Guides · Choosing a school
Every selective school in NSW — the complete list.
There are 48 selective high schools in NSW for Year 7 entry: 17 fully selective, 27 partially selective and 4 agricultural, plus Aurora College, the virtual selective school for rural and remote students. Between them they offer 4,338 Year 7 places. That's the Department of Education's own list, reproduced in full below with the places at each school — along with an honest explanation of why the "rankings" you've seen elsewhere aren't official, and what to look at instead.
The 17 fully selective high schools
Every student at these schools enters through the Selective High School Placement Test. Places are the Department's published Year 7 intake for each school; school names link to each school's official website.
| School | Suburb | Boys | Girls |
|---|---|---|---|
| Baulkham Hills High School | Baulkham Hills | 90 | 90 |
| Caringbah High School | Caringbah | 75 | 75 |
| Fort Street High School | Petersham | 75 | 75 |
| Girraween High School | Girraween | 60 | 60 |
| Gosford High School | Gosford | 90 | 90 |
| Hornsby Girls High School | Hornsby | — | 120 |
| Merewether High School | Broadmeadow (Newcastle) | 90 | 90 |
| Normanhurst Boys High School | Normanhurst | 120 | — |
| Northern Beaches Secondary College, Manly campus | North Curl Curl | 60 | 60 |
| North Sydney Boys High School | Crows Nest | 150 | — |
| North Sydney Girls High School | Crows Nest | — | 150 |
| Penrith High School | Penrith | 75 | 75 |
| Smiths Hill High School | Wollongong | 60 | 60 |
| St George Girls High School | Kogarah | — | 150 |
| Sydney Boys High School | Moore Park | 180 | — |
| Sydney Girls High School | Surry Hills | — | 180 |
| Sydney Technical High School | Bexley | 150 | — |
The 4 agricultural high schools
Selective entry with an agricultural curriculum, and — uniquely on this list — boarding places. James Ruse, the school with the state's highest entry cut-off, is formally in this category.
| School | Suburb | Year 7 places |
|---|---|---|
| Farrer Memorial Agricultural High School | Tamworth | 50 day places (boys) + 60 boarding places |
| Hurlstone Agricultural High School | Glenfield | 75 day + 15 boarding (boys); 75 day + 15 boarding (girls) |
| James Ruse Agricultural High School | Carlingford | 60 boys, 60 girls (day places) |
| Yanco Agricultural High School | Yanco (Riverina) | 30 boys, 30 girls — boarding only |
The 27 partially selective high schools
These schools run selective streams alongside ordinary local enrolment — your child sits the same test, but joins one or two selective classes within a larger year group. The Department also lists Sydney Secondary College's Blackwattle Bay campus (the Years 11–12 senior campus of the Balmain and Leichhardt streams) as its 27th partially selective school; it has no Year 7 intake of its own, so it isn't in this table.
Source: NSW Department of Education, Selective high schools, page updated 19 June 2026, accessed 14 July 2026. Leppington High School's selective stream is listed as provisional.
Aurora College — the virtual selective school
If you live in rural or remote NSW, there's a 49th option that doesn't fit the table: Aurora College, the Department's virtual selective school. Students stay enrolled at their local high school and join selective classes online, with residential camps twice a year. It offers 100 Year 7 places (50 boys, 50 girls) and operates through roughly 185 host schools across the state — the same placement test applies.
About those "rankings"
Search for selective school rankings and you'll find confident top-30 lists on coaching college blogs. Here's what they actually are: re-sorts of published HSC results — usually the percentage of exams scoring Band 6 — dressed up as a school ranking. The Department of Education has never ranked selective schools and publishes no measure of school quality. It states the number of schools and the places at each, and that's it.
HSC-based lists aren't meaningless, but be clear about what they measure: the exam results of students who entered six years earlier, in a system where the highest-scoring entrants cluster at a handful of schools. A school that admits the state's top few hundred scorers will top an HSC table almost regardless of what happens in between. It tells you who got in, not what the school added.
If you want an official, entry-relevant signal, the closest thing that exists is each school's minimum entry score — the lowest placement score offered a place, published by the Department after each intake. That tells you how competitive each school actually was last round. We keep the school-by-school picture in our results and cut-offs guide.
How to actually use this list
Three practical things matter more than any blog ranking. Travel: a selective place is six years of commuting, and there is no distance criterion in selection — a Penrith family can hold an offer from Bexley. Map the real door-to-door trip before you nominate a school. Fully vs partially selective: a partially selective stream of 30–60 students sits inside an ordinary local school — some children thrive there, but it's a genuinely different environment from a school where every classmate came through the test. Competitiveness: cut-offs differ by hundreds of places between schools on this list, so pair your school choices with last round's minimum entry scores rather than treating "selective" as one bar.
Whichever schools you nominate, it's the same single test — the format, timing and question styles don't change by school. That's covered in the complete parent guide, and if you're at the practice stage, every paper we publish is sat online in a player built to mirror the real computer-based test — one sample paper is free, no card required.
Keep going
For how a placement score is built and what recent cut-offs looked like school by school, read the results and cut-offs guide. For the application and test timeline, see key dates for 2027 entry. And if your child is in Year 3 or 4, the equivalent decision a year earlier is covered in the Opportunity Class Test guide.
Frequently asked
Questions about NSW selective schools.
How many selective schools are there in NSW?
The Department of Education's official list (updated 19 June 2026) names 48 selective high schools for Year 7 entry: 17 fully selective, 27 partially selective, and 4 agricultural high schools. Aurora College — a virtual selective school for students in rural and remote NSW — sits alongside them with 100 places. In total there are 4,338 Year 7 places.
Is there an official ranking of NSW selective schools?
No. The Department of Education has never published a ranking of selective schools, and does not rank them by quality. The "selective school rankings" you find online are produced by coaching colleges and tutoring websites, and are almost always a re-sort of HSC results — an outcome measured six years after Year 7 entry that reflects the cohort at least as much as the school.
What is the difference between fully and partially selective schools?
In a fully selective school, every student is admitted through the Selective High School Placement Test. A partially selective school runs one or two selective streams alongside ordinary local-enrolment classes — so a partially selective school with 30+30 places takes 60 selective entrants into a much larger Year 7. The same single test covers entry to both.
Which selective school is hardest to get into?
The closest official signal is each school's minimum entry score, which the Department publishes after each round of offers. James Ruse Agricultural High School has traditionally had the highest cut-off, with schools like North Sydney Boys, North Sydney Girls, Baulkham Hills and Sydney Boys close behind — see our results and cut-offs guide for the school-by-school picture.
Do all selective schools use the same test?
Yes. One sitting of the Selective High School Placement Test covers every school on this list. You nominate preferred schools in the application, and offers are made from your child's single placement score — there is no per-school exam.