Upcoming Open Houses for Selective Enrollment High Schools

 With so many high school options across Chicago, choosing the right fit can feel overwhelming for students. While online resources (like this page on our website) can provide helpful information about each school's location, strengths, and academic and extracurricular offerings, visiting a school in person can offer valuable insight into its culture and community. For students applying to Selective Enrollment High Schools, as well as certain Catholic and Independent schools, open houses are a great way to connect with administrators and current students, explore available programs, and tour the campus and classrooms.  

This year, many Selective Enrollment High Schools are holding their open houses in October and November. Find a list of open houses and descriptions of their events in order of occurrence, below:

Hancock Selective Enrollment High School
Date: Saturday, October 18
Time: 10am to 1pm

Whitney Young Selective Enrollment High School
Date: Sunday, October 19
Time: 12:30pm to 4pm
Description: At Whitney Young's open house, high school presentations and tours will run every thirty minutes until 2:45pm. There will also be a presentation for students with disabilities at 2pm.

South Shore Selective Enrollment High School
Date: Thursday, October 23
Time: 5pm to 7pm
Description: Current South Shore students, faculty, and staff will welcome prospective students at their open house. The visit will be very interactive, including campus tours, Q&A's, and a club and activity fair. South Shore's IB program and Medical and Business program will also be introduced to prospective students.

Jones Selective Enrollment High School
Date: Saturday, October 25
Time: 10am to 3pm

King Selective Enrollment High School
Date: Saturday, October 25
Time: 10am to 1pm
Description: At King College Prep's open house, students will learn about the school, its program offerings, and its environment. Two presentations will be held at 10am and 11:30am, followed by student-led tours.

Westinghouse Selective Enrollment High School
Date: Saturday, November 1
Time: 10am to 1pm

Brooks Selective Enrollment High School
Date: Saturday, November 1
Time: 12pm to 3pm

Lane Tech Selective Enrollment High School
Date: Saturday, November 1
Time: 12pm to 2:30pm
Description: Lane Tech will be hosting an open house on November 1st. The first presentation will be held at 12pm, with presentations occurring approximately every 35 minutes. The last presentation will be at 2:20pm, and will be followed by tours led by current students.

Note that the other Selective Enrollment High Schools have already held their open houses. Walter Payton held theirs on Saturday, September 27 from 9am to 1pm, Northside College Prep’s was on Sunday, October 5 from 10am to 1pm, and Lindblom’s was on Saturday, October 11 from 10am to 11:30am.

If you are interested in checking out a neighborhood CPS school, families can check out the calendar of open houses for all CPS high schools here. Families interested in looking into non-CPS schools can look into Chicago School GPS's open house and school tour calendar here.

If your student is hoping to attend a selective enrollment high school, Catholic high school, or private high school, high test scores are a must. Through group courses (click here), 1-day workshops (click here), or personalized one-on-one tutoring (click here), our programs help to prepare students for the CPS HSAT through full-length practice exams, targeted homework assignments, and expert test-taking strategies. We continually update our materials based on student feedback and evolving exam trends.

An Overview of Taft Academic Center

Located in the far Northwest side of Chicago, Taft Academic Center (housed within Taft High School) is an International Baccalaureate World School. As noted on the CPS website, IB schools “share a common philosophy—a commitment to improving the teaching and learning of a diverse and inclusive community of students by delivering a challenging and high-quality program of international education.” Most notably, IB students not only adhere to Common Core State Standards but also, international standards of excellence. Students who are accepted into Taft’s Academic Center are automatically accepted into the IB program for high school should they choose to stay.

In addition, according to Taft’s website, Taft is the only high school in Chicago to offer a six-year IB program that begins in 7th grade. This is called their Middle Years Program (MYP). Within the MYP for 7th and 8th graders, students complete an honors-level core curriculum, a design course, a foreign language course, and an elective such as art, drama, or band. Like other academic centers, students can earn high school credit during their 7th and 8th-grade years; unlike other academic centers, Taft 7th and 8th-grade students are able to earn International Baccalaureate high school credits.

Taft’s website also boasts an impressive amount of sports and clubs from which students enrolled can choose to participate: more than 100. In addition, students can learn in a more hands-on environment by attending field trips to places such as Steppenwolf Theater, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, The Holocaust Museum, as well as participating in “Team Building Adventures,” and more. Another unique element of Taft is its transportation policy: transportation is provided through a busing program for students who reside more than 1.5 miles away from the school.

For more information about Taft’s Academic Center and its programs, visit their website at tafthighschool.org.

Lauren Lynch, Tutoring Coordinator
lauren@testprepchicago.com
(312) 848-1266

Academic Center Entrance Exam (ACEE)

The Academic Center Entrance Exam (ACEE) was designed by the Chicago Public Schools’ Office of Access and Enrollment specifically for Chicago’s 6th grade students applying to Academic Centers. Unlike other standardized tests such as the NWEA MAP, the ACEE measures critical thinking skills, reasoning, and problem solving, much like an IQ test. At 90 minutes in length, the exam boasts 9 sections, each being 10 minutes long. It includes both verbal and non-verbal sections such as verbal analogies, vocabulary and sentence completion, word classification, geometric sequences, geometric analogies, number series, and paper folding, respectively.  

 Like the Selective Enrollment High School Exam (SEHS), the exact format of the exam is kept a secret, and there are no practice or past tests available from CPS. However, Test Prep Chicago’s material is exceedingly close to the actual test, which we know based on exit interviews we have conducted with past students who have taken it. To learn more about our curriculum and how to take an ACEE practice test, visit testprepchicago.com.

Lastly, for Chicago Public School, private, and parochial school students alike, the Academic Center Entrance Exam is administered in the winter of students’ 6th grade year, usually in early February. To sign up for a test date and to apply for an Academic Center, visit the CPS website. Stop by our website to check out the dates for our Academic Center prep courses. 

Lauren Lynch, Tutoring Coordinator
lauren@testprepchicago.com
(312) 848-1266

An Overview of Academic Centers

Do you want to avoid the complexities of the high school selective enrollment process, but still want your student to attend a competitive school? An Academic Center may be for you!

Academic Centers, which are similar to middle schools, are housed in high schools and provide a college preparatory program for seventh and eighth-grade students. If a student is admitted into an Academic Center, he or she is automatically granted admission to that Academic Center’s affiliated high school. A few highly sought-after Academic Centers in Chicago include Brooks, Kenwood, Lane Tech, Lindblom, Morgan Park, Taft, and Whitney Young.

The application process for Academic Centers is almost indistinguishable from the Selective Enrollment process; however, instead of the process beginning in 7th grade, students must begin testing in 5th grade. Much like Selective Enrollment, the Academic Center admission process works on a 900-point scale.

The first third of points available come from a student’s 5th-grade grades in math, English, science, and social studies. Each A grade is the equivalent of 75 points, totaling at 300 points, or 1/3 of the 900 points obtainable. Each B grade results in 50 points, each C grade results in 25 points and no points are awarded for grades of D or F.

The second third of the 900 points come from a student’s NWEA MAP scores. For CPS students, the official score will be taken from their spring NWEA MAP in 5th grade, while non-CPS students will get their official score from their fall NWEA MAP in 6th grade. This test is divided into two sections: math and reading. Each section is worth 150 points, totaling at 300.

The final third of students’ points are taken from their Academic Center Entrance Exam (AC Exam). The AC Exam includes 9 sections, each at 10 minutes long. Unlike other standardized tests like the NWEA MAP, the AC Exam measures critical thinking skills, reasoning, and problem-solving, much like an IQ test. This test is administered in the winter of their 6th-grade year, usually in early February. 

In addition to the 900 points, students will also need to fill out an Academic Center application using the CPS website. On the application, parents will have to declare in which tiered neighborhood the student lives (to find out in what tier your neighborhood is, visit the CPS website). The final score a student needs out of 900 for each school (for example, 850/900 for Lane Tech or 880/900 for Taft) will be determined by their socio-economic tier. These applications are usually open in October and are due in mid-December, but you can find official dates on the CPS website.

Lauren Lynch, Tutoring Coordinator
lauren@testprepchicago.com
(312) 848-1266