Pilar College Zamboanga: Courses Offered

The short version. Pilar College of Zamboanga City offers seven college degrees, three senior high strands, and basic education from Universal Kindergarten through Grade 12. Three of the degrees end in a PRC licence exam — nursing, elementary education and library science. The entrance test costs PHP 150. Tuition is not published anywhere on the school's site.

For the address, phone number and profile, see our Pilar College of Zamboanga City page. This post covers the programme list, the entry route and the money.

The seven degrees

BSBA runs three majors: Financial Management, Marketing Management, and Human Resource Development Management. Our BSBA degree guide covers what separates them in practice, since the choice is made at enrolment and changing later costs subjects.

Three of the seven carry a licence at the end, and that is the real fork in this list. BS Nursing ends in the NLE, and Pilar has a track record worth knowing: its own history records a Class of 2012 graduate placing 7th nationally in the December 2012 licensure examination and another placing 9th in December 2013. Those are old results, not current pass rates — ask the college for the last three years of NLE performance before you enrol. Our NLE guide explains the exam and puts school-level pass rates in context.

BEED ends in the LET on the elementary track; see the BEEd guide and the LET guide for what that route involves.

BLIS is the unusual one. Very few colleges in Mindanao run library and information science, and it leads to the librarian licensure examination — a small, low-volume board with steady demand in schools, universities and government. If you want a licensed profession without the intensity of nursing, this is the programme on the list most people never consider.

One caution on the school's own pages: the Elementary Education programme page currently displays a vision and mission written about library and information science rather than teacher education, and the Tourism Management page carries the college's generic institutional vision instead of a programme-specific one. That is almost certainly a copy-paste error on the site rather than a statement about the programmes, but it means those two pages are not a reliable description of what you would study. Ask the Dean for the actual curriculum map.

Basic education

The published brochure lists:

• Universal Kindergarten
• Grade School, Grades 1 to 6
• Junior High School, Grades 7 to 10
• Senior High School, Grades 11 to 12 — STEM, ABM and HUMSS only

Three strands, no technical-vocational, sports or arts and design track. If your child wants TVL, this is not the school. If they want an academic route into one of Pilar's own degrees, the strands line up cleanly: STEM into nursing, ABM into business administration, HUMSS into education.

The school also opened its high school to male students in 1994, having run as a girls' school before that — worth stating plainly because families still ask.

Getting in: the exam, the fee, the documents

Pilar runs an entrance examination for both departments. Its published poster for AY 2026-2027 sets out four separate lists, and the testing fee is PHP 150 in both departments.

Entrance examination requirements — incoming first year college and transferees

1. Application form
2. 2x2 photo, white background, with name tag
3. Photocopy of report card
4. Transcript of records (transferees)
5. PSA birth certificate (photocopy)
6. Testing fee, PHP 150

Entrance examination requirements — basic education

1. Application form
2. 1x1 photo, white background, with name tag
3. Photocopy of report card
4. PSA birth certificate (photocopy)
5. Testing fee, PHP 150

Then, once you pass, the enrolment lists are different documents again — originals rather than photocopies.

Enrolment requirements — first year college and transferees

1. One 2x2 studio-shot coloured photo with name tag, white background
2. PSA certificate of live birth, coloured photocopy
3. Original report card
4. Original certificate of good moral character
5. Transcript of records (transferees)
6. Honorable dismissal (transferees)

Enrolment requirements — basic education

1. One 1x1 studio-shot coloured photo with name tag, white background
2. Original report card
3. Original certificate of good moral character
4. PSA certificate of live birth, coloured photocopy
5. ESC certificate (ESC transferees only)
6. NCAE results (senior high only)

Two details to plan around. The photo size differs between departments — 2x2 for college, 1x1 for basic education — and the studio-shot requirement at enrolment is stricter than the photocopy stage. And senior high applicants need their NCAE results, which come from the junior high school, not from Pilar.

If you are unclear which record is which, our Form 137 vs Form 138 guide covers what each one is and who releases it.

Dates for 2026-2027, from the school's own poster: entrance examination ongoing, enrolment starts 11 May 2026, classes start 8 June 2026.

Money: percentages without a base figure

Pilar publishes an unusually detailed scholarship structure and no tuition schedule at all. That means you can work out what you might save, but not what you would pay, until the Finance Office gives you an assessment.

Basic education

• 5% discount for the yearly payment mode.
• 15% for the fourth child in a family with three older siblings currently enrolled; 20% for the fifth child with four older siblings enrolled.
• 100% tuition discount for incoming Grade 7 valedictorians, 50% for salutatorians — only if the previous school's graduating class had at least 100 graduates.
• 100% for continuing students who ranked First Honors in their grade level the previous year, 50% for Second Honors.

College

• First Honors, a general average of at least 95% with no grade below 92%: 100% tuition discount the following semester.
• Second Honors, at least 92% with no grade below 89%: 50%.
• Both require at least 18 units enrolled, are awarded per semester, apply to the next semester, and can be revoked for conduct or poor performance.
• Senior high valedictorians entering first year get 100% for one semester, salutatorians 50%, subject to the same 100-graduate class-size rule.

Government assistance

ESC is listed at PHP 11,000. The senior high voucher is listed at PHP 16,000 for a private school Grade 10 completer and PHP 20,000 for a public school completer — the school explains the gap plainly, noting the private school student has already had ESC support from Grade 7 to 10. On the college side Pilar accepts CHED's Merit Scholarship, Tulong Dunong, TES and COSCHO for coconut farming families, plus AFP educational assistance, OWWA and NAPOLCOM. Our ESC grant guide covers eligibility for both.

The school makes one thing explicit that most do not: grantees manage their own scholarship applications, follow-ups and correspondence with the agency. Only TES and Tulong Dunong grantees are directly assisted by Pilar's Scholarship Officer.

Alumni scholarship. The Pilar College Alumni Association Scholarship covers full tuition and miscellaneous fees for four years. Requirements: high school graduate from any public or private school, verified financial need, full-time enrolment, a minimum general average of 80% in high school academic subjects, and family annual income not exceeding PHP 100,000.

Accreditation, and what it does not cover

Pilar's own history page records a long accreditation trail on the basic education side: PAASCU accredited the High School Department in 1990, the Grade School Department in January 1996, the High School Department reached Level III re-accredited status in January 2009, and the Grade School Department reached Level III through the Federation of Accrediting Agencies of the Philippines in April 2012.

Note what that trail covers and what it does not. Those are basic education milestones. The site does not publish a current accreditation status for any of the seven college programmes, and the milestones listed are more than a decade old. If accreditation matters to your decision — and for nursing it should — ask the college registrar for the current status of the specific programme, in writing, rather than reading the high school's record across to it.

The history page also records something worth knowing for planning: CHED stopped allowing the school to admit first year students into BS Computer Science and BS Information System from school year 2012-2013. BSIT survived and is still offered. That is a reminder that a programme list is a snapshot, and that a course offered five years ago may not be offered now.

Who this school suits

A Zamboanga family that wants a Catholic school with a long institutional memory — 1894 is not a marketing date, it is a Cartilla school that predates the American colonial period — and a student heading for one of three licensed professions or a straightforward business or IT degree, without leaving the city.

It suits you less if you want a technical-vocational senior high track, an engineering degree, criminology, or accountancy. None of those appear on the published list.

Sources

• Pilar College — How to Enroll, with the AY 2026-2027 requirements and brochure posters
• Pilar College — Scholarship Grants
• Pilar College — Government Assistance
• Pilar College — History
• Pilar College — Nursing and Information Technology

Comparing with other schools nearby? Our Zamboanga City schools listing has the rest.