Frontiers Academy

Overview

Frontiers Academy is an independent, non-sectarian K-8 private school in Costa Mesa, California, serving grades K-8, founded in 2014, with about 138 students. The school does not publish tuition; ask for current figures when you book a visit. Mandarin is offered.

Admissions

Entrance exam requirements are not published; contact admissions.

The school publishes the following application details. Rolling admission. For the 2026-27 school year there are separate online applications for ECE, the early childhood program, and for K-8. The process has six steps. (1) Register for a Virtual Information Session; the school website has scheduled nine of them, on September 16, October 28, November 18 and December 16, 2026, and January 20, February 17, March 17, April 21 and May 19, 2027. (2) A campus visit is required before an application is submitted, and virtual tours are by appointment. (3) Submit the application with the $250 non-refundable application fee. (4) Applicants to grades K-7 submit transcripts for the current year and the two previous years, plus at least two recommendations, from a language teacher (English, Chinese or Spanish) and a math teacher at their current school. (5) The student spends time in class on campus, and parents interview, remotely. (6) The admissions committee reviews the file. Grade placement uses September 1 as the age cutoff. Applicants to grades that are full enter a wait pool first, and offers are made as spaces appear once returning-student re-enrollment closes in December and January (school website, Application Process page).

The main entry points at a K-8 school are kindergarten and grade 6. Younger applicants are usually evaluated through an on-campus visit, while most applicants above grade 5 need an ISEE score. Start in the fall of the year before entry: visit first to confirm the school is a fit, then decide whether to register for testing.

Tuition and fees

The school website does not publish tuition. The home page, the Admissions pages (Application Process, Fast Facts, Request Information, Visit Us, Testimonials), About Us, Academics and Student Life were all checked, and none carries a tuition figure or price list; the Application Process page lists only the $250 non-refundable application fee. The school website asks interested families to use the Request Information or Inquire form.

The only published fee is the $250 application fee, which is non-refundable and submitted with the application (school website, Application Process page).

Academics and programs

• A trilingual immersion model in Chinese, Spanish and English, with the language mix adjusted level by level: the 2-year-old class is 90% Chinese and 10% Spanish; the 3-year-old class and Pre-K are 80% Chinese, 10% Spanish and 10% English; K through grade 3 is 60:20:20; grades 4-5 are 50:20:30; and grades 6-8 are 30:20:50. All three languages have their own language arts class every day (school website, FA Model page)
• Chinese is true immersion rather than a language class: the school website states that Chinese immersion is measured not in minutes but in academic outcomes, with math taught in Chinese through grade 5 and science and social studies taught in Chinese, Spanish or English, so that each language carries real academic content (school website, FA Model page, Head of School Welcome page)
• Global Seal of Biliteracy: the school website states that every student earns the international biliteracy certification in both Chinese and Spanish by grade 8 (school website, Our Achievements page)
• Standardized testing uses independent school benchmarks: grades 2-5 take the ERB CTP-5, and the school website says average scores in every subject are above national independent school norms; language proficiency is measured separately with AVANT STAMP (school website, Our Achievements page)
• A 4:1 student-teacher ratio, with 30 teachers school-wide (school website, Fast Facts page)
• Families at the school speak 12 languages, and 86% of students are students of color by the NAIS definition (school website, Fast Facts page)

How this school compares

These are the nearest schools at the same level and a comparable price. Select a name to open that school’s admissions guide:

School	City	Grades	Tuition	Entrance test	Class size	Distance
Frontiers Academy	Costa Mesa	K-8	Not published	—	—	—
Mariners Christian School	Costa Mesa	K-8	$12,441	On-campus assessment	—	0.3 mi
St. Anne Parish School	Santa Ana	K-8	Not published	On-campus assessment	—	3.5 mi
Village Montessori School of Irvine	Irvine	K-3	Not published	—	—	3.6 mi
St. John the Baptist Catholic School	Costa Mesa	K-8	$9,742	On-campus assessment	—	1.3 mi

Where students go next

The “Placement after Frontiers Academy” section on the About Us > Our Achievements page of the school website lists the middle schools and high schools graduates have been admitted to: Harvard Westlake, Davidson Academy, The Lawrenceville School, St. Michael’s University School, TVT Community Day School, Oxford Academy, Polytechnic School, John Thomas Dye School, OCSA (Orange County School of the Arts) and Legacy Magnet Academy. The same page states that every student earns the Global Seal of Biliteracy in Chinese and Spanish on graduating from grade 8. The school website does not publish the number of admissions to each school or the years involved (school website, Our Achievements page).

Schools in our guide library that appear on this list: Lawrenceville.

Applying to high school from here usually begins in the spring of grade 7: sit the ISEE or HSPT in the fall of grade 8, then submit materials between November and January. EDUBUS works backward from each target high school’s requirements to plan grades, activities and test preparation across the K-8 years.

Getting there from Irvine

These are straight-line distances from neighborhoods where many Irvine families live. Actual drive times will be longer, and a morning rush-hour trip typically takes 1.5 to 2 times as long as an off-peak one:

Neighborhood	Straight-line distance
Woodbury	7.8 miles
Northwood	5.7 miles
Turtle Rock	4.8 miles
Portola Springs	10.4 miles

The website does not describe bus service; confirm this during your visit.

Questions to ask on a campus visit

• Accreditation — a text search of the raw HTML of nine pages, the home page, About Us, Our Achievements, Academics, FA Model, Why Immersion, Head of School Welcome, Fast Facts and Application Process, for “WASC”, “We…
• Entrance testing — the six-step process on the Application Process page includes only the student’s time in class and a remote parent interview, with no test or assessment step, and the school website also makes no pos…
• Tuition — the school website does not publish tuition at all. The home page, the Admissions pages (Application Process, Fast Facts, Request Information, Visit Us, Testimonials), About Us including Our Achievem…
• Enrollment year — the Fast Facts page on the school website gives 138 students, 108 in K-8 and 26 in ECE, 66 girls and 72 boys, but nowhere on the page is a school year or update date given, so the figure is recorded …
• Registration, technology, uniform and activity fees beyond tuition

How EDUBUS helps

Our Irvine-based counselors work in both Chinese and English. We track Frontiers Academy’s admissions calendar, prepare students for the campus visit and interview, and review application materials before they are submitted. Book a school-selection consultation or read the Chinese version of this page.