Baulkham Hills High School: Entry, Places & Results

Baulkham Hills High School at a glance

Baulkham Hills High by the numbers

How entry works

Year 7 entry to Baulkham Hills High runs through the statewide NSW Selective High School Placement Test, sat in Year 6. There is no separate school exam and no catchment for selective places — you nominate the school among your preferences, and offers are made from a single statewide placement score. The steps and deadlines are in our application walkthrough.

About one applicant in four receives a selective place across the state. A miss says very little about a capable child — with roughly four applicants for every place, the maths alone means most well-prepared children miss out, and are fine.

Later years: Years 8–11 vacancies are handled by the school itself, not the Department: a paper application lodged directly with the principal, plus an Edutest entrance exam sat at the school. No enrolments are accepted into Year 12.

The last-published entry score — read this honestly

The last time the Department published a per-school minimum entry score was for 2021 entry, on the retired 300-point scale. For Baulkham Hills High School that figure was 233/300 (234/300 the year before).

That is a historical record, not a current cut-off. The test and its scoring have changed since — four equally-weighted components, computer-based, no school-assessment mark — the Department no longer publishes per-school minimums, and it states plainly that there is no set entry score. Treat any "current" cut-off you see quoted for Baulkham Hills High as an estimate, not a fact.

Where these figures come from, why the Department stopped publishing them, and how to sanity-check any number you read: our cut-off scores guide.

Who gets one of the 180 places

For 2027 entry the Department listed 180 Year 7 places at Baulkham Hills — 90 for boys and 90 for girls. That even split is new. From 2027 entry, every co-educational selective high school allocates a set number of places to each gender, and the school states it plainly on its own enrolment page: "We offer an equal number of places for girls and boys."

The school's own enrolment figures show what the previous system produced. In 2024 it had 702 boys and 514 girls — a gap of 188 students, in a school that has never had separate boys' and girls' intakes. Under the old arrangement the 180 places went to the highest placement scores regardless of gender, and boys ended up holding well over half of them. From 2027 that cannot happen: the boys are competing for 90 places and the girls for 90, in two separate queues.

Up to 20% of places statewide are also held under the Equity Placement Model for students from low socio-educational backgrounds, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, students from rural and remote areas, and students with disability. Those places come out of the same 180.

What this does to any individual child's odds depends on the whole applicant pool, which the Department does not publish per school. We are describing a change to the arithmetic, not predicting a result.

Read next: the 50/50 gender split, explained and every selective school and its place count.

What the entry process actually involves

There is one test, and Baulkham Hills does not run it. The Selective High School Placement Test is administered statewide by the Department's Selective Education Team; the school says on its own site that it "has no role in this selection process and cannot alter the outcome for any reason". Applications open in Term 4 of Year 5 and the test is sat in May of Year 6 — for the 2027 intake, applications ran 6 November 2025 to 20 February 2026 and the test was sat on 1–2 May 2026.

The test itself is four computer-based sections — Reading, Mathematical Reasoning, Thinking Skills and Writing — and they carry equal weight in the placement score. There is no school assessment component and no interview. Offers come out in Term 3, from a single statewide score.

One detail specific to this school, and worth knowing before you plan a visit: Baulkham Hills does not hold open days or tours for prospective families. Its enrolment page states that "only students who are offered a position will be invited to attend an Orientation Day". If you want to see the place first, you cannot.

• You nominate between one and three schools, in genuine order of preference.
• An offer only ever comes from the highest-ranked school your child qualifies for — so the order matters, and you should only list schools you would actually accept.
• You can reorder your list in the application dashboard until the "last day to change school choices" in early June, after the test has been sat.
• There is no catchment and no residential requirement beyond living in NSW and holding eligible citizenship or visa status.

Read next: the application walkthrough, step by step, every date in the 2027 cycle and how the placement score is built.

Entry after Year 7 — a different process entirely

A lot of families assume the Years 8–11 route is a smaller version of the Year 7 one. It is not. For later years, each selective school manages its own vacancies and assessments, and Baulkham Hills runs a full school-based process: a paper application lodged directly with the school office at 419A Windsor Road — it states that no applications are accepted by email or online — accompanied by school reports, NAPLAN reports, evidence of external academic achievement and extracurricular participation.

Applicants also sit an Edutest entrance exam at the school, covering Verbal Reasoning, Numerical Reasoning, Reading Comprehension, Mathematics and Written Expression, 30 minutes per section, no calculators. The combined application and test fee is $180, paid directly to Edutest. An internal school panel then reviews the applications. For the 2027 cycle the exam is set for 15 August 2026.

A practical wrinkle the school documents: for 2027 applications, students applying to Baulkham Hills and to James Ruse Agricultural, North Sydney Boys, North Sydney Girls, Sydney Girls or Chatswood sit the Edutest exam once, with the results shared between them. You still apply to and pay each school separately, and your preference order must be listed identically on every form. As with Year 7, you may apply to a maximum of three schools.

The school is direct about the odds here: "Generally, only a very small number of places become available at Baulkham Hills High School in Years 8 to 11 each year." It does not accept enrolments into Year 12 at all.

What the school day looks like

Year 7 students study English, Mathematics, Science, History, Geography, Music, Visual Arts, PDHPE, mandatory Technology, and a language — French, Japanese or Latin. The language spread widens at senior level, where the school offers French, Japanese and Latin Continuers alongside Korean Beginners; Software Engineering, Enterprise Computing, Engineering Studies and Studies of Religion also run as 2-unit HSC courses. Acceleration is common rather than exceptional: alongside the 202 students it presented for the 2024 HSC, the school reports approximately 96 more completing accelerated subjects early.

The school describes a strong co-curricular pull — debating and public speaking, a music ensemble program, cadets, clubs students can start themselves, and a Student Representative Council that runs sizeable annual events including Spirit Week and a Multicultural Food Fair. Facilities include a refurbished library, renovated science labs and sports fields; the P&C reported contributing $750,000 towards the combined student wellbeing hub and library refurbishment project.

The Support Unit sits alongside the selective stream and is a genuine part of the school, not a footnote: seven classes, four for students with a mild or moderate disability and three for students with autism. The school is candid that because it is fully selective, support students "are not fully integrated into the academic program", though they share roll classes and whole-school events.

• Attendance ran at 93.5% across all years in 2024, against a NSW public-school average of 83.3%.
• 96% of students come from a language background other than English.
• Staffing is roughly 85 teaching and 20 non-teaching staff, with 13 head teachers and one school counsellor.

HSC outcomes, and how to read them

From the school's 2024 annual report: 202 students sat the HSC. Two achieved an ATAR of 99.95; 47 students — 23% of the cohort — achieved an ATAR above 99; 67% were above 95 and 88% above 90. Ninety-nine per cent of leavers went to university, and 99.5% of the expected cohort attained the HSC.

Those are strong numbers, and they are also, unavoidably, a description of the intake. A fully selective school admits the top of a statewide test and reports the results six years later; the outcome and the admission are not independent of one another. Nobody publishes a measure that separates the two, so treat the figures as a fair account of what the cohort achieved rather than evidence of what the school adds.

On rankings: the school notes it was "listed in sixth place across NSW by the Sydney Morning Herald" for 2024. That is a newspaper's compilation from published Band 6 counts. Neither NESA nor the Department of Education ranks schools, and the media tables move by several places year to year on small differences in a couple of hundred students' results.

Read next: what the Department does and does not publish.

Getting there

The school is at 419A Windsor Road, Baulkham Hills, in Sydney's north-west. Because selective places carry no catchment, the travel question is a real one — families travel in from across the Hills District and well beyond, and a long daily commute is a bigger factor in a Year 7 child's life than it looks on a map.

Most students come by bus; the school describes itself as well serviced by them, with an afternoon bus bay on Windsor Road that is teacher-supervised. Metro stations at Castle Hill and Showground are both nearby, and there are rail connections via Epping, Parramatta and Seven Hills. A School Student Travel Pass is available where the straight-line distance from home to school is more than 2km, or the walking distance is 2.9km or more.

Bus routes and timetables change at short notice; the school publishes updates through its newsletter. Check current services with Transport for NSW rather than relying on any third-party summary, including this one.

Read next: coaching centres in Baulkham Hills, compared and how to prepare without wrecking Term 1.

Known for

• A government-funded, fully academically selective, co-educational secondary school for Years 7 to 12, with a Support Unit of seven classes alongside the selective stream. source
• Established in 1971 and officially opened in 1974 on a former orange orchard; the crest features an orange in acknowledgement of that heritage. Motto: "Persevere". source
• Became academically selective in 1990, with every year group selective by 1995 — it spent its first two decades as an ordinary comprehensive high school. source
• Offers French, Japanese and Latin from Year 7, and Korean Beginners at HSC level — an unusually wide language spread for a NSW public school. source
• 96% of students come from a language background other than English, on the school's own 2024 reporting. source

Baulkham Hills High: common questions

Families near Baulkham Hills

Many families sitting for Baulkham Hills High come from the surrounding suburbs. We compare the selective coaching options — centre by centre, with published prices — for Baulkham Hills, Castle Hill, Bella Vista, Carlingford and Parramatta.

Other nearby areas: Winston Hills, Kellyville, Northmead, Norwest.