An apparatus and a method for estimating a channel in a broadband wireless access system. A receiving apparatus includes a first channel estimation filter having a tap coefficient which is channel-adaptively variable, the first channel estimation filter acquiring a channel impulse response by filtering received pilot symbols, a second channel estimation filter having a fixed tap coefficient, the second channel estimation filter acquiring a channel impulse response by filtering received pilot symbols, and a selector which selects the operation of one of the first and the second channel estimation filters according to channel correlativity.