Los Angeles Unified School District has more than 330 programs focused on a specific theme, such as science, math, language, advanced studies or art.
There are many reasons families may consider one of these specialty programs, known as magnets, as an alternative to their resident school. Some of them are so popular there isn’t room for every family that wants to enroll.
LAist is here to help. In this guide we’ll cover:
- The application process, including the points system
- Important dates
- School options
- What to consider as you’re making your choice
We’re primarily focused on elementary and middle school choices in LAUSD, but some of this information is also relevant to families elsewhere and those looking for a high school.
Magnet schools 101
Magnet programs began as a strategy to desegregate U.S. schools in the 1970s. The goal was to attract students from different racial backgrounds to specific campuses.
LAUSD created its first magnet programs in 1977 after a court order to integrate segregated schools.
The benefits of integrating schools are well-established.
“Integration is associated with the reduction of racial prejudice. It's associated with improvements in adult outcomes like income… and health," said Ryan Pfleger, an education policy researcher at UCLA focused on inequalities in education and society.
Some integration strategies were mandatory. For example, some districts were required to bus students to specific schools (LAUSD’s program was short-lived). Magnet programs are voluntary — families choose whether to attend a school.
“Let's address both segregation, a fundamental social problem, and let's improve schools and let's give parents choices,” Pfleger said, explaining the reasoning of the time.
In the decades since then, many magnets have grown in popularity among a broad range of families.
Magnet programs may encompass the whole campus (i.e. a magnet school) or be limited to a department within a larger school (i.e. a magnet center). In the latter, magnet students attend separate classes and have separate teachers.
Families may enroll in a magnet program because their child has a specific interest or they’re interested in a program that attracts students from different geographic areas.
Are schools still segregated?
The magnet application
Here’s a list of all the magnet programs in the district organized by name (alphabetical) or by region, theme and grade level (selection tool).
The application process for magnet schools is called “Choices.” This is also the same application families use to apply for dual language, some honors programs and charter schools.
Who can apply: Any student who lives within LAUSD boundaries can apply, including those with disabilities and English language learners. There is no test required for admittance, except in some cases for the gifted magnet programs.
How to apply:
- The application (available online or on paper) usually opens in October and applications are typically due in mid-November, about 10 months ahead of the first day of school.
- There’s also a late application window, but the only spaces available are those left after families who applied on-time accept their offers.
Let’s say you’re applying for the 2026-27 school year. Here’s the general Choices timeline you’d be on for LAUSD:
- Sept. 2025: School fairs start
- Oct. 2025: Choices application opens
- Mid-Nov. 2025: Deadline to apply online or by mail
- Feb. 2026: Late applications begin
- March 2026: On-time applicant results sent
- Early April 2026: Deadline to accept or decline school offers for on-time applicants
- April 2026: Late selection process begins
Consider this a rough estimate. We’ll update the timeline when LAUSD releases the new dates, usually in early autumn.
Keep in mind:
If your resident school has one or more magnet programs, you must still complete a Choices application for that program. Some magnets are considered "residential magnet schools” and give priority to students that live within the attendance boundary. The best way to know for sure is to inquire with the program you are interested in applying to.
On the application, you must also select one of the federally identified ethnicity/race categories, even if you choose “multi-racial/multi-ethnic.” This criteria is related to LAUSD’s desegregation order.
- American Indian/ Alaska Native
- Asian
- Black or African American
- Hispanic/ Latino
- Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander
- White
Families applying to “gifted” magnet programs must show the “ability” or “strong potential” to work two years above grade level. They have to be assessed by the district and meet additional criteria.
Magnet schools are not required to provide transitional kindergarten. But there might be an on-campus TK option available.
Hear it from a parent: It started with dinosaurs
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Francis Esfahani grew up going to the Natural History Museum with her mother and when her son Milad was born, she continued the tradition. “I think a lot of children really like dinosaurs,” she said. “I don’t know what the word is, but he was like fascinated, fixated.”
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Talking to other San Pedro parents— at community events, the park and the store— led her to the Point Fermin Elementary Marine Science Magnet. Esfahani said the small school felt nurturing and several of the teachers also lived nearby. She thought the focus on science would be a good fit for Milad and was also attracted to the emphasis on math because it was an area she struggled with as a student. “ I didn't want him to have that issue.”
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She visited the school and learned parents were encouraged to get involved. Esfahani volunteered in the classroom and later got a job as a classroom aide. The students often visited the Cabrillo Aquarium, Marine Mammal Care Center and tidepools nearby. “ To this day, he brings shells, little things, rocks. I'm like, ‘Milad, that's a rock.’ He's like, ‘No, this, this was a fossil,’” Esfahani said.
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Milad matriculated into the marine science magnet program at San Pedro High and graduated in 2025. He plans to study marine biology in college with the goal of eventually becoming a paleontologist.
What is the points system?
When there is more demand than seats available, families are admitted based on a points system that takes into consideration:
- Matriculation: Whether students are advancing from the last grade at their current magnet program to a middle or high school (12 points) OR Waiting list: If the student applied to a program where there were more applications than spots available. (4 points for the following year, up to 12 points total for the prior three consecutive years)
- PHBAO: The ethnic make-up of their current school. Students receive these points if their resident schools are predominantly Hispanic, Black, Asian, and “other non-Anglo” aka PHBAO. These points apply to many schools because 10% of students in the district are white. (4 points)
- Overcrowding: Whether their resident school is overcrowded. (The vast majority of students won’t get these points. Just four schools were categorized as overcrowded in the 2024-25 school year. (4 points)
- Siblings: A sibling already in a desired program. (3 points)
The maximum number of points a family may accrue is 23. Seats are assigned randomly to students with the highest number of points in descending order.
We turned to Debbie Steinert, a now-retired, longtime magnet school coordinator at Sylmar Charter High School, for the low-down on what won’t help your child’s chances.
- Your child’s grades or other academic achievements (with the exception of gifted and other select programs)
- Letters of recommendation
- Repeatedly contacting the school
- Making a donation or volunteering at the school
“There's nothing you can do that makes your child more desirable, because this is about integration, not about your child being better than somebody else,” Steinert said.
Keep in mind:
- Families may apply to up to three programs a year. If a student is not selected for any of their three choices, they are placed on a waiting list for their first choice school. (They also get 4 points toward next year’s admissions cycle if they never get off the waitlist.)
- You don’t have to accrue the maximum number of points (23) to get a spot in a magnet program.
- Late applications do not accrue points.
- If you are offered a spot in any magnet program you apply to, but decline to enroll, you will lose all of your accrued waiting list points. This is a risk taken by families who try to accumulate points for future years (i.e. middle or high school) by applying to competitive programs they do not intend to actually attend.
Hear it from a student: Good schools fill the gaps
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Akshita Islam says her third grade teacher at Burbank Boulevard Elementary gifted/global learning magnet changed her life. ”While my speaking was always advanced, my writing wasn't,” Islam said. “But she made sure no one was left behind. And because of her, I now write with confidence.”
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Her teacher provided weekly progress reports to her parents, and created extra assignments and activities that helped her improve her grammar and handwriting. Islam also chose a gifted magnet program for middle school and is now a rising senior at Kennedy High School’s medical magnet program.
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Islam’s decision was shaped, in part, by an older sister who had a good experience at the school and in a variety of programs offered. “ I didn't want to be in the medical field,” Islam says. ”I wanted to innovate and research, so I built my own path.” The path includes classes that give her credit toward an associate’s degree in electrical engineering, an internship at Cedars-Sinai, and serving on several student advisory councils.
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Kennedy, like several other schools she’s attended, is more than an hour's bus ride from her North Hollywood home. “ My journey hasn't been always traditional,” she said. “It's been one shaped with long bus rides, late pickup and a lot of early mornings, but it's also been full of growth.”
How competitive is enrollment?
The interest in some schools far exceeds the capacity.
Or as Steinert put it, ”Your chances of winning, depend on how many people play.”
When you search for a magnet program through LAUSD’s website, you can compare the number of openings for the next school year to how many applications were received the prior year to get an idea of how likely your child is to be admitted. But an important caveat is that the number of openings is for the whole school, not the individual grade your child is hoping to enroll in.
For example: If there are 50 openings at an elementary school, that’s no guarantee that there is a seat available in a second grade classroom. You can try to get a clearer picture of how many openings there are for your child’s grade by asking the school directly.
Keep in mind: If your child doesn’t get in the first year, they accumulate waiting list points that apply to subsequent applications.
What types of gifted magnet programs exist?
So many.
LAUSD groups magnet programs by theme:
- Career and social entrepreneurship
- Designed to prepare students for specific careers including animal science, fire, law enforcement, forensics, hospitality, medicine, law, business, and political science.
- Science, technology, engineering and math
- Also known as STEM. STEAM adds “art” to mix. Schools may focus on one or more of these subjects or a variation including robotics, environmental science, computer science, marine science.
- Liberal arts
- Schools in this genre have a wide variety of focuses including world languages, humanities, museum science, college prep, and social and gender equity.
- Visual and performing arts
- These schools blend studio arts, photography, theater, stage tech, graphic design, music, dance and the entertainment industry throughout their classes.
- New media
- Programs include film, video production, animation, digital media, game development, esports, journalism, graphic arts and podcasting.
There are also Center for Enriched Studies and gifted magnets, which we’ll go into more detail on in a bit.
Not all schools that share the same label — for example, STEAM magnet — offer the same experience. And some labels, like “innovative thinking” or "multicultural," are pretty ambiguous.
“There's a lot of pressure on school leaders and schools to differentiate themselves and to have a special brand,” said Huriya Jabbar, an associate professor of education policy at the University of Southern California. “That doesn't always mean that there are kind of deep curricular changes in the school to align.”
A single class, elective or extracurricular may not be the best indicator of what your child will experience over multiple years at a school.
“Hanging everything on one elective they might take once or twice is probably not the most important thing about choosing a school,” Steinert said.
Furthermore, a magnet school with a specific theme may still offer classes and extracurriculars that overlap with another theme. For example, a middle school with a humanities focus might also offer a robotics program. A high school with a new media focus might also have a dance pathway.
So that’s where school tours and your questions play a big role in understanding a fuller experience at any school.
Center for Enriched Studies
The Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies is LAUSD’s first magnet program and opened in 1977.
The district promotes these schools’ strong focus on academics, college and career preparatory programs.
There are four of these programs:
All the Centers for Enriched Studies offer grades six through 12 and SOCES also includes fourth and fifth grade.
Gifted
The district provides some form of “gifted and talented education” (GATE) programs at each school from TK-12th grade, but there are also dedicated magnet programs that offer separate classes focused on more advanced coursework.
To be eligible, students must meet one of the district’s criteria, which include test scores, creative ability, critical thinking and leadership skills. The district also has several “highly gifted" magnet programs that require a specific intellectual assessment administered by an LAUSD psychologist.
Families may enroll in gifted or highly gifted because their child is bored in their current class or they are seeking a more challenging academic experience.
Hear it from a parent: You have to advocate
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Jolivette Mecenas’ son did not test into LAUSD’s gifted and talented programs the first time he took the assessment in second grade. “ I still had questions,” Mecenas remembered. “This kid memorizes books, all sorts of things. He just did not fit that kind of typical mold.”
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Mecenas spoke with her son's teachers and asked them to recommend their son take another test administered by an LAUSD psychologist and in third grade, he scored high enough to enter the highly gifted program at the Eagle Rock elementary school he already attended.
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Despite the shift to online learning during the pandemic, Mecenas was impressed by the teachers’ ability to hold the students’ attention with fun projects, interesting reading assignments and an at-home version of the school’s dance program. When it came time to look for a middle school, Mecenas and her partner wanted a school that offered advanced math classes and a music program.
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Mecenas visited open houses and took school tours in the fall before they applied to Choices. “That’s I think the best way that we learned the information that we needed to that led to our decision,” she said. Her son also tagged along on the tours. The aquariums full of marine animals in one teacher's classroom at Portola Middle School caught his eye. ”It was a big plus if we met really excited teachers who were just really into what they were teaching,” she said.
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The trade-off was adding a 20-mile commute to and from the Tarzana campus. The family has driven, carpooled and used LAUSD buses at different points. “Think about if your kid can wake up that early and deal with coming home a bit later,” Mecensa said. “Do they have a lot of extracurriculars? Do they play sports because it really eats up that time.”
What data can I consult to make my decision?
For better or worse, we have a school accountability system based largely on students’ standardized test scores.
“The scores tell you something, but usually they are — across the whole country — highly correlated with socioeconomic status,” Learning Policy Institute founding president Linda Darling-Hammond told LAist. “A lot of what they tell you is how well off economically are students in this school, rather than how much is the school contributing to their gains and growth.”
For example, one study in Mississippi found a school’s overall scores can mask outcomes for low-performing groups of students.
No one metric defines a great school and there are many factors beyond test scores to consider— from data about student attendance, discipline and parent surveys on school safety.
By far the most frequent piece of advice we’ve heard is to go on an in-person school tour if possible.
“The very best thing that people can do is go to the school and try to watch the way that educators interact with students, the way that students interact with each other, and the way that families are included or not in the life of a school,” said Jack Schneider, a University of Massachusetts Amherst education researcher and parent. “Once you do that, you really get a sense of what kind of place kids are going to school.”
Some schools post information about tours online, but you may have to call for details.
Once you’re there, here are some questions to ask:
- Can I talk to staff and students?
- Do staff send their children to the school?
- What is staff turnover?
- What professional development is available for staff?
- How big are classes?
- What extracurricular activities are available?
- Is there before- or after-school care?
- What are the options for transportation?
- What is the school’s approach to social and emotional learning?
- How does the school handle discipline and bullying?
- What is the school’s approach to social emotional learning?
- How much time do students spend on screens? I.e. working on computers or tablets?
- Are there any recent or planned improvements to campus?
- What opportunities are there for parents to get involved? Is there a parent-teacher association (PTA) or other organized group of families?
- Can the school help connect families to other community resources i.e. meals, mental health, housing support, internet access?
Here are some things to observe:
- What time of day does the tour take place? Is it a moment of transition like the beginning of the day or lunch?
- Are students engaged in the lessons? Wandering around campus?
- What is the condition of the buildings, classrooms, playgrounds and school grounds? Is there green space?
- How are staff interacting with students and each other?
- What information is posted in the front office and hallways? Are there opportunities for parental involvement?
Hear it from a student: Imagine what you can be
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Nightingale Middle School was Hanna Corona’s resident school, but she heard about the Business Entrepreneurship Technology (BET) Magnet through school visits and social media. She had already started to learn about entrepreneurship from her parents, who work as street vendors, and the stories about students who’d won thousands of dollars in competitions or appeared on Shark Tank caught her attention.
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While at the school, Corona developed an idea that would go on to win several competitions— a biodegradable chewing gum with embedded seeds that could help solve the pollution problem associated with the traditional confection. “The way that the magnet … uplifts the students is by letting them imagine what can be,” Corona says.
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When it was time to pick a high school, Corona researched other magnet programs near her home in Lincoln Heights so that her parents could drop off and pick her up from school. She chose Wilson High School’s law magnet where she participated in mock trial, served on the student advisory council for the school board member and in addition to several other extracurriculars.
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Corona will attend UC Berkeley in fall 2025 and plans to study political science on a pre-law track. “A student must be willing to put themselves out there,” Corona says. “Because a school is just a school. It's just a building, but it's really what you make out of the opportunities that are within.”
In the fall, LAUSD also hosts a series of in-person and virtual “Choices Fairs,” where families can talk to educators from different schools in each region.
We have a comprehensive overview of the information you can review from the comfort of home, but here are a few places to start your search.
LAUSD’s school explorer: You can search by location or by keywords. Each school page provides an overview of the programs and services available and few data points with a comparison to the district average including:
- Test scores
- Student demographics
- The percentage of students who feel safe at the school
For more information, including suspensions, attendance and the progress made by English Language Learners, visit the district’s open data site.
Individual school websites: At their best, these platforms are a window into the school’s history, curriculum, current programs and events. On the other end of the spectrum, information can be sparse or outdated. But a bad website isn’t necessarily indicative of a bad school.
Look for:
- Events
- Tours
- Extracurricular activities and after- and before-school programs
- How to contact teachers and administrators
- Parent and family resources
California School Dashboard: Here you can compare a school’s test scores and other information against state standards. Many measures are assigned a color from red (worst) to blue (best) based on performance from the current year and growth from the prior year.
School Accountability Report Card (SARC): The wonkiest of these options. The SARC is an annual assessment each school must submit each year; among the data is:
- Teacher qualifications
- School facility conditions
- Student support staff on campus (librarian, nurse, psychologist, etc.)
The website isn’t super user-friendly. Search for an individual school here and then click the button that says “view full SARC” to see all of the available information.
More resources
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LAUSD Choices: The district’s dedicated website for the school application process.
- For assistance call the dedicated helpline at (213) 241-4177 or email applyforschools@lausd.net.
- You can also find a paper copy of the Choices booklet at LAUSD schools and Los Angeles Public Libraries.
- Here is a list of information needed to apply.
- To enroll, families must provide additional documentation, including:
- Birth certificate or other legal document to establish a child’s age.
- A parent, legal guardian or caregiver’s government-issued photo ID.
- Proof of residence, a document such as a lease or utility bill that shows your address
- Proof of immunization
Parent Portal: LAUSD’s website and app for families.
When will I hear back?
LAUSD starts notifying families about the outcome of their Choices applications in March and families have until early April to accept or decline the school placement offered. Otherwise, the student’s enrollment will default to their resident school.
Acceptance
If you accept the district’s offer, the next step is to contact the school to enroll. Students who do not enroll and subsequently attend class within the first week of school are dropped from the program.
Waiting list
When there are more applicants than available space, your child will be placed on a waiting list. If you applied for multiple schools and are not selected for any of them, your child is placed on the waiting list for their first choice school.
Schools start to offer available spaces to students on the waiting list in April and continue through the beginning of the fall semester. Spots may also open up the first two weeks of the spring semester.
You can contact the school directly to learn more about your child’s status on the waiting list.
Students still on the waiting list in the fall when the next application period opens should reapply.
Credits
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This guide was informed by the School Game Plan review committee:
- Christian Entezari, consultant
- Huriya Jabbar, USC associate professor of education policy
- Laura Montelongo, parent of current LAUSD student
- Angel Zobel-Rodriguez, parent of LAUSD alum
Illustration: Olivia Hughes / LAist
