To get ready for High School parents and students will be able to attend Open Houses starting as early as November and usually until February. The Madison PTSA also organizes information sessions with counselors from the West Seattle High School, so make sure you don’t miss those! Keep an eye on our Welcome page and sign up for our BullDog Bulletin on the right ——>
If your child is going to his/her reference High School, you won’t need to apply on your own. Your student will just need to register and this will happen in class.
If you want to apply for another school than your reference school (public or private), you will need to determine the application process for the school you are interested in. Don’t wait until the last minute, you might need letters of recommendations.
Late Spring, the registration process for reference schools will take place at Madison (and sometimes for a few other schools depending on how many students from Madison are interested). By then, you will have received a form with the available options (brought home by your students). Work with your student to decide together what classes are right for your student. By then his/her portfolio will be ready (this will be taken care of at school, with counselors and advisory teachers).
To learn more about specific High Schools, please go to their respective websites:
To find and compare school scores, click here and choose the school of your choice in the drop down menu at the top of the page (summary).
AP, Spectrum, Honors… what is this all about?
High Schools offer different types of classes:
Regular classes: an A in a regular course contributes a GPA of 4.0
Honors classes (H): Based on school course availability; incoming students must have a teacher recommendation and meet some academic criteria. An A in an Honors class contributes a GPA of 4.5.
Advanced Placement classes (AP)*: Based on school course availability; may have prerequisites. An A in an AP class contributes a GPA of 5.0.
*Note: AP classes should not be confused with APP classes (or HCP – Highly Capable Programs), for which students must have been identified as Highly Capable through district testing. Only a few High Schools offer APP classes, including Garfield for instance.
World Languages … Parlez-vous français ?
To be able to apply to a 4-year college, students will need 4 credits (4 HS years) of a World Language.
If your student has taken 2 years of a World Language in Middle School, he/she might be able to skip the first year of that language in HS depending on his level of knowledge and the requirements of the HS but this is not systematic.
If your student is bilingual already and can read and write in another language than English, you might want to have him/her take a STAMP test in order to get credits for those linguistic skills. For more information, please click here.
Can I get ahead?
Coming from Middle School, your student might already have completed some High School courses such as Algebra 1 or Geometry. The credits earned for those classes could be added to his/her HS transcript, but you will want to make an informed decision depending on the grade received for those classes. Also, because those classes will count as non-Honors classes, your student would add one or two non-Honors classes to his/her transcript, which could affect GPA and ranking. Please talk to your HS counselor to weigh the pros and cons of adding MS credits or STAMP credits to your student’s HS transcript. It is not always the best option…
If you have additional questions regarding your student, please contact the school administration or school counselors. If you have suggestions on how to improve this page and make it more useful for parents and students, please contact us directly at webmastermadisonptsa.com. We welcome any feedback, thank you!