Admissions

At Central Park East High School our goal is to make our admissions process as simple as possible.  We do not require an interview, a writing sample, any additional diagnostic testing, a portfolio of work, or even attendance at one of our many open houses.  We believe that a students' grades in middle school are the strongest and best indicator of their commitment to hard work, and our admissions rubric is designed to value and reward work-ethic over performance on standardized exams.  We are appreciative of your interest in our program, and hope that you list us on your application!

As Per NYC DOE Policy for Screened High Schools:

Students' highest grades in four courses—English, Math, Social Studies, and Science––will be used. To determine which grades to use, we will choose the highest grade in each of these courses, from the following:

• Final course grades from seventh grade

• Marking period or end-of-term grades from eighth grade, available by the high school application deadline

This means that a combination of student grades from two different school years may be used.

For example, if an applicant received a 95 for their final seventh grade English grade, an 89 for their first marking period eighth-grade English grade, and an 81 for their second marking period eighth-grade English grade, then a 95 would be used for admissions.

Some high school programs have additional requirements, such as interviews or essays. We will not require this.

Because a variety of grading scales are used across schools, each course grade being used for admissions will be converted to 100-400 points using the table below.

After each of an applicant’s course grades being used for admissions are converted to 100-400 points, these will be averaged to assign each applicant a point average.

1. All applicants are divided into four groups according to their point average. 

• Students whose point average is between 350-400 will fall into Group 1

• Students whose point average is between 250-349 will fall into Group 2

• Students whose point average is between 150-249 will fall into Group 3

• Students whose point average is 149 or below will fall into Group 4

Example: If a student’s point average is 325, this means this student is in Group 2.

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2. For screened high school programs, applicants from Group 1 will be considered first for admissions:

• If there are more applicants from Group 1 than available seats, students from Group 1 will be randomly selected until all seats are filled.

• If there are enough seats for all applicants from Group 1, then students from Group 2 will be considered for remaining seats.

• If there are more applicants from Group 2 than remaining seats, students from Group 2 will be randomly selected for remaining seats until all seats are filled. 

This will continue across groups until all seats are filled, or until all applicants have been placed.