Your Boston Admissions Timeline

Start with the appointments

It is October 3, and you may have three browser tabs open and no clear winner. Ask each school: when must the visit be booked, and when is the file due?

Give each child and each grade its own checklist, with four separate lists on it: visits, the full application file, tests, and financial aid. A finished essay is not a booked interview, and a booked interview is not a registered test date.

A sample calendar

Checked October 3, 2026; examples, not a full list.

Kindergarten appears here only through BB&N; ask every other school for its own steps.

Milton's dates here refer to its Upper School.

Grade 9 and the exam schools

For an eighth grader outside BPS applying to an exam school, both parent and student must live in Boston. Residency verification and ranked choices go together; weekend MAP registration is a separate form.

BPS letters come in late April, after Milton's and Beaver's April 10 dates. Do not count on a private-school extension.

Keeping the file moving

A habit worth having: once a week, open every portal and read it like a bank statement. What is complete, what is pending, what is missing?

Dependencies hide in portals. At Andover, the interview scheduler appears only after the Candidate Profile is submitted on Gateway; login details arrive by email 24 hours later, and interviews run through January. Miss the first step and the second step quietly does not exist.

If a step slips, say so quickly and plainly: 'We missed this step. Is it still possible to complete it, and what would you like us to do next?'

If your child may need testing accommodations, ask the school and the test provider what documentation they require and how much lead time they need.

March: read it all together

When decisions arrive, read the offer, the aid information and the contract together, because each changes how you read the others.

That is a lot of paper for one evening, so write four lines on one page: the reply date, what the deposit commits you to, what aid is offered or still pending, and which other answers you are still waiting on.

If another answer is still outstanding, tell the school plainly and ask what options exist before the reply date. Do it in March, while it is a question and not an emergency.