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Nikola Tesla STEM High School

Lake Washington School District · High · grades 9-12 · 4301 228th Ave NE, Redmond, WA 98053-8304

Location

4301 228th Ave NE, Redmond, WA 98053-8304

Academic snapshot

Meeting standard, latest year
90.5%
SBAC ELA+Math combined, 2024-25
Meeting standard, 3-year
91.2%
#2 of 173 high schools region-wide · #2 of 6 in this district
Exceeding standard, latest year
74.2%
SBAC Level 4, the top score band
Exceeding standard, 3-year
76.2%
#2 of 173 high schools region-wide · #2 of 6 in this district
3-year trend

Student outcomes

Graduating in 4 years
97.8%
Of the entering 9th-grade class
9th graders on track
91.1%
Earned all attempted credits
College-level coursework
99.5%
AP / IB / Running Start / CTE
Regular attendance
89.4%
Missing fewer than 2 days/month

Directly from OSPI Report Card (graduation, postsecondary via ERDC, ninth-grade on track, dual credit, growth, attendance). Latest published year.

Who attends

Students from low-income homes
2.8%
English language learners
1.0%
Highly Capable program
23.0%
Enrollment
609
Kids per typical block
Density band: unknown

Teachers

Teachers (latest)
34
Avg years experience
13.1
MA-degree share
85.3%
3-year experience trend

Avg years and MA-degree share are direct OSPI publications; the 3-year trend is our derivation. From data.wa.gov/yp28-ks6d.

Nearby schools

We haven't mapped this district's official feeder chart yet, so these are the closest schools of the next level by straight-line distance, not your assigned or guaranteed schools. Your address decides the assignment. See the districts with full pathways mapped.

Nearest middle schools by distance

Competition and advanced-peer evidence

Aggregated from WHSCA, Washington Science Olympiad, The Blue Alliance, and the Seattle Times National Merit list. "Known counts" only, missing public evidence is not proof of absence.

Highly Capable / gifted pathway

Curated from district Highly Capable program pages, with observed-at dates and confidence labels.

Research dossier

Nikola Tesla STEM High School

Lake Washington School District · grades 9–12 · 609 students · district-wide lottery choice school in Redmond, built entirely around science and engineering

The verdict

Tesla STEM is the rare famous school that neither money nor address can buy. There is no attendance boundary, no entrance exam, and no grade-point screen. A randomized district lottery decides who gets one of roughly 150 seats per grade, and as of June 2026 the 9th-grade waitlist stood at 250 students. What a lottery winner receives is less a menu than a contract: four mandatory years of math and science (graduates average six science courses and four math courses), Advanced Placement (AP) coursework starting with AP Computer Science Principles in 9th grade, and humanities deliberately held to the state minimum to make room for it all. The output is extraordinary for a school this size: 18 National Merit Semifinalists in the Class of 2026, a 97.93% four-year graduation rate, and 95% of graduates heading to four-year colleges.

The people who should look closer are not the ones worried about rigor; they're the ones whose kid wants breadth. The school offers one world language (Spanish, three years maximum), no on-campus athletics, and no large band or orchestra, and since the district's 2025-26 move to a six-period day there is visibly less schedule room outside the STEM spine. The trade is depth for breadth, on purpose. Decide whether your student wants it before entering the lottery.

Researched 2026-06-10. Citations and claim ledger included in the full dossier.

That is the free excerpt. The full dossier is the rest of the file: how these outcomes hold up in context, how deep the advanced-peer group actually runs, how families get in (and who doesn't), culture signals from handbooks and climate surveys, logistics, neighborhood context, the open questions to ask on your tour, and every citation, so you can check our work. Unlock it for $9, or get a $29 Research Pass with 3 dossiers included.

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Sources

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