How to Get Into The Overlake School: Key to Admission

Everything Redmond and Eastside families need to know about Overlake School admissions for the 2026-2027 cycle.

Quick Answer for Busy Parents

The Overlake School is an independent, nonsectarian, coeducational college preparatory day school in Redmond, Washington, serving 575 students in grades 5 through 12. Applications for 2026-2027 open October 2, 2026 on Aryval, the school’s new application platform, and all materials are due January 14, 2027 by 4:00 PM PST. Overlake accepts any standardized test from the previous school year and has no preferred test. Interviews are required only for grades 5, 6, and 9, which are the school’s traditional entry years. Upper School decisions are released February 19, 2027; Middle School decisions follow on March 19.

Why Do Families Choose The Overlake School?

Overlake was founded in 1967 and has grown into one of the strongest independent schools in the Pacific Northwest. Niche ranked it #2 among Best Private High Schools in Washington for 2026 and #11 among the most diverse private high schools in the state. The school states its mission as championing students and their vast potential through engaging educational experiences in a diverse and inclusive community, where students are valued as multifaceted individuals and graduate ready for any path that contributes to a better world.

What families notice first is the campus. Seventy-five acres of forest, meadow, and trail sit roughly ten minutes from downtown Redmond, and Overlake treats that land as instructional space rather than scenery. Its OWLS program, short for Outdoor Wise Learning Spaces, includes an outdoor classroom, a fitness course, a student art gallery, a weather station reporting real-time readings online, and 2.5 miles of marked interpretive trails. Inside, the numbers are just as deliberate: an average class of 14 students and a 7:1 ratio, with 85% of faculty holding advanced degrees.

Academic and Community Snapshot

Overlake is accredited by the Northwest Accreditation Commission and the Northwest Association of Independent Schools, and holds memberships with ACCIS, the College Board, NACAC, NAIS, PNACAC, and the Washington Federation of Independent Schools. Academic departments span Arts, English, Experiential Education, Math and Computer Science, Physical Education, Science, Social Studies, and World Languages.

How Hard Is It to Get Into Overlake?

Overlake does not publish an acceptance rate, and we will not repeat an unsourced one. What the school does publish is more useful anyway: exactly how many seats exist. Fifth grade has 32 spots. Sixth grade has 32. Ninth grade has 25 to 30. Every other grade fills only through attrition, which in practice means a handful of openings or none at all. Against the Eastside’s applicant pool, those numbers make Overlake genuinely selective, and dramatically more so outside the three entry years. Our explainer on how competitive top private schools really are puts those figures in national context.

On what gets weighed: Overlake describes standardized scores as one small part of a holistic review, placing equal emphasis on mission fit, character, and a candidate’s potential to thrive in the community. That is not marketing language layered over a scores-first process. The school accepts state assessments alongside national exams and declines to name a preferred test, which is a meaningful signal about where the emphasis actually sits. Our piece on what test-flexible policies mean in practice is worth reading before you build a testing plan.

Families weighing Overlake usually consider it alongside other Eastside and Seattle independents. Eastside Preparatory School in Kirkland is the closest peer by size and grade range and sat just above Overlake in Niche’s 2026 Washington ranking; our guide to Eastside Prep admissions covers how that process differs. Applicants targeting grades outside 5, 6, and 9 should read our guidance on applying as a transfer student, since attrition-dependent entry is a different problem entirely.

Top Tips for Applying to The Overlake School

• Target a traditional entry year if your timing allows; grades 5, 6, and 9 hold nearly all the available seats.
• Register for an Open House the day registration opens, one month before the event, because private tours are not offered.
• Submit the strongest standardized result your child already has rather than defaulting to a new exam.
• Match your teacher evaluation requests to your entry grade, since the required pairings differ.
• Give your child’s school several weeks to respond to the records request sent through Aryval.

Best Practices for Families Applying to Overlake

• Read Overlake’s own language about mission fit carefully, then ask honestly whether it describes your child.
• Keep the student essay in the student’s voice, even where the prose is imperfect.
• Write the Parent/Guardian Statement about your actual child rather than an idealized one.
• Visit an Open House with your child rather than alone; their reaction to the campus is data.
• Confirm visa eligibility early, since Overlake does not issue I-20 forms.

Admissions Questions Families Ask First

Is Overlake a boarding school?

No. Overlake is a day school. Students commute to the Redmond campus, and bus service is available.

What grades does Overlake serve?

Grades 5 through 12, divided into a Middle School of grades 5 to 8 and an Upper School of grades 9 to 12, all on one campus.

Is Overlake religiously affiliated?

No. Overlake is nonsectarian.

The Overlake School Admissions Process

Everything runs through Aryval, which replaced Ravenna for the 2026-2027 cycle. Families submit materials, track progress, request records, register for Open Houses, and receive decisions in one place.

1. Create an Aryval account and complete the initial application.
2. Schedule an interview, if your child is applying to grade 5, 6, or 9. Applicants to other grades are not interviewed.
3. Complete the Get to Know You forms: a Parent/Guardian Statement, a student personal essay, and an Activities and Interest Form.
4. Arrange two teacher evaluations, with the required pairing determined by entry grade.
5. Submit one standardized test score from the previous school year, in any accepted format.
6. Request report cards and transcripts through the records request feature built into Aryval.

Overlake Admissions Calendar and Key Dates

Overlake does not offer private campus tours to prospective families. The three Open Houses above are the only scheduled opportunities to see the campus before applying, and each registration window opens exactly one month ahead. Treat those dates as deadlines in their own right.

Overlake School Application Requirements

Interviews, by Entry Grade

The interview is not a single uniform experience at Overlake. It changes shape depending on which door your child is entering through, and for most grades it does not happen at all. Preparing for the wrong format is a common and avoidable mistake, which is what our interview coaching exists to prevent.

Teacher Evaluations

Overlake requires two evaluations from every applicant, but which teachers write them depends entirely on entry grade.

The Student Essay

Applicants write a personal essay submitted through Aryval as part of the Get to Know You materials. Overlake is reading for voice and self-awareness rather than polish, and an essay that has been smoothed over by an adult loses exactly the thing the school is looking for. Our work on personal statements focuses on helping students find something true to say and say it in their own register.

The Parent/Guardian Statement

Families submit a brief statement of their own. Admissions officers use it to understand how a family sees its child, which makes specificity more valuable than praise. Our parent statement guidance helps families write something honest and concrete rather than something safe.

Activities and Interest Form

This form asks students to account for how they actually spend their time outside class. Overlake’s emphasis on experiential learning makes depth more persuasive here than volume, and a form padded with brief involvements reads exactly as it is.

Standardized Testing

Applicants submit one standardized test result from the previous school year. Overlake accepts state assessments such as the SBA, MAP, or Iowa Assessments, as well as national exams including the ISEE and SSAT, and states that it has no preferred test. One caution: Overlake’s separate Testing page still describes an older SSAT and ISEE requirement for Upper School applicants. The current Apply page supersedes it, but ninth grade families should confirm directly with the admissions office.

Transcripts and School Records

All applicants submit report cards from 2025-2026 plus the first term or semester of 2026-2027. Records are requested through a feature built into the Aryval application and sent directly from your child’s school to Overlake.

International Applicants

Overlake does not issue I-20 forms and cannot sponsor or support F-1 student visa applications. International students must be eligible to reside in the United States through a parent or legal guardian’s visa status, such as an H-2 or L-2 visa.

Where Does Your Child Actually Stand?

Requirements are the easy part. Knowing whether your child reads as an Overlake fit, and what to do about it with a year to go, is the work. Let us take an honest look.

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Questions About Preparing the Application

When should we start preparing?

For a fifth or sixth grade application, the spring before the October opening is a reasonable start. For ninth grade, earlier is better, because the paired interview and the English and Math evaluations both reward relationships built over time rather than assembled in November.

Does attending an Open House help our chances?

Overlake states that Open Houses are not required but strongly recommends them. Since the school offers no private tours, attending is also the only way your family can judge fit before committing to the application.

Can we apply to more than one entry grade?

Applications are submitted for a specific grade. Families with flexibility should weigh the seat counts, since fifth and sixth grade each offer 32 spots against ninth grade’s 25 to 30.

Student Life at Overlake

Academics

Overlake offers 25 AP and Honors courses across eight departments, including a World Languages program covering Mandarin Chinese, Latin, French, and Spanish. The Whitten Math and Sciences Center, a 30,000 square foot building opened in 2021, houses math, science, and computer science along with an IDEA Lab. Upper School students complete a Senior Project before graduating. Experiential Education is a full department at Overlake rather than an add-on, which is unusual and tells you something about how the school allocates its attention.

Activities

Overlake runs more than 50 student-led clubs and explicitly invites students to start their own if what they want does not yet exist. Project Week is the school’s signature program: for one week each spring, classes stop and students travel, build, serve, or study something outside the curriculum, with options that have ranged from coding to overseas volunteering to Himalayan trekking. Upper School language students can travel to a country where their studied language is spoken. Community-engaged Service Learning runs alongside it throughout the year.

Athletics

Overlake fields 27 teams across 9 sports, namely cross country, golf, soccer, tennis, ultimate, volleyball, basketball, baseball, and lacrosse, competing in the Emerald Sound 1A League of the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association. Between 80 and 85% of students play each year, and most play multiple seasons. The recent record is genuinely strong: three consecutive state championships in girls golf, four straight state titles in girls tennis, a second-place finish at state for boys tennis, and a third consecutive Final Four appearance in baseball. The WIAA also named the boys tennis team Academic State Champion for posting the highest GPA in its classification at 3.88, Overlake’s 31st academic state championship. Families weighing how athletics factors into admissions can read our piece on competitive sports in private school admissions.

Arts

The Fulton Performing Arts Center gives students in grades 5 through 12 access to 16,000 square feet of theater, music, and visual arts space, including a flexible Black Box theater, dedicated choral and instrumental rooms, and small ensemble rehearsal spaces. The Art Barn, a repurposed barn from the farm that once occupied the land, houses a woodshop and three studios for drawing, painting, sculpture, and mixed media.

Summer Programs

Overlake runs a summer program with current offerings published on the school’s own summer program page. Because the catalog changes annually, families should check the current year’s listings rather than relying on a prior season’s camps.

Notable Overlake School Alumni

1. Carrie Brownstein (’92) – musician, writer, and actor. Guitarist and vocalist for Sleater-Kinney, co-creator and star of the Emmy- and Peabody-winning series Portlandia, and author of the memoir Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl. Raised in Redmond, she attended Overlake for her senior year.
2. Allison Barto (’94) – Director at Ball Aerospace, where she worked on the James Webb Space Telescope for seventeen years. Recipient of Overlake’s Distinguished Alumni Award.
3. Justin Wadsworth – United States cross-country skiing champion and three-time Olympian.
4. Jay Stamper (’90) – Democratic candidate for the United States Senate in South Carolina.
5. Tom Hughes – co-founder of PhotoDisc, an early digital stock photography company.

A Final Word

Overlake keeps telling families what it values, and it does so more plainly than most schools: any test will do, character matters, come see the campus at an Open House because we will not tour you privately. Families who take the school at its word write better applications than families who try to reverse-engineer it. That is the whole strategy, and our private school admissions consulting is built to help your child get there honestly. Our Seattle-area team works with Eastside families through the full cycle.

Begin Your Overlake Plan

Tell us your child’s entry year and where they are now. We will tell you what the next twelve months should look like.

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Related Articles:
The Overlake School Admissions Process: A Step-by-Step Guide for Parents
Applying to Overlake in 5th vs. 9th Grade

Frequently Asked Questions

Applying to Overlake felt overwhelming at first, but working with Cardinal Education brought clarity and structure to the whole process. They helped us focus on highlighting our son’s genuine personality in our parent statement and prepared him for his group interview in a way that felt natural rather than rehearsed. We are so grateful for the thoughtful guidance that made us successful in the application.

— Overlake Parent