Chadwick School: an unusually complete K–12 experience—if the hill, the workload, and the whole-child promise work in real life

What the day actually asks

One campus, three divisions, and the Palos Verdes clock

The school day begins at 7:55 a.m., but the afternoons require some family coordination. The Village School dismisses at 3:15 p.m., while Middle and Upper Schools finish at 3:40 p.m. Fridays let out early—2:30 p.m. for the Village and 2:45 p.m. for older students—and Wednesdays feature an 8:55 a.m. late start for student wellness.

From Kindergarten through fifth grade, children spend their days in homeroom with eight school-reported hours of specialist classes each week. A typical Village School class is 20, with two teachers in most elementary classrooms.

Sixth grade stays inside the Village School structure but adds more teachers, a global language, integrated science, STEM, arts, athletics and human-growth work; Grades 7–8 add departmental depth, office hours, weekly clubs and a STEM rotation.

Human-growth courses are not a one-off assembly: seventh graders take Discovering Self and eighth graders take Building Relationships for the year. Upper School uses a modified block.

The current college profile describes four days with three 80-minute academic periods, one day with six 45-minute periods, and two co-curricular periods. The school’s academic page says Monday touches all core subjects and the rest of the week shifts to blocks.

Community time occurs twice weekly.

Rigor, placement, and sleep

Advanced Placement, online breadth, and the homework reality

The Upper School is an American college-preparatory program built around Honors, Advanced Placement, advanced and post-AP work, not the International Baccalaureate. Mathematics reaches calculus, statistics and data science; science begins with an integrated physics-chemistry-biology sequence; Chinese, French and Spanish continue through advanced levels.

Access is not wholly self-selected. The profile says departmental approval is required for Honors mathematics and languages, and for Advanced or AP mathematics and language courses, including study beyond the usual sequence such as Multivariable Calculus through Global Online Academy.

Membership in Global Online Academy and the Malone Schools Online Network lets students take courses with peers at other independent schools; both count as Honors on the transcript. Ask about extra fees, synchronous meeting times and local supervision before counting on an online course.

The school says blocks reduce daily homework by letting students focus on fewer subjects, and it candidly acknowledges that Upper School can be busy and stressful. It does not publish minutes of homework, assignment calendars or sleep data.

Ask to see three anonymized Grade 9 schedules and a two-week assignment calendar during a busy month, then map commute, practice, dinner and sleep.

Support—and its boundary

Six full-time specialists and a strict language boundary

Chadwick currently says three counselors and three learning specialists work on campus full time. The named counseling structure covers Village School, Sixth Grade and Middle School, and Upper School.

Teachers, advisors and division leaders are part of the stated support network, and Middle School office hours provide an ordinary academic-help route.

Chadwick has no English Language Learner program and requires international students to be fully fluent in spoken, read and written English. A student seeking an I-20 must live within commuting distance with one or both parents; there is no general homestay or boarding path.

Not an occasional field trip

Wilderness expeditions from Catalina to Senior Course

The current college profile says students participate in one wilderness course per year, culminating in a three-week senior backpacking expedition. Sixth grade spends a week at the Catalina Island Marine Institute with kayaking, climbing, hiking and labs.

Grades 9–11 take multi-day expeditions in places that may include Los Padres, Joshua Tree, the Sierra, Catalina, Zion or the Colorado River before Senior Course.

Chadwick employs two full-time Outdoor Education directors, says instructors follow a written syllabus with risk-management policies and location-specific emergency procedures, and reports that the program is accredited by the Association for Experiential Education.

Tuition includes most overnight and Outdoor Education trips, including Senior Course; ask which gear, clothing, medical forms and evacuation insurance remain the family’s responsibility, and how the school supports a child with a disability, medication or real fear of the route.

Arts and athletics run alongside. Sixth graders get dedicated visual and performing arts time, PE four times a week and their first interscholastic competition; Grades 7–8 expand into drawing, painting, ceramics, photography and video, with orchestra or chorus open to every student; Upper School visual offerings include painting, photography, graphic design, film and ceramics.

The school does not publish no-cut rules or roster limits, so ask for last season’s roster and the playing-time philosophy.

One foundation, two distinct schools

The South Korea campus, travel, and day-school boundaries

Chadwick School in Palos Verdes and Chadwick International in Songdo, South Korea share a mission, core values and the Roessler-Chadwick Foundation. Teachers and students collaborate, visit and work on projects, and sixth-grade English and social-studies units may be co-taught across campuses.

They are not one academic product: Chadwick International enrolls more than 1,450 students and offers four International Baccalaureate programs, while Palos Verdes is an AP school.

Optional travel grows from Grades 7–8 into Upper School, with recent examples including Washington, D.C., Costa Rica, Japan, Morocco, South Korea and Spain; these are prior offerings, not a promise for a particular child.

Chadwick now describes a one-year Global Fellows residential experience on the Palos Verdes campus exclusively for selected Grade 9 or 10 Chadwick International students, who are expected to return to Songdo.

That does not convert the general Palos Verdes program into a boarding school; CAIS still lists Chadwick as day only, and the ordinary admissions FAQ says no boarding or homestay.

The hill is part of the school

Getting up the hill: buses, carpools, and late routes

Chadwick’s campus sits at 26800 South Academy Drive on a hilltop in the Palos Verdes Peninsula. The official transportation catchment currently names Carson, Hermosa Beach, Inglewood, Ladera Heights, Lomita, Long Beach, Manhattan Beach, Palos Verdes, Redondo Beach and Torrance.

The admission FAQ says actual routes appear each summer because locations may change. A school-linked 2023–24 sample gives useful scale only: distant stops such as Long Beach, Carson, Inglewood and Ladera Heights picked up around 6:45–7 a.m.; intermediate stops around 7:05–7:15; nearest stops around 7:20–7:35.

Do not plan Fall 2027 around those old times.

That flyer also said roughly one-third of students used a bus in at least one direction and required everyone else to carpool, with a general minimum of two students (three when the driver was a student) in both directions, plus a 5:45 p.m. late bus and a frequent afternoon shuttle to a local meeting area.

Every item needs current confirmation.

The live FAQ lists morning-only, afternoon-only and round-trip options and says the transportation office can help form carpools. The tuition page gives the current annual bus range as $625–$2,605, which conflicts with lower prices still printed in the admission FAQ.

Use the tuition page for budgeting, and test a regular morning, a practice pickup and a Friday early dismissal before you decide.

Build a first-year number

Tuition, published extras, and all-in first-year budgeting

For 2026–27, tuition is $45,880 in Grades K–5 and $53,760 in Grades 6–12. Every new student pays a one-time $1,750 matriculation fee, bringing the minimum published first-year base to $47,630 for K–5 and $55,510 for Grades 6–12 before applicable extras.

Published possible extras are bus transportation at $625–$2,605; Grade 6 books at $90–$125; Grades 7–12 books at $500–$900; technology at $550–$1,500; before- and after-school care at $13 an hour; and global programs at $125–$6,000. Tuition includes most overnight field trips, Outdoor Education and Senior Course.

If every published category applies, a first-year sixth grader lands around $56,900–$65,740 before hourly care and any unlisted costs. A first-year ninth grader lands around $57,310–$66,515.

Chadwick reports that 23% of students receive aid and the average annual award is $35,800. More than $7 million was awarded in 2026–27, with 5% of the aid budget reserved for supplemental costs such as buses, books, technology, athletics and global programs.

The current college profile instead says 21% receive assistance and $7.1 million is planned.

The page calls $35,800 about 70% of tuition. It is approximately 78% of K–5 tuition but only about 67% of Grades 6–12 tuition, so do not treat that percentage as a universal award.

Aid is need-based and uses Clarity; income, assets, expenses, debts and family context are considered. The page now shows January 15, 2027, for new-family applications and December 15 for returning families.

Three new ninth graders receive the need-based MacFarlane Leadership Scholarship each year. It adds a four-year leadership class and funded domestic and international travel.

Renewal depends on annual need plus satisfactory academic and disciplinary standing. Chadwick also awards one new need-based Malone Scholarship annually to an applicant in Grades 7–12.

K, Grade 6, Grade 9—and Grade 7

Where places open: Kindergarten, Grade 6, and Grade 9

Kindergarten is a full entry year. Chadwick says it admits approximately 40 children, and its live FAQ says each K–5 grade has about 40 students.

The FAQ says a kindergartner must be five by September 1 of the enrollment year; because the new Fall 2027 step page does not repeat that cutoff, a family near the date should confirm it in writing.

A K–5 cohort of about 40 grows to 75–80, and the school says it can admit approximately 35 new sixth graders. That means newcomers may be close to half the class.

Sixth grade is built as a deliberate bridge year inside the Village School.

Grade 9 is another meaningful opening: Chadwick reports 25–30 new ninth graders in an Upper School averaging about 90 per grade. Directionally, newcomers therefore make up roughly 28% to 33% of the ninth-grade cohort.

The live Fall 2027 workflow accepts applications for Grades 7–12. The school says it enrolls about 8–15 new seventh graders, while Grades 1–5, Grade 8, and Grades 10–11 are space-available.

The FAQ does not say whether Grade 12 has a planned opening, so ask before investing in a senior-year application.

The current application

The January 4 deadline, assessments, and testing

Applications for 2027–28 are open and due January 4, 2027. The preliminary application carries a $125 fee.

Families for whom the fee creates hardship may request a waiver from the director of financial aid, and Chadwick says that request will not disadvantage the application. Supplemental recommendations and report-card requests appear only after submission in the Veracross portal.

Chadwick does not yet post its own decision date, but as a Los Angeles Independent Schools participant it sits inside the common calendar: decisions Friday, March 12, 2027, with email no earlier than 5 p.m.; replies due Friday, March 19, at noon.

Kindergarten families schedule a parent meeting by Zoom and a student evaluation on Saturday, January 9, or Tuesday, January 19, 2027. The page tells families without a PK or TK program to contact admissions.

Sixth-grade families also have a Zoom parent meeting. Students complete an evaluation and group visit on Saturday, January 9, or Friday, January 22.

Applicants to Grades 7–12 have a Zoom parent meeting and student interview. They may add a shadow day, with dates from December through February, but the visit is described as optional.

Do not assume Chadwick is test-required, test-optional, or test-blind for Fall 2027. The current school page does not name the ISEE, SSAT, or any standardized admission test.

LAIS’s latest available secondary-policy sheet covers 2026–27 entry and listed Chadwick as test-optional, but that document is one cycle too old to establish the Fall 2027 rule, so ask whether scores are accepted, ignored, or required by grade.

Applicants to Grades 7–12 must also take the Character Skills Snapshot at home, about 30 minutes and $60, with fee assistance available. The school says the snapshot adds to grades and test scores.

Chadwick placement, outdoor-trip costs and the hill commute

Chadwick's honors placement, outdoor education and Palos Verdes location all shape a family's week, so ask about each one concretely.