Rio Mesa High School

• ▸On UC Reach, Rio Mesa High School sits near the bottom of its similar-school group (ranked #9 of 10): 10% vs. a peer median of 13%.
• ▸Its UC Reach has slipped 2 points since 2018 — worth watching.
• ▸Across the top-6 UC campuses, Rio Mesa High School is admitting at roughly +6 percentage points above what its average applicant GPA (3.753) alone would predict (27% actual vs. 21% 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 3% (513→497 from 2018 to 2026), outpacing the peer-group median of -10%.
• ▸In business terms, this is market-share growth during a market contraction. Ventura County's senior population shrank 10% over the same window — Rio Mesa High School only shrank 3%. So Rio Mesa High School picked up about 7 percentage points of relative share — families chose it over the alternatives even as the overall pool got smaller. That's overperforming the market in a shrinking market.
• ▸At its recent rate (-2.3%/yr), enrollment projects to ~1712 by 2029 — about 124 fewer students than today.

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UC Reach = top-6 UC admits ÷ senior class. Sources: UCOP Admissions by Source School, CDE enrollment, IRS Form 990, NCES F-33. Test Prep Gurus Intelligence by Test Prep Gurus · Methodology

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