Costa Mesa High School
📄 Shareable scorecard →Compare with peers
Most similar nearby schools
Valley High → Saddleback High School → Bolsa Grande High School → Santiago High → Los Amigos High School → Compare all similar →Enrollment trend & projection
If this trend holds (-1.8%/yr, Total enrollment)
At per-pupil funding of $ / student:
| Horizon | Projected Total enrollment | Change | Funding impact / yr |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 yr (2027) | ~1,581 | -29 | $0 |
| 3 yr (2029) | ~1,525 | -85 | $0 |
| 5 yr (2031) | ~1,471 | -139 | $0 |
Straight-line extrapolation of the recent annual rate — a what-if, not a forecast of intent. Default = California's LCFF base grant for grades 9–12 ($12,423/ADA). Edit the figure to match your school.
Enrollment stability & demand — 2024-25
Two complementary signals: retention (do students stay once enrolled?) and demand (are families choosing the school?). Read against the Orange County baseline — the demographic tide is moving every CA HS, so a school's gap vs. county is the actionable signal.
Enrollment and retention both close to Orange County baseline. The demographic tide is the main mover; no internal break in the system, but no outperformance either.
107 of 1,197 students who enrolled at Costa Mesa High School this year didn't maintain continuous enrollment (8.9% non-stability). Mid-year transfers, dropouts, and other exits are all counted.
Stability by student group
Nearest peer high schools
Source: California Department of Education, Stability Rate 2024-25. Benchmarks limited to non-virtual public & charter HS with ≥100 cumulative enrollees so by-design-high-churn continuation schools don't dominate the bottom of the distribution. Cumulative enrollment counts every student on the rolls during the year, so it can exceed peak-day enrollment.
Chronic absenteeism — 2024-25
Share of students missing 10% or more of expected attendance — the leading indicator that often precedes the demand decline shown above. Families disengaging tend to raise absenteeism first, then formally leave. Basis: grades 9–12.
Absenteeism is up 7.6 pp since 2016-17. A rising absenteeism trend often precedes formal departure — worth investigating which subgroups are driving it.
Source: California Department of Education, Chronic Absenteeism 2024-25. Benchmarks limited to non-virtual public & charter HS with ≥100 eligible students. CDE didn't publish a usable 2019-20 file (COVID).
SBAC academic outcomes — grade 11, 2025
Share of grade-11 students meeting or exceeding the California standard on Smarter Balanced ELA and Math. This is the academic-readiness signal that pairs with UC Reach (post-grad outcomes), stability (retention), and absenteeism (engagement). Note: statewide median Math is only ~20% — a school at 20% isn't an outlier; one at 45%+ genuinely is.
Source: California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP) Smarter Balanced research files. Benchmarks limited to non-virtual public & charter HS with ≥30 tested students.
Student composition — 2025-26
HS grades 9–12 racial/ethnic composition and program subgroups, from CDE Census Day Enrollment. Two-year shift shown when ≥1 pt — surfaces how the community served has changed since 2023-24.
Race / ethnicity
Program subgroups
Source: California Department of Education, Census Day Enrollment 2025-26 (HS grades 9–12). Δ shown when shift is ≥1 pt since 2023-24. Categories below 0.5% omitted.
District financial profile — Newport-Mesa Unified (FY2020)
From 4 years of NCES F-33 filings (the federally-mandated district finance survey). Public schools don't have their own books — the district does. These figures show the financial scale, revenue dependence, instruction-vs-overhead mix, and long-term debt that shape what a school can sustain.
Local: 78.6%
Federal: 7.2%
Source: NCES F-33 Annual Survey of School System Finances (Urban Institute Education Data API). Latest year currently published: FY2020. F-33 is a district-level federal filing — it reflects the Newport-Mesa Unified as a whole, not this individual school's books. Revenue mix shows where the district's dollars come from (state aid dominates in CA via LCFF). Instruction share is current expenditure on instruction ÷ total current expenditure (national benchmark ~60%). Long-term debt is end-of-year outstanding (mostly facilities bonds).
-4.1 pp vs. peer median (18.6%) · Ranked #10 of 11 similar schools
18.5%
53.3%
14.5%
Higher than 39% of California high schools (1105 ranked, ≥50 seniors)
Costa Mesa High School's UC Reach of 14.5% is below the California median (18.5%). The top 10% of CA schools achieve 53.3% or higher.
But in Orange County, where the local median is 25.0% and the top-10% bar is 71.2%, this score is mid-pack rather than exceptional — typical of its market rather than a standout.
Overall, Costa Mesa High School's UC Reach is higher than 39% of California high schools (1105 ranked).
Costa Mesa High School — Enrollment & Outcomes Snapshot
Public · Costa Mesa · vs. 10 most similar nearby schools
- ▸On UC Reach, Costa Mesa High School sits near the bottom of its similar-school group (ranked #10 of 11): 14% vs. a peer median of 19%.
- ▸Its UC Reach has risen 2 points since 2018.
- ▸Across the top-6 UC campuses, Costa Mesa High School is admitting at roughly +6 percentage points above what its average applicant GPA (3.83) alone would predict (28% actual vs. 22% expected). That's a meaningful signal — it can reflect UC's track record with this school's graduates, students presenting strongly in UC's holistic review (essays, EC's, context), or institutional familiarity helping at the margin. The data can't distinguish which, but the pattern itself is real and worth understanding.
- ▸Senior-class enrollment is down 8% (283→260 from 2018 to 2026), tracking the peer-group median of -10%.
- ▸At its recent rate (-1.8%/yr), enrollment projects to ~1525 by 2029 — about 85 fewer students than today.
Enrollment projection
That's about 85 fewer students. At per-student funding of $ per student, that's roughly $0 in annual state funding at risk.
Default = California's LCFF base grant for grades 9–12 ($12,423 per ADA) — adjust to your district's actual per-pupil figure. Projection extrapolates the recent annual rate — not a forecast of intent.
Your school vs. its 10 most similar nearby schools
| School | Type | Size | UC Reach | Enroll. trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Costa Mesa High School | Public | 1610 | 14.5% | -8% |
| Peer-group median | 18.6% | -10% | ||
| Valley High | Public | 1737 | 14.8% | +4% |
| Saddleback High School | Public | 1407 | 15.1% | -3% |
| Bolsa Grande High School | Public | 1606 | 27.1% | -16% |
| Santiago High | Public | 1557 | 20.6% | -16% |
| Los Amigos High School | Public | 1327 | 17.1% | -21% |
| Tustin High School | Public | 1520 | 16.2% | -29% |
| Newport Harbor High School | Public | 2044 | 25.5% | +4% |
| Segerstrom High School | Public | 2209 | 20.0% | -5% |
| Century High School | Public | 1356 | 8.2% | +18% |
| Corona Del Mar High School | Public | 2117 | 47.8% | -14% |
UC Reach = top-6 UC admits ÷ senior class (can exceed 100% when students are admitted to multiple campuses). Enrollment trend = first-to-latest grade-12 change on file. Similar schools matched on proximity, size, type. Methodology →
Admit rate vs. CA peer average, by campus ⓘ
How does this school's admit rate at each UC compare to other CA schools whose applicant pool averages the same GPA?
| Campus | Applicant GPA (avg) | Actual admit rate | CA peer avg | Δ | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UC Berkeley | 3.85 | 18.2% | 11.6% | +6.5pp | Over |
| UC San Diego | 3.84 | 31.0% | 23.7% | +7.2pp | Over |
| UC Santa Barbara | 3.83 | 28.6% | 27.0% | +1.6pp | On target |
| UC Irvine | 3.79 | 25.0% | 19.8% | +5.2pp | Over |
| UC Davis | 3.89 | 46.2% | 32.2% | +13.9pp | Over |
Where Costa Mesa High School sits vs. all California schools ⓘ
Overall, this school admits its UC applicants 6.0 points above what their GPAs predict (28.0% actual vs. 22.0% expected).
UC Outcomes Trend — 2018–2025
Class size from CDE grade 12 enrollment. Campus-level data — applicant/admit totals may count a student at multiple campuses more than once.
Campus Breakdown — 2025
| Campus | Applicants | Admits | Enrollees | Admit Rate | UC Reach | Yield | Avg GPA (App) | Avg GPA (Adm) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UC Berkeley → Elite | 22 | 4 | — | 18.2% | 1.3% | — | 3.85 | — |
| UCLA → Elite | 38 | — | — | — | — | — | 3.88 | — |
| UC San Diego → Selective | 42 | 13 | 4 | 31.0% | 4.3% | 30.8% | 3.84 | 4.21 |
| UC Santa Barbara → Selective | 28 | 8 | — | 28.6% | 2.6% | — | 3.83 | 4.16 |
| UC Irvine → Selective | 52 | 13 | 8 | 25.0% | 4.3% | 61.5% | 3.79 | 4.12 |
| UC Davis → | 13 | 6 | — | 46.2% | 2.0% | — | 3.89 | 4.16 |