Almost a third of the 1,000 schools that ranked on Newsweek’s list of the best American high schools are found in the northeastern pocket of the nation. 153 of those schools sit in the expansive New York City metropolitan area alone. But among the area’s top 20 are a few surprises from New Jersey and Massachusetts.
To generate the overall rankings, we factored in six criteria. Three make up 75 percent of the overall score—the four-year graduation rate, college-acceptance rate, and number of AP and other high-level exams given per student. Average SAT/ACT scores and AP/college-level test scores count for another 10 percent each, and the number of AP courses offered per student counts for the final 5 percent. Because most of these data aren’t available from a central source, we collected it by reaching out directly to high-school administrators directly. 15,000 were contacted, and 2,300 responded.