Mallya Aditi International School, Bangalore | International Schools Guide

Bangalore's most academically prestigious co-ed school, established 1984 in Yelahanka. Cambridge Fellowship holder, top-ten ranked nationally, and one of only twenty schools globally to hold that Cambridge recognition.

Aditi runs ICSE and Cambridge Advanced, with a 6 to 18 age range and around 740 students, a deliberately tight scale that keeps the academic culture concentrated. Admission is selective and competitive, the alumni network spans 4,000-plus globally and is unusually engaged, and graduates routinely place at top universities in India and abroad.

The reputation around Bangalore is consistent: rigorous, intellectually serious, and not for every child. Families looking for a relaxed pace, large extracurricular menus or a softer pastoral profile usually pick elsewhere. Families who want their child stretched academically alongside motivated peers, in a school where teachers expect and get a high level of work, treat Aditi as the first call. Fees sit in the upper-mid bracket rather than the premium international tier.

Year level	Age	Fee
Grade 1-5 (ICSE)	6	₹605,000
Grade 6-10 (ICSE)	11	₹605,000
Grade 9-10 (IGCSE)	14	₹850,000
Grade 11-12 (A Level / AICE)	16	₹850,000

Year level

Age

Fee

Grade 1-5 (ICSE)

₹605,000

Grade 6-10 (ICSE)

₹605,000

Grade 9-10 (IGCSE)

₹850,000

Grade 11-12 (A Level / AICE)

₹850,000

Forty years in, Aditi sits in a small bracket of Bangalore schools where the reputation is genuinely earned rather than marketed. The Yelahanka campus runs as a not-for-profit under the Ujwal Trust, which keeps fees noticeably below the boarding-flagship peers while academic outcomes stay comparable. The flavour is intellectual and quietly cosmopolitan rather than glossy, with a long-tenured principal at the centre. The price of all that is access: seats are scarce, the location is a haul from most of the city, and the school makes families work for a place rather than the other way round.

Positives

Academic depth. Cambridge IGCSE/A-Level and ICSE/ISC tracks run in parallel, with class sizes around 30 and strong subject coverage across sciences, humanities, and the arts. Recent cohorts have landed places at Stanford, Brown, Duke, Imperial, and Georgetown, and the school's counselling track record on US and UK admissions is consistently cited as one of the strongest in Bangalore.
Not-for-profit structure. Run by the Ujwal Trust rather than a commercial group. Annual tuition lands around INR 6 lakh for ICSE and INR 8.5 lakh for IGCSE, well under the headline numbers at TISB or Indus. That positioning is unusual at this tier in the city.
Arts, music, and SUPW. Carnatic and Hindustani music, theatre, robotics, MUN, and a long-running Socially Useful Productive Work programme that puts students into joint projects with neighbouring government schools. The cultural and service side is more than ornamental and is one of the things alumni remember.
Leadership continuity. Sathish Jayarajan has led the school since 2003, and the long tenure shows in the steadiness of the academic culture. Alumni accounts consistently describe the principal as personally engaged with students.

Admissions scarcity. Standards 2 through 9 are usually full, and the senior intake is small. Families often apply expecting a no and need a backup plan. Application windows for senior school open well in advance of the academic year.

Yelahanka commute. The campus sits in Yelahanka New Town, on the far north of the city. From central or south Bangalore the bus run can stretch to an hour or more each way, which is a real constraint for younger children.

Senior-school workload. Grades 9 to 12 are intense by design, geared towards rigorous boards and competitive university applications. Alumni speak well of what came out of it; the daily pressure during those years is part of the package.

Sathish Jayarajan