University City High
San Diego · San Diego County · San Diego Unified · Public
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Most similar nearby schools
Charter School of San Diego → Mission Bay High → LA Jolla High → San Diego High School → Canyon Hills High School → Compare all similar →📋 At a glance
- 📚 15 AP courses offered — Elite
- ✅ Dual-enrollment program (college credit while in HS)
- ✅ Gifted & talented program
- 🔢 3 calculus classes · 15 physics · 21 chemistry
- 🎓 AP rigor: Top 3.7% of US high schools
- 📝 SAT/ACT participation: 69th percentile by test-taker volume
- 🎓 4-yr grad rate: 99% (Top 0.7% of US high schools by 4-yr grad rate)
Composed from federal CRDC offerings, EDFacts ACGR, and other public data. Full breakdowns below.
🎓 Where grads go
UC admits by campus · Class of 2025
Source: University of California Office of the President, Admissions by Source School. Full campus-by-campus breakdown below.
How University City High compares for families
Above-average college outcomes statewide.
- ▸ Statewide33.0% UC Reach — 14.9 points above the California median of 18.1%. Ahead of 78% of California high schools.
- ▸ Locally📘 Top 10% in California on ELA proficiency — plus 1 more top-rank.
- ▸ vs Similar SchoolsBeats the peer median (33.0% UC Reach vs 25.1% median) across the 5 most similar nearby schools.
For Parents
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🎓 Academic rigor
AP + advanced-course offerings
Elite — exceptional AP + advanced course breadth
Top 3.7% of US high schools
✅ Gifted/talented program
Source: federal Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC 2020-21). CRDC reports what's offered + enrolled — it doesn't collect AP exam pass rates (College Board owns that data and doesn't release it school-level).
SAT / ACT participation
CRDC federal data · 2020-2169th percentile by test-taker volume
Source: federal Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC 2020-21). Volume — not score — is what's reported here. A higher count means more students at this school are entering the college admissions pipeline. Note: 2020-21 was COVID-disrupted; some districts (especially those that stayed remote longer) report unusually low or zero takers.
🎓 4-year graduation rate · federal EDFacts
What % of students graduate on time?
Top 0.7% of US high schools by 4-yr grad rate
Source: federal EDFacts ACGR (Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate), 2019 vintage via Urban Institute. EDFacts publishes a range (low-high) to preserve privacy on small cohorts; we display the midpoint.
🏛️ Federal Title I context
Title I Schoolwide eligible
≥40% FRPL — qualifies for Title I Schoolwide program
40-74% of students qualify for free/reduced lunch. The district can use Title I funds across the whole school under federal Schoolwide Program rules.
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 7.1 pp since 2016-17. 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
If this trend holds (-3.6%/yr, Total enrollment)
At per-pupil funding of $ / student:
| Horizon | Projected Total enrollment | Change | Funding impact / yr |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 yr (2027) | ~1,393 | -52 | $0 |
| 3 yr (2029) | ~1,295 | -150 | $0 |
| 5 yr (2031) | ~1,204 | -241 | $0 |
Straight-line extrapolation of the recent annual rate — a what-if, not a forecast of intent. Default = California's LCFF base grant for grades 9–12 ($12,423/ADA). Edit the figure to match your school.
University City High — Enrollment & Outcomes Snapshot
Public · San Diego · vs. 10 most similar nearby schools
- ▸On UC Reach Score, University City High sits in the middle of its similar-school group (ranked #4 of 11): 33 vs. a peer median of 25.
- ▸University City High's UC Reach Score has declined meaningfully from a peak of 56 in 2021 to 33 in 2025 — a 23-point drop that warrants attention. Multi-year UC Reach declines of this size often signal something specific (leadership change, comp-program shift, demographic move) rather than year-to-year noise. This is the kind of trajectory an Enrollment Trend Audit unpacks.
- ▸Senior-class enrollment is down 26% (456→338 from 2018 to 2026), trailing the peer-group median of -4%.
- ▸At its recent rate (-3.2%/yr), enrollment projects to ~1312 by 2029 — about 133 fewer students than today.
Enrollment projection
That's about 133 fewer students. At per-student funding of $ per student, that's roughly $0 in annual state funding at risk.
Default = California's LCFF base grant for grades 9–12 ($12,423 per ADA) — adjust to your district's actual per-pupil figure. Projection extrapolates the recent annual rate — not a forecast of intent.
Your school vs. its 10 most similar nearby schools
| School | Type | Size | UC Reach Score | Enroll. trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| University City High | Public | 1445 | 33 | -26% |
| Peer-group median | 25 | -4% | ||
| Charter School of San Diego | Public | 1268 | 2 | -77% |
| Mission Bay High | Public | 1280 | 26 | +38% |
| LA Jolla High | Public | 1147 | 62 | -22% |
| San Diego High School | Public | 1408 | 26 | +147% |
| Canyon Hills High School | Public | 1160 | 21 | -26% |
| Crawford High School | Public | 1361 | 21 | +22% |
| Point Loma High School | Public | 1747 | 24 | -5% |
| Scripps Ranch High | Public | 1920 | 43 | -3% |
| Lincoln High | Public | 1444 | 12 | +6% |
| Canyon Crest Academy | Public | 1977 | 93 | -5% |
UC Reach Score = top-6 UC admits ÷ senior class (can exceed 100 when students are admitted to multiple campuses). Enrollment trend = first-to-latest grade-12 change on file. Similar schools matched on proximity, size, type. Methodology →
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.
University City High's enrollment is shrinking 3.3× the county rate (school -25.9% vs. county -7.8%). Stability of 93.3% means every family you keep is one fewer; the leverage is at recruitment, not retention. This is the case the high stability number alone would hide.
102 of 1,521 students who enrolled at University City High this year didn't maintain continuous enrollment (6.7% 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 — San Diego 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: 65.2%
Federal: 10.6%
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 San Diego 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).
University City High sent 686 applications to the six most selective University of California campuses and 18.7% were admitted, producing a UC Reach Score of 33 — 15 points above the California median of 18, higher than 78% of California high schools. The school produces 4.6 UCLA + UC Berkeley admits per 100 seniors.
+8 pts above peer median (25) · Ranked #4 of 11 similar schools
18
25
51
33
Higher than 78% of California high schools (978 ranked, ≥50 seniors)
University City High's UC Reach Score of 33 is in the top quartile statewide (median 18; top 25% bar 30) — but it's still below the top-10% bar of 51.
For context, the elite tier (top 1%) clears 97 — a gap of 64 pp from where this school sits.
Overall, University City High's UC Reach is higher than 78% of California high schools (978 ranked).
UC funnel — which kids are getting in at what GPA
Combining the school's applicant pool GPA, admit pool GPA, actual admit rate, and statewide CA admit rates by individual GPA band, we can read which GPA tiers tend to get in — and which don't.
| Campus | 4.00+ GPA | 3.70–3.99 GPA | 3.30–3.69 GPA | < 3.30 GPA |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| UC Berkeley | Real shot | Long odds | Filtered out | Filtered out |
| UCLA | Real shot | Long odds | Filtered out | Filtered out |
| UC San Diego | Strong shot | Moderate | Long odds | Filtered out |
| UC Santa Barbara | Strong shot | Real shot | Long odds | Filtered out |
| UC Irvine | Strong shot | Real shot | Long odds | Filtered out |
| UC Davis | Strong shot | Strong shot | Real shot | Filtered out |
The numbers behind it
| Campus | Applicant GPA | Admit GPA | Lift ⓘ | Admit rate | vs peer schools @ same GPA ⓘ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UC Berkeley | 4.08 | 4.14 | +0.07 | 4.7% | Peers +0.19 · wider |
| UCLA | 4.07 | 4.30 | +0.24 | 10.5% | Peers +0.23 · matches |
| UC San Diego | 4.02 | 4.25 | +0.23 | 21.1% | Peers +0.26 · matches |
| UC Santa Barbara | 3.99 | 4.28 | +0.30 | 25.0% | Peers +0.27 · matches |
| UC Irvine | 4.03 | 4.27 | +0.24 | 17.4% | Peers +0.21 · matches |
| UC Davis | 4.03 | 4.22 | +0.19 | 39.7% | Peers +0.20 · matches |
📊 Statewide CA admit rates by individual GPA band, 2025 (for reference)
| GPA band | UCB | UCLA | UCSD | UCSB | UCI | UCD |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4.00+ | 17.0% | 15.1% | 45.2% | 62.3% | 46.3% | 65.9% |
| 3.70–3.99 | 3.1% | 1.6% | 9.3% | 17.6% | 17.0% | 31.1% |
| 3.30–3.69 | 0.8% | 0.5% | 1.5% | 2.8% | 2.4% | 10.3% |
| 3.00–3.29 | 0.4% | 0.3% | 0.2% | 0.4% | 0.3% | 1.9% |
| < 3.00 | 0.7% | 0.4% | 0.3% | 0.2% | 0.1% | 0.7% |
Where University City High sits vs. all California schools ⓘ
Overall, this school admits its UC applicants in line with what their GPAs predict (18.7% actual vs. 21.9% expected).
UC Outcomes Trend — 2018–2025
Class size from CDE grade 12 enrollment. Campus-level data — applicant/admit totals may count a student at multiple campuses more than once.
Campus Breakdown — 2025
| Campus | Applicants | Admits | Enrollees | Admit Rate | UC Reach Score | Yield | Avg GPA (App) | Avg GPA (Adm) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UC Berkeley → Elite | 106 | 5 | 3 | 4.7% | 1 | 60.0% | 4.08 | 4.14 |
| UCLA → Elite | 124 | 13 | 7 | 10.5% | 3 | 53.8% | 4.07 | 4.30 |
| UC San Diego → Selective | 142 | 30 | 13 | 21.1% | 8 | 43.3% | 4.02 | 4.25 |
| UC Santa Barbara → Selective | 104 | 26 | —† | 25.0% | 7 | — | 3.99 | 4.28 |
| UC Irvine → Selective | 132 | 23 | 8 | 17.4% | 6 | 34.8% | 4.03 | 4.27 |
| UC Davis → | 78 | 31 | 5 | 39.7% | 8 | 16.1% | 4.03 | 4.22 |
What This Means
For School Admins
The full Reach Report for University City High
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 (33) ranked head-to-head against your closest competitor schools
- ✓Your 5-year enrollment forecast (currently -3.6%/yr) with the revenue at stake
- ✓Student-retention benchmarking vs your county median — and the LCAP evidence to back your goals