Adelphia Classical Christian Academy

Overview

Adelphia Classical Christian Academy is a Christian K-12 private school in Orange, California, serving grades K-12, founded in 2014, with about 107 students. The school does not publish tuition; ask for current figures when you book a visit. Religion classes are required, so confirm your family is comfortable with that before applying. Average class size is about 16.

Admissions

No standardized entrance exam; admission uses an on-campus assessment or visit day.

The school publishes the following application details. The process given on the Admissions page of the school website: request a New Student Registration Packet through the Contact Us form on the site, mail the completed packet back to the school, and the school schedules the student assessment once it arrives. The assessment covers math and English; for younger students in grades K-4 it is replaced by a one-on-one meeting with a teacher, which also gives student and teacher a chance to get to know each other. Parents of new students must also complete a Capability to Teach form and sign the Statement of Faith. The admissions office keeps only intermittent hours from June 1 to August 15. The school website notes that the program is small and fills up easily, and recommends applying early or paying $50 to join the waitlist, with rolling admission as spaces open. The contact for new families is admissions director Mrs. Tiffany Bettenhausen.

The main entry points at a K-12 school are kindergarten, grade 6 and grade 9; seats in other grades open only when a family leaves. Plan on a 12-month runway: visit in the fall, submit materials and test in the winter, and receive decisions in the spring. Applications for mid-year grades can be filed at any time, but availability depends on that year’s openings.

Tuition and fees

The school website does not publish any tuition figure in text. On the Admissions > Program Fee Schedule (Tuition and Fees) page the entire fee table is posted as an image, named Fee Schedule 2025.png, and the body text of the page is explanatory only, with no amounts; no specific figures appear on the other Admissions pages or on the FAQ page either. A page-by-page search with curl for dollar amounts turned up only the $50 waitlist fee and a passage quoting average California private school tuition for comparison. The only items stated in text on the school website are the discount categories: siblings, Bridge Church members, families of full-time pastors or missionaries, and active-duty military families qualify for a discount, and there is also a Family Tuition Reduction Program, whose details appear in the FAQ and in the registration packet, with no amount or percentage published on the site. For actual prices, request the current fee schedule directly from the school. (school website, Tuition and Fees page, New Students page, FAQ page)

The waitlist fee is $50 per family; the school notifies families as soon as a space opens, and the $50 is credited toward the later application process fees (school website, FAQ page). All other fees are published on the school website only as an image and are not recorded here.

Financial aid: The FAQ on the school website states plainly that the school does not currently offer need-based financial aid: “At this time, the Academy does not offer a formal financial aid program that evaluates each family’s financial circumstances.” The reason given is that the school is a PSP, a private school satellite program that takes no California public funds, and instead takes the approach of keeping tuition low. In its place there is a Tuition Reduction Program, which trades volunteer work for a reduction: the school designates the tasks according to its needs each year, and the size of the reduction depends on how many hours a week a family is willing to put in. Families must commit to completing the tasks assigned for the year and must register before the deadline; some tasks are first come, first served, and some are reserved for returning families with experience, and the school does not guarantee that a task matching a family’s availability will be available. There are also four fixed discounts: siblings, Bridge Church members, families of full-time pastors or missionaries, and active-duty military families (school website, FAQ page, New Students page).

Academics and programs

• A hybrid PSP (Private School Program, a private school satellite program) format: students are taught by teachers on campus three days a week, on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, with Wednesday and Friday as at-home learning days. The school issues assignment sheets for the at-home days, and the school website states that parents do not need to teach the lessons themselves, only to make sure the work gets done (school website, About Us page, FAQ page)
• Enrollment records and student files are maintained by the school: full-time students in grades 1-12 are listed under the school’s private school affidavit, which the school files on their behalf each year, and the school keeps the CUM file, covering attendance, grades, high school transcripts and health records (school website, About Us page, FAQ page)
• A three-stage Trivium structure: grammar in K-6, memorizing and accumulating facts; dialectic/logic in grades 7-8, understanding and analysis; and rhetoric in grades 9-12, reasoning, synthesis and expression. The navigation on the school website divides the levels into K-2 Pre-Grammar, 3-4 Grammar, 5-8 Middle and 9-12 High (school website, Academics Overview page and the individual level pages)
• K-2 uses Memoria Press classical materials, with First Start Reading for phonics, followed in grades 1-2 by Core Skills Phonics and Traditional Spelling; reading includes classic children’s books such as Little Bear, The Story About Ping, The Courage of Sarah Noble and Little House in the Big Woods (school website, K-2 Pre-Grammar page)
• The only high school foreign languages are Latin and Ancient Greek (school website, 9th-12th High page)
• Logic and rhetoric are separate subjects: Traditional Logic, Material Logic, Informal Fallacies, Speech and Debate, Classical Rhetoric and Mock Trial (school website, 9th-12th High 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
Adelphia Classical Christian Academy	Orange	K-12	Not published	On-campus assessment	16	—
The Open School	Santa Ana	1-12	$6,900	None	—	0.6 mi
Orangewood Academy	Garden Grove	K-12	$8,087	—	—	4.0 mi
Calvary Chapel Schools	Santa Ana	K-12	Not published	—	—	6.6 mi
Bethel Baptist School	Santa Ana	K-12	$5,400	On-campus assessment	—	6.2 mi

Where students go next

The 9th-12th (High) page on the school website mentions where a few graduates went in the form of individual congratulatory notes, including the University of Southern California, Northwestern University on a diving scholarship, and the University of Dallas, but it does not publish a complete matriculation list or year-by-year figures. The school website also states that the school offers UC a-g approved courses and more than 30 NCAA approved courses, which supports applications to the University of California system and the athletic recruiting path.

Students continuing internally generally do not test again, but families planning to move to a different high school in grade 9 should start preparing in the spring of grade 7.

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	7.9 miles
Northwood	5.1 miles
Turtle Rock	9.9 miles
Portola Springs	9.4 miles

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

Questions to ask on a campus visit

• Tuition figures — the Admissions > Program Fee Schedule page (/tuition-fees) on the school website posts the fee table as an image, named Fee Schedule 2025.png, and the body text carries no amounts for this school. Ev…
• Head of school — the Teachers & Staff, Our Founders and About Us pages on the school website give no name for a Head of School or Principal, listing only admissions director Mrs. Tiffany Bettenhausen, board chair Mr.…
• F-1 students — the school website has no International or I-20 page and no information of any kind about international students, so there is no way to tell whether it issues I-20s. Since this is a PSP program that …
• Average class size — the figure listed is 16, but the FAQ on the school website actually reads “The typical class size at the Academy is 16 or less students”, which states a ceiling rather than a statistical average
• Registration, technology, uniform and activity fees beyond tuition

How EDUBUS helps

Our Irvine-based counselors work in both Chinese and English. We track Adelphia Classical Christian 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.