Every NSW Selective High School, With Places

There are 4,338 places in NSW selective high schools for Year 7 entry in 2027. They are spread across 47 schools that take Year 7 students, plus 90 online places at Aurora College for children in rural and remote areas. Below is every one of those schools, grouped by type, with its suburb and the number of Year 7 places it holds for boys and for girls.

Every name, suburb and number here comes from the NSW Department of Education's own list of selective high schools, which it last updated on 10 September 2026. Places are set for each round, so treat the department's page as the last word if a number below ever disagrees with it.

Three kinds of selective school

• Fully selective. Every student in the school entered through the selective process. There are 17.
• Partially selective. A selective stream sits inside a school that also takes a local, comprehensive intake. The department counts 27; 26 of them take Year 7 entrants, because Sydney Secondary College's Blackwattle Bay campus teaches Years 11 and 12 only.
• Agricultural. Selective schools where agriculture is a compulsory subject from Years 7 to 10. There are 4, and three of them offer boarding.

The places add up exactly: 4,248 across the schools below, and Aurora College's 90 on top, makes the department's 4,338.

Fully selective high schools (17)

• Baulkham Hills High School, Baulkham Hills: 90 boys, 90 girls
• Caringbah High School, Caringbah: 75 boys, 75 girls
• Fort Street High School, Petersham: 75 boys, 75 girls
• Girraween High School, Girraween: 60 boys, 60 girls
• Gosford High School, Gosford: 90 boys, 90 girls
• Hornsby Girls High School, Hornsby: 120 girls
• Merewether High School, Broadmeadow: 90 boys, 90 girls
• Normanhurst Boys High School, Normanhurst: 120 boys
• Northern Beaches Secondary College, Manly campus, North Curl Curl: 60 boys, 60 girls
• North Sydney Boys High School, Crows Nest: 150 boys
• North Sydney Girls High School, Crows Nest: 150 girls
• Penrith High School, Penrith: 75 boys, 75 girls
• Smiths Hill High School, Wollongong: 60 boys, 60 girls
• St George Girls High School, Kogarah: 150 girls
• Sydney Boys High School, Surry Hills: 180 boys
• Sydney Girls High School, Surry Hills: 180 girls
• Sydney Technical High School, Bexley: 150 boys

Seven of the seventeen are single-sex. That matters more than it looks when you are choosing, because a single-sex school's places are only open to half the applicant pool, and a co-educational school now holds a set number of places for boys and a set number for girls.

Agricultural high schools (4)

• Farrer Memorial Agricultural High School, Tamworth: boys only, 50 day places and 60 boarding places
• Hurlstone Agricultural High School, Glenfield: 75 day places and 15 boarding places for boys, and the same for girls
• James Ruse Agricultural High School, Carlingford: day places only, 60 boys, 60 girls
• Yanco Agricultural High School, Yanco: boarding places only, 30 boys, 30 girls

Boarding works differently at two of these. For boarding places at Farrer and at Yanco, families apply directly to the school, and a student does not have to sit the Selective High School Placement Test to be considered for a boarding place there. A student offered a boarding place at Farrer or Hurlstone cannot automatically switch to a day place later.

Partially selective high schools taking Year 7 (26)

• Alexandria Park Community School, Alexandria: 15 boys, 15 girls
• Armidale Secondary College, Armidale: 15 boys, 15 girls
• Auburn Girls High School, Auburn: 30 girls
• Blacktown Boys High School, Blacktown: 30 boys
• Blacktown Girls High School, Blacktown: 30 girls
• Bonnyrigg High School, Bonnyrigg: 30 boys, 30 girls
• Chatswood High School, Chatswood: 30 boys, 30 girls
• Elizabeth Macarthur High School, Narellan Vale: 30 boys, 30 girls
• Gorokan High School, Gorokan: 15 boys, 15 girls
• Grafton High School, Grafton: 15 boys, 15 girls
• Granville Boys High School, Granville: 30 boys
• Karabar High School, Queanbeyan: 15 boys, 15 girls
• Kooringal High School, Kooringal: 15 boys, 15 girls
• Leppington High School (provisional name), Leppington: 15 boys, 15 girls
• Macquarie Fields High School, Macquarie Fields: 45 boys, 45 girls
• Moorebank High School, Moorebank: 30 boys, 30 girls
• Parramatta High School, Parramatta: 30 boys, 30 girls
• Peel High School, Tamworth: 15 boys, 15 girls
• Prairiewood High School, Wetherill Park: 30 boys, 30 girls
• Richmond Agricultural College, Richmond: 15 boys, 15 girls
• Rose Bay Secondary College, Dover Heights: 30 boys, 30 girls
• Ryde Secondary College, Ryde: 30 boys, 30 girls
• Sefton High School, Sefton: 44 boys, 44 girls
• Sydney Secondary College, Balmain campus, Rozelle: 30 boys, 30 girls
• Sydney Secondary College, Leichhardt campus, Leichhardt: 30 boys, 30 girls
• Tempe High School, Tempe: 30 boys, 30 girls

A few of these carry conditions worth knowing before you put them on a list. Leppington is the provisional name of a new school being built at Leppington, scheduled to open in 2027. Students in Richmond Agricultural College's selective stream must study agriculture, across two campuses: Richmond High School and the college's centre at Western Sydney University's Hawkesbury campus. Sydney Secondary College's Balmain and Leichhardt campuses teach Years 7 to 10, and students generally move on to the Blackwattle Bay campus for Years 11 and 12. Alexandria Park, Rose Bay and Tempe also have targeted places for Aboriginal students.

Aurora College, for rural and remote students

Aurora College is the selective option for children who live far from any of the schools above. It has 90 places for Year 7 entry, 45 for boys and 45 for girls, and its selective classes are taught online while the student is enrolled at a host public high school near home. There are 185 host schools across rural and remote NSW. Only a student who is enrolled at, or will enrol at, one of those host schools can apply for Aurora College.

What the list can tell you, and what it cannot

The number of places is the one hard fact on this page, and it is easy to read too much into it. A school with 180 places is not necessarily easier to get into than one with 60. What decides it is how many strong applicants put that school first, and that changes every year. A big, well-known school can be harder to reach than a smaller one simply because more families chose it.

Two more things shape the real competition at every school. Up to 20 per cent of places at each school can be held under the Equity Placement Model for high potential students from under-represented groups. And reserve lists move: families decline places for all sorts of reasons, and offers can keep coming until the end of Term 1 of the entry year. There is more on how that queue behaves in the reserve list, explained.

Using this list when you apply

You can nominate up to three schools, in order of preference, and the placement runs down your list and stops at the first school where your child qualifies. The department's own advice is to name only schools your child would genuinely attend, which may be fewer than three. Travel time is the factor families most often underweight: a long daily journey is six years of early mornings.

How to order the three, and why the order is an instruction rather than a wish list, is in choosing your three schools. When the window opens and what to have ready is in applying for selective entry in 2028.