California Academy of Mathematics and Science

Tucked inside the campus of California State University Dominguez Hills, California Academy of Mathematics and Science is one of those rare schools where the college experience starts before graduation — students walk the same grounds as university students, access research facilities, and routinely go on to top universities across the country. It draws academically driven students from across the greater South Bay and Long Beach area who are ready for a rigorous, science-and-math-focused curriculum in a genuinely collegiate environment. Carson itself is a working-class, diverse community with a strong sense of neighborhood identity, and families who make the commute here are doing so with real purpose — because for a kid who loves STEM, there's simply not much else like it in Southern California.