Holmdel Ranks 91st On Newsweek’s Top Public High Schools List For 2016

Congratulations to Holmdel, which made Newsweek’s latest list of the best public high schools in the country.

A total of 51 New Jersey schools made the 2016 list, which ranked the 500 best high schools in the country.

Holmdel was ranked 91st out of 500. The top-ranking school in the state was Academy for Math, Science and Engineering in Rockaway, which came in second nationally, and Union County Magnet High School in Scotch Plains, which came in fourth.

Several other local schools in New Jersey made the list. Click here to see all of the New Jersey high schools that made Newsweek's list and their ranking.

The school rankings are borne of legitimate research. Newsweek, along with the analytics firm Westat, uses legitimate and objective measurements to put together its annual ranking of the country’s best high schools.

And just in time for the start of school, Newsweek is releasing 2016’s list later Thursday morning.

Newsweek looked at six measurements and weighted them to come up with a “college readiness index.” The rankings are meant to show how well high schools do at preparing students for college.
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.

See the full list here.