong senior who applies to six UC campuses and gets into four. That student adds four to the admit count. Spread a few students like that across a small class, and the per-100-seniors math runs past 100 quickly.

Small schools swing hardest. Pacific Academy Irvine's 50 admits is one of the smaller counts in our top 40, yet its score is the highest in the county. Magnolia Science Academy-Santa Ana scored 100 on just 36 admits. Tarbut V'Torah Community Day School scored 65 on 34 admits.

Large schools move the other way. Portola High School collected 421 admits and still scored 67, because it has a lot of seniors. Neither pattern is a flaw in the measure. It means a parent should always read the Reach Score next to the admit count, and keep class size in mind.

Does an acceptances list mean the same thing as an enrollment list?

No, and mixing them is the most common mistake we see. An acceptances list runs about three times an enrollment list, because one student can hold several offers but attends one college.

Portola High School printed Irvine (397), Riverside (378) and Fullerton (246) for the Class of 2020 - 2024. Those are acceptances across five classes, not 397 students who enrolled at Irvine. Pacific Academy Irvine's 2026 list is also acceptances: University of California Riverside (16) and University of California Irvine (11).

Sage Hill School, Orange County School of the Arts, St. Margaret's Episcopal School, Yorba Linda High School and Santa Margarita Catholic High School print enrollment counts. Those numbers are smaller by nature. Orange County School of the Arts printed University of Southern California (23) as its top Class of 2026 enrollment.

Never add the two kinds of list together, and never compare a school's acceptance count to another school's enrollment count. Our table shows the list type in its own column for that reason. Read that column first, then read the numbers.

Which cities in Orange County have the strongest UC pipelines?

Irvine appears more than any other city in our top 40, with nine schools on the board. Pacific Academy Irvine leads at 161, followed by Crean Lutheran High School at 94, Northwood High School at 71, Portola High School at 67 and University High at 67.

Santa Ana is the next deepest city, with six schools in the top 40. Magnolia Science Academy-Santa Ana scores 100, Orange County School of the Arts scores 96, Middle College High scores 80 and Samueli Academy scores 40. Mater Dei High School, Legacy College Prep and Hector Godinez Fundamental High School also sit on the board.

Fullerton shows two schools with large counts: Troy High School at 464 top-6 admits and Sunny Hills High School at 327. The coastal cities contribute Corona Del Mar High School in Newport Beach at 48, Laguna Beach High School at 47 and Sage Hill School in Newport Coast at 151.

South county is well represented too, through Santa Margarita Catholic High School and Tesoro High School in Rancho Santa Margarita, Capistrano Valley High School in Mission Viejo and Aliso Niguel High School in Aliso Viejo. A family moving within the county has strong options in most ZIP codes, not just in Irvine.

What should I do with these numbers before my child applies?

Start by finding your school's row and reading three columns together: the UC Reach Score, the top-6 admit count and the UC admit rate. Troy High School at 464 admits and 24.3% tells a different story than Crean Lutheran High School at 269 admits and 36.5%.

Next, check whether your school is one of the 8 that print a counted list. If it is, read the list type before the names. If it is not, the UC board still comes from UC's own records.

Then set the school data aside and look at your child. None of these numbers predict one student's result. A Reach Score of 29 at Canyon High School and a 161 at Pacific Academy Irvine describe school patterns, not the odds for any applicant with a particular transcript.

Use the board the way you would use a weather report for a trip. It tells you what is normal in that place. It does not tell you what happens on your day. Plan the application list around your child's record, grades and interests, and treat the county numbers as background.

What do these tables leave out?

Three things. The college-going rate is not reported for any of the 93 schools, so we print no county-wide college attendance figure. The second gap is coverage of the published lists: only 8 schools print counted lists, so 85 of the 93 have no printed list in our set.

The third is time. The years covered differ by school. Northwood High School's label reads Class of 2013 - 2017. Whittier Christian High School's acceptances list is from the Class of 2020. Yorba Linda High School and Crean Lutheran High School give no year at all.

The UC data itself is one year, Fall 2025 first-year admits. A single year moves with class size and with UC's own capacity choices. A school that scored 33 this year may have scored higher or lower last year.

We also count admits, not enrollments, on the UC board. A student admitted to four campuses attends one. That is why the Reach Score is a measure of access and offers, not of where the class actually landed. Keep those four limits in mind when you compare two schools.

Related: Orange County UC brief · All rankings · Family Decision Report