All applicants have to complete the LASA Application.

You can’t save the form to edit later.  Please save all of your answers and materials in a separate place (like a google doc or Word document) and complete the form only when you are ready to submit the whole thing.

The form includes three short answer questions, a creator’s statement, your creative work (either uploaded or linked), and proof of residence.

The way the form works, you have to be logged in with your email address to fill it out. Later, you will be asked for your email address. This should be an email address that can receive outside emails (as LASA mainly communicates via email), and one that you check! It does not have to be the same one that you are logged into to fill out the form.

If you do not have an email address other than your school email address, we suggest that you create one with your parent/guardian. Gmail.com is a solid email provider that works well with all LASA forms. Make sure you check it with some frequency. Once a week through December and most of January, and more often as the deadline approaches.

If you need to upload report cards, the form will tell you when you answer the question about whether or not you were enrolled at an AISD school this year or last.

Since you can’t request a shadow date at LASA until you have submitted your application, you can submit this form before you receive your semester 1 report card (Fall, 2025) if you have to upload one. (Again, students who are at an AISD school do not have to submit report cards separately.)

Starting in late December/early January, students who have submitted the LASA Application will get application status emails as LASA checks your submitted materials to make sure we can access them, and that they have the information we need.

If there are issues, we will explain what the issues are in that email. The email will also link you to the LASA Upload form so you can upload (or reupload) required documents.

If you submitted your LASA Application without your Fall, 2025 report card, you can use the LASA Upload form to upload your report card as soon as you get it.
 

Follow the prompts and instructions in the LASA Application to answer the 3 short answer questions. Use the LASA Application Rubric to see what our scorers are looking for in the responses.

The suggested word limit is 150 words per answer. If you go too far under or too far over, that may be a sign of having structural issues with your response.

Remember to read the questions carefully to make sure you answer them fully!

We suggest that you ask a trusted adult to read over your answers before submitting the LASA Application.

Follow the prompts in the LASA Application. (Who are you? What are your passions? What makes you special? Create a work that represents who you are as an individual.) Decide which medium you want to use to answer the question. (It could be a work of art, a photograph, a musical, an essay, a video, etc. The only limit is your imagination.)

Yes, this is very open-ended. That’s kind of the point. 

A couple of things to keep in mind:

• We prefer you to create something new for your creative work.
• If you make a video, it shouldn’t be more than around 3 minutes (5 minutes max!)
• Instead of uploading a large file, we recommend that you add a link to a Google Drive document
• If you share a file in Google, you have to make sure that the share settings (under Share > General Access) are set to “Anyone with the link”
• Don’t upload your Creative Work to YouTube Shorts; it’s blocked on AISD WiFi.
• If we can’t see your Creative Work, we can’t score it!
• Only submit one Creative Work. So, either upload a file or submit a link. Don’t do both!

The Creative Work should be your own.

Use the Creative Work Rubric to guide your work.

This is your opportunity to reflect on your creative work. There is no suggested word limit for the Creator’s Statement. You should take the space you need to explain the creative choices you made with your work and help the reader understand the message you are trying to get across.

You don’t want to write something that’s so short it doesn’t answer the prompt. But longer isn’t always better either! Find a happy medium where you can express everything you need without rambling.

ALL students, regardless of where they are enrolled, have to submit proof of residence. Only students who live in AISD by the deadline are eligible to apply to LASA.

This means that with your LASA Application, you have to upload your family’s latest electricity or gas bill.

If you don’t have the utility bill in digital format, you can use google drive to upload it as a .pdf. Or, you can always take a picture or use a phone app like genius scan. 

Electricity/Gas Bill must: 

• show the full first page of the bill
• show the name of your parent/legal guardian
• show the home address
• be less than 45 days old

If your family’s gas/electricity is included in your rent, you can upload your family’s lease instead.
The lease should:

• be the full lease document
• show the name of your parent/legal guardian
• show your home address
• show that gas/electricity is included with the rent

LASA may ask for additional proof of residence as part of the application process.

Common Mistakes to Avoid
DO NOT submit a blurry, low-resolution file where the information cannot be read
DO NOT submit a photo of the envelope of your utility bill.
DO NOT submit a photo of just one corner of your utility bill.
DO NOT submit a photo of your utility bill still folded.
DO NOT submit a photo of your utility bill with the bottom portion torn off.
DO NOT submit a screenshot from the payment portal.
DO NOT submit the email telling you that your bill is due.
DO NOT submit a cable, Internet, or cell phone bill.
DO NOT submit your property tax bill. 

Exception
If your parent/guardian is an AISD employee, you do not have to live in AISD in order to apply to LASA. (Unfortunately, substitutes and temp/hourly employees do not qualify for the exemption.)
If your parent/guardian works for AISD you can upload one of the following as proof of residence:

• Picture of your parent/guardian’s AISD badge
• A word document with their employee number and AISD email address

NOTE: We can’t consider an application until we have proof of residence! If you’re not (physically!) living in AISD by the deadline, we can’t even look at your application.

If you went to an AISD school last school year, you do not have to submit a report card.  LASA will get access to your grades once your parent has completed priority registration in Enroll Austin. 

NOTE: Since Enroll Austin isn’t opening until spring, it will take a while for us to be able to see your grades to confirm that we have access to them.

If you went to a private/charter school, or a school outside of AISD last year you have to submit your report card from that school.

Final Year Report Card from Last School Year (2024/2025) must show:

• your final year grades in core subjects (i.e. math, English, social studies, and science)
• your first and last name
• your grade level or the school year

NOTE! We only look at your grades in English, Social Studies, Science, and Math. So if, say, your Spanish grade is lower than you would like, that doesn’t matter for this application. 

Before You Upload Your Report Card

• Look at the digital copy. If you can’t read it, neither can we.
• Doublecheck that it:
  • is from the right grading cycle (eg. we can’t use your 1st 9 weeks report card etc.)
  • has your name on it
  • shows your grade level or the school year

Common Mistakes to Avoid
DO NOT submit a blurry, low-resolution file where the information cannot be read
DO NOT submit a screenshot of your grades that doesn’t also show your name and grade level
DO NOT send a screenshot of your grades where it’s unclear which courses the grades are for
DO NOT submit an incomplete report card 
DO NOT submit a report card from an earlier grading period (eg. showing only semester 1)

NOTE! We don’t accept report cards showing only first semester or partial year grades unless you switched schools in the middle of the school year. If that is the case, please upload the latest report cards you received from both schools.

If you go to an AISD school, you do not have to submit this report card. LASA will get access to your grades once your parent has completed priority registration in Enroll Austin and the semester 1 grades have been released.

NOTE: Since Enroll Austin isn’t opening until spring, it will take a while for us to be able to see your grades to confirm that we have access to them.

If you go to a private/charter school, or a school outside of AISD you have to submit your report card from that school.

Semester 1 Report Card from This School Year (Fall, 2025) must show:

• semester 1 (or equivalent) grades in core subjects (i.e. math, English, social studies, and science)
• your first and last name
• your grade level or the school year

NOTE! We only look at your grades in English, Social Studies, Science, and Math. So if your Spanish grade is lower than you would like, that doesn’t matter for this application. 

Before You Upload Your Report Card(s)

• Look at the digital copy. If you can’t read it, neither can we.
• Doublecheck that it:
  • is from the right grading cycle (semester 1)
  • has your name on it
  • shows your grade level or the school year

Common Mistakes to Avoid
DO NOT submit a blurry, low-resolution file where the information cannot be read
DO NOT submit a screenshot of your grades that doesn’t also show your name and grade level
DO NOT send a screenshot of your grades where it’s unclear which courses the grades are for
DO NOT submit an incomplete report card 
DO NOT submit a report card from an earlier grading period

NOTE! We know that by the time you’re ready to submit your LASA Application many of you won’t have received your report card for this year. You can go ahead and submit your LASA Application without it. Then once you get your Fall, 2025 report card, use the LASA Upload form to upload it.

IF your school won’t release your fall semester report card by January 30, 2026, take your most recent report card and write on it that it is the latest report card you will have available by the deadline and then upload it to the LASA Upload form.

This year, teacher recommendations are submitted via a separate Google form. All AISD high schools use the same form, so teachers only have to submit once.

First, pick two teachers who you think would give you a good recommendation. One who is teaching you in English or social studies, and one who is teaching you in math or science. 

(LASA prefers that you use your current year teachers. But if you feel like last year’s teachers know you better, you can ask them instead.)

Next, ask them if they are willing to write you a teacher recommendation. It’s a lot of work to write a good recommendation so recognize that they are doing you a favor. If they accept, they may ask you to provide them with a brag sheet or something similar in order to write the best recommendation possible. Please do so!

Once you have found two teachers willing to write teacher recommendations for you, please provide them with this link and let them know that teacher recommendations are due on January 30, 2026.

They will have to be logged in to their school email address (it doesn’t matter if they work for a charter/private school or another school district) to fill out the form.

Remember: 

• LASA will only read two teacher recommendations per student, even if more are submitted.
• If more than one core teacher submits a recommendation (say a math teacher and a science teacher both submit a recommendation for a student), LASA will pick one of them at random to consider.
• LASA does not require (or read) recommendations from Fine Arts teachers. There’s a spot for them on the form because other schools (like McCallum) require a Fine Arts recommendation.

Common Mistakes to Avoid
DO NOT ask a teacher who has never taught you in a core subject for a recommendation.
DO NOT ask a teacher who has only been your club sponsor for a recommendation.
DO NOT harass your teacher about when they will fill out your recommendation. Their deadline is the same as yours!
 

All students applying for LASA should take the CogAT Admissions test at LASA in January. The specific dates and times can be found on our admissions calendar.

You do not have to sign up in advance, just show up 15 minutes before the testing session for your last name is set to start. 

If you absolutely can’t attend the session for your last name on either testing date, it’s okay to attend the other session instead. You do not have to let us know.

You can only take the CogAT once at LASA.

Only students applying to LASA for next school year may take the test at LASA. 

Accommodations

• Only if you currently receive them at your school
• Parent/Guardian have to fill out accommodation request form (on admissions calendar) in advance
• Only offered during the morning session
• You must show up on the date you indicated on the form
• Can’t take the test with no accommodations and then take it with accommodations

Version: CogAT Form 7

• 8th graders: Test Level 13/14
• 9th & 10th graders: Test Level 15/16
• 11th graders: Test Level 17/18

You can google CogAT Form 7 and try the free sample questions to get an idea of what the test is like. We don’t recommend paying for practice tests.

On the Day of the Test:

• Show up 15 minutes early
• Bring something to drink and a light snack
• Dress in layers (the temperature is unpredictable!)
• LASA will provide everything else you need, including a pencil to fill out the scantron sheet
• Only students are allowed in the school building
• If you are not an 8th grader, let us know when you enter the building so we can give you the right level of the test
• If you have requested accommodations, let us know when you enter the building so we can get you to the right testing room

NOTE! If you’ve taken the CogAT within the last year, you do not have to take it again if you can share your scores with LASA. Please email LASAadmissions@austinisd.org for the link to the LASA Upload form. We ask that you upload the CogAT narrative report showing the raw scores and the percentile. 

All students must have a completed Enroll Austin application by the deadline or LASA will not be able to accept them. 

Normally, Enroll Austin and the LASA application open at the same time. Due to the consolidation plans, this year will be a little different.

The exact timeline has not been rolled out yet, but Enroll Austin is set to open sometime after winter break.

As a result the priority registration window in Enroll Austin will be much shorter than normal. We will communicate with applicants and their families as we learn more.

Once the priority registration window opens in Enroll Austin, parents should complete priority registration as soon as possible.

We plan to have at least one event at LASA to help parents/guardians complete priority registration before the deadline.

Accessing Enroll Austin

• Parents/guardians with students in an AISD school
  Please access the Enroll Austin tile via your Parent Portal account at portal.austinisd.org. Going through the Portal helps prevent duplicate accounts which may otherwise cause issues later. 
• Parents/guardians with students in a non-AISD school
  Please go to austinisd.org/enroll and make an Enroll Austin account. (New to AISD parents should not create an AISD Parent Portal account at this time).
• Parents/guardians who used to have students in an AISD school
  Try to access Enroll Austin via your old Parent Portal account before making a new Enroll Austin account. You can call the Enroll Austin Hotline at 512-414-SEAT for help to recover an old account. 

Technical Questions or Issues

• Login issues? Try a different browser or clearing your cache.
• Reach out to the Enroll Austin Hotline at 512-414-SEAT.
• Attend an Enroll Austin priority registration help event at LASA.
  • Dates TBD. Check the admissions calendar for dates and times. 

Address

• Only students who live in AISD by the deadline are eligible to apply to LASA.
• If your address in Enroll Austin is wrong, you can update it under “FAMILY INFORMATION”
  If your student is currently at an AISD school, you should speak with the main office to have the address officially updated in the system.

Completing Priority Registration

• Find your student’s tile in Enroll Austin
• Make sure you select priority registration for 2026/2027
• Go all the way through the options to submit
• Select and rank LASA as one of the schools your student wants to attend next year
• If you have to make changes to the priority registration, you have to go all the way through and submit again

Next Steps

Next steps are accessible at the ribbon across the top of the Enroll Austin page once you are logged in. Here you are asked to:

• Upload Report Card (NOT REQUIRED FOR 2026/2027 APPLICATION)
• Upload Test Scores (NEVER REQUIRED FOR LASA)
• Upload Proof of Residence
• Upload Parent ID
• Provide teacher email address to send recommendation forms to teachers (NOT REQUIRED FOR 2026/2027 APPLICATION)

Because Enroll Austin opens so late this year, much of the information requested in Enroll Austin will already have been provided in other ways.

• Report Cards - only requested from students who have attended non-AISD schools and uploaded to the LASA Application this year.
• Test Scores - never required for LASA application
• Teacher Emails for Teacher Recommendation - Teacher Recommendations are submitted via google form this year.

Parent ID and Proof of Residence are both still required in Enroll Austin. More details are available below. 

Enroll Austin may show the NEXT STEPS as incomplete if there is nothing uploaded to each upload-slot. You can safely ignore this. 

LASA will go in and manually mark NEXT STEPS as complete once everything has been submitted. If there is a delay due to work load (very possible!) know that the individually addressed application status emails will show which items LASA has received.

Parents can edit the priority registration in Enroll Austin right up until the deadline. Just make sure you go through the whole thing and resubmit each time you make an edit or changes to the ranking. 

Next steps can be accessed from the ribbon at the top of the page without going through the whole priority registration process.

NOTE! While Report Cards from AISD schools do not have to be submitted separately, LASA will not be able to access AISD students’ grades until parents/guardians have completed priority registration in Enroll Austin. Once we have received grades from district, we will check them manually to make sure we have all the information we need. Thank you for your patience!

The last part of priority registration is to select the schools/programs students are interested in attending and ranking them 1-7. 

1 being the school/program they are the most interested in attending and 7 being the school/program they are the least interested in attending.

Remember:

• Students may rank up to 7 schools/programs.
• Parents can make changes to the list of schools/programs and the ranking up until the Enroll Austin deadline.
• Rank the schools/programs in true order of interest.
• If a student was admitted to their top choice, they will not see the result of any of the other schools/programs.

It is important to rank the schools in the order the student most wants to attend them. If students are accepted to their first choice, the Enroll Austin process (the lottery) will not consider them for any of their lower ranked schools even if they “got in”. Do not try to "game the system". Rank the school/program your student most wants to attend first. Even if your student does not think they can get into their first choice. If you rank it second, and the student gets into the school they ranked first, they will never even know if they could have gotten into their actual first choice.

Remember:  LASA is unable to consider any student who does not have a completed priority registration in Enroll Austin by the deadline.

Under NEXT STEPS, you will be asked to upload a Parent ID. You can  access NEXT STEPS from the ribbon across the top of the Enroll Austin home page once you are logged in. 

Parent ID

• Drivers License
• Valid (i.e. not expired)
• For the parent/guardian listed in Enroll Austin and/or the LASA application
• A picture of the back is not needed

Common Mistakes to Avoid
DO NOT submit a blurry, low-resolution file where the information cannot be read
DO NOT submit an expired drivers license
DO NOT submit another form of ID if you have a drivers license 
DO NOT submit just a picture of yourself
 

Under NEXT STEPS, you will be asked to upload Proof of Residence. You can  access NEXT STEPS from the ribbon across the top of the Enroll Austin home page once you are logged in. Look for the Proof of Residence upload-slot.

LASA requires more than one proof of residence. As students have already provided a utility bill with the LASA application, we ask that parents/guardians upload their mortgage statement or lease.

Mortgage Statement must: 

• show the full first page of the statement
• show the name of the applicant’s parent/legal guardian
• show the home address
• be dated within 45 days of submission

Lease must:

• be the full lease document
• show the name of the applicant’s parent/legal guardian
• show the home address

ALL students, regardless of where they are enrolled, have to submit proof of residence. Only students who live in AISD by the deadline are eligible to apply to LASA.

LASA may ask for additional proof of residence as part of the application process.

Exception
If an applicant’s parent/guardian is an AISD employee, the applicant is exempt from the residency requirement. But, the parent/guardian should still upload their mortgage statement/lease in Enroll Austin.

Common Mistakes to Avoid
DO NOT submit a blurry, low-resolution file where the information cannot be read.
DO NOT submit a photo of the envelope of your mortgage statement.
DO NOT submit a photo of just one part of your mortgage statement.
DO NOT submit a photo of your folded mortgage statement.
DO NOT submit only a page or two of your lease.
DO NOT submit a screenshot from a payment portal.
DO NOT submit a cable, Internet, or cell phone bill.
DO NOT submit your property tax bill. 
DO NOT submit your electricity bill.

REMEMBER! We can’t consider an application until we have proof of residence! If you are not (physically!) living in AISD by the deadline, we can’t even look at your student’s application.