International School Admissions in Bangalore (2026)

The brief

Two bottleneck years run the city. Junior KG and Year 7 are where seats are built, and where the queue is longest. Mid-year entry depends on attrition.
Tech-corridor schools carry the heaviest waitlists. Stonehill, TISB, Inventure, and Greenwood all sit in the Whitefield to Sarjapur belt where most relocating families are looking.
The Karnataka RTE Act reserves 25% of entry-level seats at most private unaided schools for economically weaker section pupils. International schools structured as unaided private schools are inside that scope; how it is administered varies.
Capitation is illegal in Karnataka under the 1984 Educational Institutions (Prohibition of Capitation Fee) Act. The fee is published as building, development, or corpus depending on the school.
The academic year splits. Indian-board schools start in April or June; IB and Cambridge schools mostly run an August intake, which means two different application clocks in the same city.

The application calendar

Bangalore runs two academic years in parallel.

CBSE, ICSE, and Karnataka State Board schools start in April or June. Applications open in November or December of the previous year. Junior KG forms at sought-after schools can close within days.

IB and Cambridge schools run an August start. TISB, Stonehill, Canadian International, and Inventure publish year-round enquiry routes, with assessment cycles clustered October to February for the following August intake.

Most of the top tier holds both calendars. A family applying to Greenwood High for IGCSE in Y7 is on a different clock from a family applying to the same school's ICSE primary cohort.

A March arrival lands a family between intakes. Indian-board schools have started; IB and Cambridge schools are five months from August. Mid-year entry depends on attrition, and at the top tier attrition is low.

The two year groups where the queue is longest

Junior KG (JKG). The first formative intake, age three to four, where most of the cohort is built. At TISB, Stonehill, Inventure, and Greenwood, applications open 12 to 18 months ahead and entry-level cohorts close before the academic year starts.

JKG is where a school opens whole new sections. Once a student is in JKG they are usually in for the long run. The JKG cohort sets available seats in every subsequent year, minus attrition.

Year 7. The second build year. Cambridge schools take their secondary intake for IGCSE preparation; IB schools place students into MYP. Y7 has more movement than JKG because some families switch schools at the end of primary, and relocating families with older children target Y7 as a natural entry.

Primary 1 to 6 is where the squeeze is hardest. A family with an eight-year-old looking at TISB or Stonehill mid-cycle is dependent on a single seat opening up. Some schools maintain a formal waiting pool. Others run a quieter process where the registrar contacts families when a place becomes available.

Waitlist conventions at the tech-corridor schools

The word does different work at different schools.

Stonehill International, with the full IB continuum, runs a priority pool. The school applies internal criteria including sibling status and how long the application has been on file, alongside assessment.

The International School Bangalore (TISB) publishes a sequenced policy: enquiry, application, assessment, interview, offer, then payment to secure the place. Where a year group is full the application is held; the school does not promise a queue position.

Inventure Academy publishes a similar enquiry-to-offer route in its admissions FAQ, with no public queue mechanism. Y7 entry at Inventure is one of the more oversubscribed in the corridor.

Greenwood High, the largest at around 2,000 students, has more elastic capacity. The admissions process is FAQ-based, and Greenwood opens new sections more readily than the smaller IB schools above. Not every year group has open seats in every cycle.

The pattern is the same across all four. A waitlist is not a queue. It is a pool of qualified applicants, reordered by the school's own criteria, against a fixed number of seats that move only when an existing student leaves.

Assessment, in practice

Early years and early primary assessments are observational. A child sits with a teacher for 30 to 60 minutes, sometimes with parents present. The school is looking for age-appropriate development, social readiness, and language exposure. Almost no top-tier school publishes a JKG test a parent could prepare for.

Upper primary and secondary assessments shift register. Schools use written papers in English, Maths, and sometimes a second language, paired with a structured interview. Some use CAT4 (the GL Assessment Cognitive Abilities Test). Bangalore International School publishes CAT4 as part of admissions.

The written component checks readiness for the year group, diagnoses learning support needs, and at the most oversubscribed schools acts as a filter when the applicant pool exceeds available seats. A child transferring from a less academically intense feeder into Y7 or Y9 at the top-tier IB and Cambridge schools faces a bar set above their current grade level. The assessment is not a placement test alone; at the top tier it is also a selection tool.

The top-tier read

School	Area	Curriculum	Pressure shape
The International School Bangalore	Whitefield to Sarjapur	IB, Cambridge	JKG closes early; Y7 oversubscribed; primary mid-cycle on attrition
Stonehill International	North Bangalore	IB continuum	Small cohort; JKG and Y7 the only meaningful build points
Canadian International School	Yelahanka	IB, Cambridge	Less tight than the corridor schools; Yelahanka location filters demand
Inventure Academy	Whitefield to Sarjapur	Cambridge	Y7 the visible pressure point; primary on attrition
Greenwood High	Sarjapur Road	IB, Cambridge, ICSE	Largest of the corridor schools; more elastic but selective at top years
Neev Academy	Yemalur	IB	Smaller, newer; pressure concentrated in early years
Mallya Aditi International School	Yelahanka	Cambridge, ICSE	Established; selective; written assessments from upper primary

Pressure descriptions reflect commonly reported parent experience across forums and school enquiry channels. Verify current cohort availability with the school directly.

The Karnataka rules behind the queue

Two state-level rules shape Bangalore admissions.

Karnataka RTE provisions. The state's implementation of the central RTE Act reserves 25% of entry-level seats at most private unaided schools for children from the economically weaker section and disadvantaged groups, with the state reimbursing tuition. International schools registered as unaided private schools fall inside the scope. Administration varies and there has been long-running litigation on its application to schools following non-state syllabi. The seats are real; the route's visibility is uneven.

Karnataka Educational Institutions (Prohibition of Capitation Fee) Act, 1984. Capitation is unlawful. Schools that ask for a one-time amount at admission publish it as a building fund, development fee, corpus, or registration deposit. The lines between a legitimate refundable corpus, a one-time development fee, and an effective capitation payment are not always clear. The legal position is that anything beyond published tuition that buys priority or a seat is capitation, whatever it is called on the receipt.

How to maximise chances

The Bangalore-specific answer is move the timeline forward. The city is India's largest IT employment hub and tech relocators arrive year-round with school-age children. Whitefield and Sarjapur, where most settle, contain most of the top-tier schools, which is why the corridor cluster is the most oversubscribed.

The practical levers for relocating families:

Apply 12 to 18 months ahead for JKG and Y7. The build years are where seats exist. Every other year is attrition.
Apply to the corridor schools and at least one out of the corridor. Canadian International (Yelahanka), Mallya Aditi (Yelahanka), and Trio World (Sahakar Nagar) carry less of the relocator demand than the Whitefield to Sarjapur cluster.
Apply to both IB and Cambridge streams where the school offers both. Greenwood, TISB, and others run parallel cohorts at certain years; the Cambridge route is often less tight than the IB one in the same school.
Close the assessment gap honestly. Y7 written papers in English and Maths set the bar above the child's current grade level. Six months of preparation matters more than enquiry timing at this entry.
Two questions every school should answer cleanly. What is the current cohort size in the target year. What is the one-time fee at admission, and is it refundable.

FAQs

When does the academic year start in Bangalore? Indian-board schools (CBSE, ICSE, Karnataka State Board) start in April or June. IB and Cambridge schools mostly run an August intake. Most top-tier schools offer both streams and run both calendars in parallel.

Which year groups are hardest to enter? Junior KG and Year 7. JKG is where the cohort is built; Y7 is where Cambridge and IB schools take their secondary intake. The primary years between are almost entirely attrition-driven.

Are waitlists first-come, first-served? At top-tier schools, no. A waitlist is a priority pool reordered by sibling status, prior assessment, and the school's own criteria. A later application with a stronger profile can move ahead of an earlier one.

Is the RTE 25% quota real at international schools? The seats exist on paper at private unaided schools registered in Karnataka. Administration varies, and there is long-running litigation on the rule's application to schools following non-state syllabi. EWS-category families apply through the state portal.

What is capitation, and is it allowed? Capitation is any payment beyond published tuition that secures a seat. It is illegal in Karnataka under the 1984 Act. Schools that ask for a one-time payment at admission call it a development fee, building fund, or refundable corpus. Legality depends on what the payment is for, not what it is called.

Can a family apply mid-year? Yes, but at top-tier schools the answer at mid-year is usually that the year group is full and the application will be held. Mid-year movement depends on attrition, and attrition at the top tier is low.

Is the assessment a competitive exam? At early years, no. At upper primary and secondary, often yes. Top-tier IB and Cambridge schools use the assessment as both a placement check and a selection filter when the applicant pool exceeds available seats.

Sources

Karnataka Educational Institutions (Prohibition of Capitation Fee) Act, 1984.
Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, and Karnataka rules.
TISB admissions: https://www.tisb.org/admissions-overview.html
Bangalore International School admissions (CAT4 reference): https://www.bangaloreinternationalschool.org/admissions/
Stonehill International School admissions: https://www.stonehill.in/admissions/
Inventure Academy admissions FAQ: https://www.inventureacademy.com/admission/admission-faq/
Greenwood High admissions FAQs: https://greenwoodhigh.edu.in/admission/faqs/
Canadian International School Bangalore admissions: https://www.cisb.org.in/admissions/
Karnataka RTE admissions portal: https://schooleducation.kar.nic.in/