Prairie Ridge, Cary-Grove High Schools Ranked Among Best High Schools in Nation: Newsweek

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Two local high schools have been ranked among the best high schools in the nation, according to the Newsweek Top High Schools list for 2015, which was released Wednesday morning.

Prairie Ridge and Cary-Grove Community high schools both made Newsweek’s Top High Schools list. Newsweek ranked Prairie Ridge No. 251 in the nation. Cary-Grove Community High School was not far behind on the list, receiving a rank of No. 323 in the nation.

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Newsweek noted in its rankings that Prairie Ridge has a graduation rate of 99.2 percent and 92.7 percent of its students are college-bound. The average ACT score at Prairie Ridge is 23.7. Meanwhile, Cary-Grove has an impressive graduation rate of 100 percent and 93.8 percent of its students are headed to college. The average ACT score is 23.8.

Neither Prairie Ridge or Cary-Grove high schools was ranked among the top 500 high schools in 2013 or 2014. In 2015, The only Illinois school to crack the top ten nationwide was Payton College Preparatory High School in Chicago.

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The rankings were compiled using several metrics, including graduation rate, college enrollment rate, SAT and ACT scores, AP and IB scores and participation, teacher-student ratio and dropout rates.

“Some factors are more important, especially since our rankings focus on college readiness,” Jim Impoco, editor in chief of Newsweek, told Patch via email. “We place emphasis on criteria like college enrollment and graduation rate since we know that those are some of the biggest indicators of whether students are prepared for college.”

This year’s rankings were weighted by:

• Enrollment Rate—25 percent
• Graduation Rate—20 percent
• Weighted AP/IB/Dual Enrollment composite—17.5 percent
• Weighted SAT/ACT composite—17.5 percent
• Change in student enrollment between 9th-12th grades, to control for dropout rates—10 percent
• Counselor-to-Student Ratio—10 percent

Other high-performing schools in the Chicago suburbs include: New Trier Township High School in Winnetka, ranked 14th nationally; Lake Forest High School in Lake Forest (No. 34 nationally), Adlai E. Stevenson High School (No. 82 nationally), William Fremd High School in Palatine (No. 104 in nation), Barrington High School (No. 161 nationally) and Wheaton North High School (No. 388 in the nation).

See the full list on the Newsweek website.