Northwest Pennsylvania Collegiate Academy

Story

The Northwest Pennsylvania Collegiate Academy, or just Collegiate Academy or Academy High School, is located in midtown Erie, Pennsylvania. The school is housed in the former Academy High School building; that school merged with Central Tech High School in September 1992. The school boasts a 100% college acceptance rate among recent graduates.Admission requirements Grade point average of 3.0 or greater National standardized test scores at the 50th percentile or greater One teacher recommendation Students from within the district are not required to pay tuition. Home districts paid the $3100 tuition cost for a set number of out-of-district students up until the 2010-2011 school year. Previous to the 2010-2011 school year, any out-of-district student who met the acceptance criteria, but could not be accepted because of the home district cap on the number of students it would pay to attend, could elect to pay the tuition out-of-pocket.About 180 of the school's 861 students came from outside of the Erie school district for the 2010-2011 school year. Beginning with the 2011-2012 school year, home districts stopped paying the tuition costs and providing transportation. Currently enrolled out-of-district students for the 2011-2012 year paid a tuition of $3400 and incoming freshmen paid $4200. This resulted in many students returning to their home schools. In the 2012-2013 school year, the tuition cost for out-of-district freshmen increased to $5000. Collegiate Academy has about 225 openings for freshmen each year. There were 195 incoming freshmen for the Class of 2016. The admission standards were lowered after the 2012-2013 school year by lowering the requirement for a national standardized test scores at the 75th percentile or greater to a 50th percentile or greater and the number of teacher recommendations was lowered from two to one.