Poway to Palomar Middle Colleg
San Diego · San Diego County · Poway Unified · Public
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Most similar nearby schools
Audeo Charter School Iii → Montecito High (continuation) → Sunset High (continuation) → Dimensions Collaborative School → Foothills High School → Compare all similar →A parent's read
- About 3 in 4 students read and write at grade level. On the state's own 11th-grade test, 78% met or exceeded the college-readiness bar — the top quarter of California high schools (statewide: 54%).
- Kids actually show up. Only 14% of students are chronically absent, versus about 23% statewide — day-to-day engagement most schools would envy.
- One question for any counselor: who should still test? Plenty of strong students skip the SAT/ACT now — but merit scholarships at dozens of colleges still key off scores. Ask how the school decides who should still sit for one.
Composed from this page's data — every claim is backed by a number in the sections below.
Where grads go — and what it costs & pays
UC admits by campus · Class of 2025
Getting in is step one. The cost above is the average aid-receiving family's net price — yours depends on whether you qualify for aid — and your child's odds depend on their GPA + scores. See your family's real numbers at these campuses:
Get my child's odds + our real costs →Sources: UC Office of the President (admits); IPEDS net price + College Scorecard 10-yr earnings (cost & payoff). Full campus-by-campus breakdown below.
How Poway to Palomar Middle Colleg compares for families
Mid-pack college outcomes within California.
- ▸ StatewideUC Reach Score of 24 — right around the California median of 19.
- ▸ Locally📘 Top 10% in California on ELA proficiency — plus 1 more top-rank.
- ▸ vs Similar SchoolsThe closest comparables nearby: Audeo Charter School Iii, Montecito High (continuation), Sunset High (continuation) and 2 more. See the sidebar to compare side-by-side.
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Objective, government-grade data — no school pays us for placement.
Federal Title I context
Lower-need school
Not Title I eligible (FRPL < 25%)
<25% of students qualify for free/reduced lunch. Well below the Title I threshold; expect a higher-income student body on average.
Source: NCES Common Core of Data, free/reduced-price lunch eligibility. The actual Title I designation is a district decision and may differ from eligibility — but the federal eligibility math is what we show here. We don't claim to assert whether the district formally chose to enroll this school in Title I.
SBAC academic outcomes — grade 11, 2025
Share of grade-11 students meeting or exceeding the California standard on Smarter Balanced ELA and Math. This is the academic-readiness signal that pairs with UC Reach (post-grad outcomes), stability (retention), and absenteeism (engagement). Note: statewide median Math is only ~20% — a school at 20% isn't an outlier; one at 45%+ genuinely is.
Source: California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP) Smarter Balanced research files. Benchmarks limited to non-virtual public & charter HS with ≥30 tested students.
Student composition — 2025-26
HS grades 9–12 racial/ethnic composition and program subgroups, from CDE Census Day Enrollment. Two-year shift shown when ≥1 pt — surfaces how the community served has changed since 2023-24.
Race / ethnicity
Program subgroups
Source: California Department of Education, Census Day Enrollment 2025-26 (HS grades 9–12). Δ shown when shift is ≥1 pt since 2023-24. Categories below 0.5% omitted.
Chronic absenteeism — 2024-25
Share of students missing 10% or more of expected attendance — the leading indicator that often precedes the demand decline shown above. Families disengaging tend to raise absenteeism first, then formally leave. Basis: grades 9–12.
Absenteeism is up 11.3 pp since 2022-23. A rising absenteeism trend often precedes formal departure — worth investigating which subgroups are driving it.
Source: California Department of Education, Chronic Absenteeism 2024-25. Benchmarks limited to non-virtual public & charter HS with ≥100 eligible students. CDE didn't publish a usable 2019-20 file (COVID).
Enrollment trend & projection
How does Poway to Palomar Middle Colleg really compare on getting kids to college?
Unlock a head-to-head snapshot of Poway to Palomar Middle Colleg against its 10 most similar nearby schools — matched on size, location, type. See exactly where it stands on the college pipeline.
Your similar-school group includes
Audeo Charter School Iii · Montecito High (continuation) · Sunset High (continuation) · Dimensions Collaborative School · Foothills High School · Merit Academy · +4 more
Enrollment stability & demand — 2024-25
Two complementary signals: retention (do students stay once enrolled?) and demand (are families choosing the school?). Read against the San Diego County baseline — the demographic tide is moving every CA HS, so a school's gap vs. county is the actionable signal.
Poway to Palomar Middle Colleg is recruiting families faster than San Diego County is shrinking (school +31.7% vs. county -12.7%), but 10 students didn't make it to year-end. The recruitment engine works; the mid-year exits are worth understanding.
10 of 94 students who enrolled at Poway to Palomar Middle Colleg this year didn't maintain continuous enrollment (10.6% non-stability). Mid-year transfers, dropouts, and other exits are all counted.
Stability by student group
Nearest peer high schools
Source: California Department of Education, Stability Rate 2024-25. Benchmarks limited to non-virtual public & charter HS with ≥100 cumulative enrollees so by-design-high-churn continuation schools don't dominate the bottom of the distribution. Cumulative enrollment counts every student on the rolls during the year, so it can exceed peak-day enrollment.
District financial profile — Poway Unified (FY2020)
From 4 years of NCES F-33 filings (the federally-mandated district finance survey). Public schools don't have their own books — the district does. These figures show the financial scale, revenue dependence, instruction-vs-overhead mix, and long-term debt that shape what a school can sustain.
Local: 54.6%
Federal: 6.0%
Source: NCES F-33 Annual Survey of School System Finances (Urban Institute Education Data API). Latest year currently published: FY2020. F-33 is a district-level federal filing — it reflects the Poway Unified as a whole, not this individual school's books. Revenue mix shows where the district's dollars come from (state aid dominates in CA via LCFF). Instruction share is current expenditure on instruction ÷ total current expenditure (national benchmark ~60%). Long-term debt is end-of-year outstanding (mostly facilities bonds).
Poway to Palomar Middle Colleg sent 66 applications to the six most selective University of California campuses and 16.7% were admitted, producing a UC Reach Score of 24 (top-6 UC admits per 100 seniors, counting a student at each campus that admitted them) — 5 points above the California median of 19, higher than 61% of California high schools..
19
53
24
Higher than 61% of California high schools (1107 ranked, ≥50 seniors)
Poway to Palomar Middle Colleg's UC Reach Score of 24 is above the California median (19). The top 10% of CA schools achieve 53 or higher.
For context, the elite tier (top 1%) clears 95 — a gap of 71 pp from where this school sits.
Overall, Poway to Palomar Middle Colleg's UC Reach is higher than 61% of California high schools (1107 ranked).
GPA figures reflect 2024 — UC has not yet released applicant/admit GPA for 2025.
UC Outcomes Trend — 2024–2025
Class size from CDE grade 12 enrollment. Campus-level data: applicant and admit totals count a student once at EACH campus. A senior admitted to UCLA and UC San Diego adds 2 to the admit total, so the total can exceed the senior class — that is the metric working as defined, not an error. The admit RATE is unaffected: both its numerator and denominator are campus-level.
Campus Breakdown — 2025
| Campus | Applicants | Admits | Enrollees | Admit Rate | UC Reach Score | Yield | Avg GPA (App) '24 | Avg GPA (Adm) '24 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UC Berkeley → Elite | 9 | —† | —† | —† | —† | — | — | —† |
| UCLA → Elite | 11 | —† | —† | —† | —† | — | 3.69 | —† |
| UC San Diego → Selective | 13 | —† | —† | —† | —† | — | 3.60 | —† |
| UC Santa Barbara → Selective | 9 | —† | —† | —† | —† | — | 3.70 | —† |
| UC Irvine → Selective | 13 | 7 | 3 | 53.8% | 15 | 42.9% | 3.58 | —† |
| UC Davis → | 11 | 4 | —† | 36.4% | 9 | — | 3.65 | —† |
What This Means
For School Admins
The full Reach Report for Poway to Palomar Middle Colleg
A board- and LCAP-ready intelligence brief: your enrollment retention and college outcomes, benchmarked against your closest competitors, with a 5-year forecast, concrete steps to act on, and the rigor + outcomes story you can share with your families. Built from primary public data — prepared for you, not auto-generated.
- ✓Your UC Reach Score (24) ranked head-to-head against your closest competitor schools
- ✓Student-retention benchmarking vs your county median — and the LCAP evidence to back your goals
Related reading
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UC testing review · August 25, 2026