TL;DR: GCF International Christian School publishes a clear five-step admission process (requirements and application fee, application packet, entrance exam, interview, results) and a short list of initial documents. It publishes no tuition figure, no application fee amount, no deadline, and no exam details. Budget for a phone call or email to the business office before you can plan around cost.
GCF International Christian School sits on Ruby corner Garnet Roads in Ortigas Center, Pasig, inside the GCF Building. It is a Kinder-to-Grade-12 school affiliated with Greenhills Christian Fellowship, and it runs on a school year that starts in August. Basic contacts and the map are on the GCF International Christian School profile.
This guide covers the part the profile cannot: the actual sequence you go through, what you can prepare in advance, and the gaps you will hit.
The five steps the school publishes
The admissions page carries a diagram labelled "General Admission Process". The steps are:
- Submit initial requirements and pay the application fee
- Complete all documents in the Application Packet
- Take the entrance examination
- Attend the interview schedule
- Wait for results
Two things are worth noticing. First, the application fee is charged at step one, before anything has been assessed, which is normal for private schools but means the money is spent whether or not you get in. Second, there are two document stages, not one. The "initial requirements" get you into the process. The "Application Packet" is a separate, larger set that you only see after step one, and its contents are not published.
That second point is the practical trap. Families often assume the published requirement list is the whole list, then get held up mid-process waiting on a document nobody warned them about. Ask the business office for the Application Packet contents at the same time you ask about the fee, so you can start chasing certificates early.
Initial requirements: local applicants
The school asks for clear digital copies of:
- A recent 2x2 colored photo
- PSA birth certificate, scanned as a PDF
- Report cards covering the complete previous school year, plus the first quarter or semester of the current year
Everything is digital. There is no line about bringing originals to the campus at this stage, which fits a process that starts with an online pre-application form.
The report card requirement is the one to plan around. Asking for the current year's first quarter means an application filed early in the school year cannot be completed until that quarter closes and cards are released. If you are moving your child mid-year, that timing decides when you can realistically apply.
Initial requirements: foreign applicants
Foreign students submit a different set:
- A recent 2x2 colored photo
- Birth certificate with official English translation
- Report cards, same coverage as local applicants
- Passport (bio page and visa stamp)
- Alien Certificate of Registration (I-Card)
Note the PSA certificate is replaced by a translated foreign birth certificate. The I-Card requirement means immigration status has to be settled before the school application closes, not alongside it. If the child is entering the Philippines on a dependent visa tied to a parent's employment, that paperwork chain runs on its own clock and is usually the slower half.
The age rule for preschool
The school states that DepEd Order 47, s. 2016 requires Kinder students to be five years old by October 31, and explains the cut-off date in terms of its own August start.
It then adds something most schools do not: it accepts younger children into a Nursery level "as long as they are potty trained." That is a genuinely different admissions standard from an age cut-off, and it means the school's practical entry point is earlier than Kinder for families who need it.
An August start also means the calendar is not identical to the public system's. If you are comparing schools across sectors, check the current DepEd school calendar for 2026-2027 against the school's own dates before assuming holidays and breaks line up.
What you are applying into
The school splits into two departments:
| Department | Levels | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Grade School | Primary (Kinder to Grade 2), Intermediate (Grades 3 to 6) | Spiral progression, DepEd K-12 |
| High School | Junior High (Grades 7 to 10), Senior High (Grades 11 to 12) | Academic Track only at SHS |
Senior high runs the Academic Track with ABM, HUMSS and STEM. There is no TVL, Sports, or Arts and Design offering. If your child is heading toward a technical-vocational path, this is not the school for Grades 11 and 12, and it is worth checking how tracks and strands actually differ before committing at Grade 10.
The junior high programme is described as a spiral curriculum, with mathematics running Algebra through Statistics, sciences running General Science through Physics, plus History, English and Filipino. The intermediate grade school curriculum lists Science, English, Math using a Concrete-Pictorial-Abstract approach, Araling Panlipunan, Filipino, and Mother Tongue for Grades 1 to 3.
Fees: what is and is not published
This is the honest part. GCF-ICS does not publish tuition. Not a range, not a per-level table, not an installment schedule.
What the payments page does publish is the mechanics: three bank accounts (China Banking Corporation ADB-Ortigas, UnionBank Tektite, and BDO Ortigas-Garnet, all in the name of GCF International Christian School, Inc.), a note that a dollar account is available on request, and an instruction to screenshot the deposit slip, upload it, and submit it through a payment form. The business office then confirms by email.
So the process for paying is documented and the amount is not. The application fee amount in step one is also unpublished.
Practically, that means the first email you send should ask for four numbers at once: the application fee, the entrance test fee if it is separate, the full annual tuition and miscellaneous fees for the level you want, and the payment terms. Ask what happens to the down payment if the child is not accepted. Do not accept a "range" from anyone other than the school. Our general comparison of private versus public school costs explains why unofficial figures for private schools go stale so fast.
The business office is reachable at [email protected] or (632) 8632-1354 local 379.
The exam and the interview
Both are real steps, and both are undocumented publicly. The school does not say what the entrance exam covers, whether it is on paper or online, how long it takes, whether there is a fee, or what happens if a child does not pass.
The interview is listed as a scheduled event, which usually means the family attends rather than the child alone. Christian schools commonly use the interview to talk through the family's expectations of the faith component. The school's FAQ page includes the question "Are we open to non-Christian students?", but the published page shows the question list without answers, so the policy is not readable from the site. If that matters to you, raise it in the interview rather than guessing. For the wider landscape, see our roundup of Christian and international schools in the Philippines.
Who this school suits
Three profiles fit cleanly. Families already connected to Greenhills Christian Fellowship, for whom the faith continuity is the point. Ortigas-based working parents who need a school inside the business district rather than a commute away from it. And families with a child younger than the Kinder cut-off, since the Nursery entry point is genuinely earlier than most private schools accept.
Two profiles fit badly. A student heading for a technical-vocational senior high, because only the Academic track is offered. And a family that needs to compare total cost against two or three other schools before applying, because you cannot do that here without a phone call first.
What to ask on a campus visit
- What is in the Application Packet, and which documents take longest to obtain?
- Is there an application deadline, or is it rolling until slots fill?
- What is the class size per level this school year?
- What does the entrance exam cover, and is there a retake policy?
- Total cash outlay before day one: application fee, testing fee, down payment, uniforms, books.
- For Nursery: what are the hours, and what is the adult-to-child ratio?
- Is there a sibling discount or an early-payment discount?
Other Pasig options are listed on the schools in Pasig page if you want to shortlist more than one before paying an application fee.
Sources
- GCF International Christian School, Admissions page (gcf-ics.edu.ph/admissions), including the General Admission Process diagram
- GCF International Christian School, Payments page (gcf-ics.edu.ph/payments)
- GCF International Christian School, FAQs page (gcf-ics.edu.ph/faqs)
- GCF International Christian School, Academic Programs pages for grade school and high school
- SchoolFinderPH directory record for GCF International Christian School
