Raleigh Charter High School is a public, college-preparatory school that serves students from North Carolina. Admission to the school is by public lottery.

Prospective students complete an application for admission to Raleigh Charter High School. Applicants must be ready for Algebra I or a higher mathematics course in the ninth grade. A math placement form indicating that the student is prepared for Algebra I or higher level math course and signed by the current math teacher, completes the application. During high school, students must take at least four courses in math and at least two consecutive years of a foreign language in order to graduate from Raleigh Charter High School. We offer math courses from Algebra I to Calculus III. Many courses are offered only at the honors (advanced) level.

Qualified siblings of current students and qualified children of the principal, teachers, and teacher assistants have preferences for admission.

We hold Information Sessions to give prospective students and parents a chance to view the school campus, to visit staff members, to pick up an application and information packet, and to hear programs about our school.

We will hold Open Houses with student and parent information sessions for prospective students on:

Due to our limited facility here at RCHS (remember we are a school of only 538 students), we have difficulty accommodating simultaneously all of the families who are interested in learning about our school. We have developed a ticketing system that allows all interested families to attend our Open House sessions AND to be guaranteed an opportunity to learn about the school and visit our facility.

When you attend an Open House, you should attend an Information Session AND you should tour our facility and visit with our teachers. When you arrive, you will stop in front of the building and receive a map and ticket for one of the information sessions. The student will receive a ticket for an information session run by students, and parents will receive a ticket for an information session conducted by school administrators. These color-coded tickets will ensure you a seat in a session at a specific time and will ensure that you and your student(s) will be able to attend different sessions at the same time. Sessions will be held at:

If all of these sessions are filled, we will hold an additional session at 7:30 pm. We want all interested families to have the opportunity to attend one of these sessions.

Before and after your information session, we encourage you to visit with our faculty (located in rooms around the school) and to tour our school. Please note that our faculty will only be on campus until 8 pm. So, if you attend a 7:30 information session, please plan to visit with the faculty before the session.

Tickets for sessions will be distributed beginning at 5:15 pm (and no earlier). However, if you arrive later in the evening, you may not have to wait for a ticket and you may get into a session closer to the time when you arrive. Last year there was a line outside the school at 4:45 pm BUT we had plenty of room in the 7:30 session. In the past we have also had a smaller crowd at the second Open House night. There is no advantage to coming to the earlier night, and the application can be downloaded to be completed by hand beginning on January 25, 2010.

We appreciate so much your interest in Raleigh Charter High School. Although our Open House nights are often crowded, we do look forward to meeting you and thank you in advance for your patience during these important events.

Applications will be available at our Open Houses. They are also available for download here. If you would like to download the application from our website, please follow these instructions:

Print out all four pages of the application and fill it out completely. Mail it to RCHS in a 9’’x12’’ envelope postmarked between January 25th and February 25th. Write the student’s name in the return address. On the back of the envelope in the top left-hand corner write the student’s name, the grade he or she is applying for, and the math course the student would take at RCHS next year. Also indicate if the student is a sibling of a current RCHS student (S), or the child of an RCHS faculty member (F). If the students are twins or multiples, place both (or all) applications in the same envelope. Write a (T) on the back of the envelope. Students applying for grades 10, 11, or 12 are reminded to include an unofficial high school transcript with the application.
If you would like confirmation of our receipt of the application, send a self-addressed, stamped postcard with the application. Please do not call the school to confirm that the application has been received. We do not have the office staff to field those questions.
The lottery will be held on Saturday, March 13th at 10:00 am and is open to the public. After the lottery, we will send a letter to each family indicating whether the student has been admitted in the lottery, placed on a waiting list, or denied admission. Letters will be mailed by March 19th. Please do not call the school to find out your lottery status.Applications to RCHS must be postmarked between January 25 and February 25, 2010. We will hold a public admissions lottery on Saturday, March 13, 2010.