Wheaton North Ranked Among Best High Schools in Nation: Newsweek

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Wheaton North High School has 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.

Wheaton North was ranked No. 388 in the country. Newsweek found the graduation rate at Wheaton North was 98.5 percent while 87.2 percent of students were college-bound. The average ACT score was 24.1.

Wheaton North saw a slight drop in its ranking from 2014 to 2015. The school was ranked as No. 349 in 2014 but did not make the list of the top 500 schools in 2013.

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The only Illinois school to crack the top ten nationwide in 2015 was Payton College Preparatory High School in Chicago.

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) and Barrington High School (No. 161 nationally).