Record Applications to Harvard-Westlake

As many elite universities report record number of applications this year, some top private high schools are also announcing new application benchmarks. This is the case at Harvard-Westlake School, an elite independent preparatory day school in Los Angeles that has long served as a feeder school to America’s elite universities. In all, 1,260 students applied to Harvard-Westlake for the upcoming 2022-2023 academic year, a figure that’s 3% higher than the 1,220 average application tally for the prep school over the prior three years. And just who applied to Harvard-Westlake this year?

As Will Sherwood, son of former Disney ABC Television Group president and ABC News topper Ben Sherwood, himself a graduate of HWS, reports in a piece entitled “Admissions receives record applications,” “Applications this year were submitted from 356 different sending schools and 268 different zip codes, Salmon said. Of the 290 zip codes in all of Los Angeles County, an area larger than Delaware or Rhode Island, the current student body currently represents 175…Of 1,260 applications overall, 856 applicants—68%—self-identified as people of color, Salmon said. According to the school’s website, the school’s current population includes 59% of students who identify as people of color.”

Congratulations to Harvard-Westlake on their record application tally this year. Decisions will be sent out in March with 215 seats available in the seventh grade, about 90 seats available in the ninth grade, and about ten seats available in the tenth grade.