High School Placement
Success Beyond CSA
100% of CSA’s 2021-2025 8th-grade graduating class members who applied were placed at day and boarding high schools, with scholarships covering tuition and other costs. 96% of CSA's inaugural class of 2021 graduates enrolled in a four-year college, almost double the 52% rate for other Trenton high school graduates.
How We Make This Happen
- Each Middle School student has a placement coordinator, helping drive the mission of ensuring their acceptance to at least one high quality independent high school.
- At the start of 8th grade, we meet with students and their families to discuss their profiles and build a list of schools that are potential matches.
- Students, parents, and their advisers will choose five schools to apply to, with visits to each of those schools that fall.
- Our placement advisors confer with the high schools’ admissions coordinators to determine best matches, and students then interview at select schools.
Our students’ success at CSA, combined with our placement team’s long-standing and ongoing relationships with officials at dozens of high quality high schools, help ensure the likelihood of acceptance by at least one or two schools in March of their 8th-grade years.
A Special Tradition
We provide a special breakfast to help lighten the mood on the day they learn of the high schools’ placement decisions, knowing there will be some disappointment that most students only will be accepted into one to two of their five schools. We emphasize to them that these schools can only accept a limited number of students who require full scholarships.
By mid-April, students must make a final decision on which school they will attend after being able to revisit the ones that accepted them, before focusing on their June graduations.