Three Irvine Public High Schools Rank in Top 100 in National Survey

IRVINE, CA—Newsweek’s list of the best public high schools in the country is out, and 51 California high schools made the list, which ranked the 500 best high schools nationwide. Four of those were in the city of Irvine, California.

The top-ranked school in the state was Whitney (Gretchen) High School in Cerritos, which came in seventh nationwide. The school ranked the highest in California for 2015.

Here's a look at all of the California high schools that made Newsweek's list and where they came in on the list: (Click here to view the full list of Newsweek's 500 best.)

In Irvine, the following high schools ranked in the top 75 of the nation's top 500 Public High Schools:

• # 25 - Northwood High School
• # 57 - University High School
• # 69 - Woodbridge High School

Also making the grade in Irvine, just over halfway down the list:

• # 295 - Arnold O. Beckman High School

Those measurements and their weight are:

• Holding power: 10 percent
• Ratio of counselor/full-time equivalent to student enrollment: 10 percent
• Weighted SAT/ACT: 17.5 percent
• Weighted AP/IB/dual enrollment composite: 17.5 percent
• Graduation rate: 20 percent
• College enrollment rate: 25 percent

In all, 6,477 of the nation’s 15,819 public high schools met the criteria to be considered in Newsweek’s rankings. Newsweek used school performance data from the National Center for Education Statistics to narrow down the list of schools.

Click here to view the full methodology.
You can view last year’s rankings here.

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