21 Long Island High Schools Make Newsweek's Top Public High Schools List

Newsweek has released its annual list of the top public high schools in America for 2015.

Twenty-one Long Island schools–12 in Nassau and nine in Suffolk–made the list of the top 500 schools in the nation. There are almost 30,000 public high schools in the United States.

Here’s where the Long Island schools ranked:

• No. 27- Jericho High School (Jericho)
• No. 105- Great Neck North High School (Great Neck)
• No. 174- Plainview-Old Bethpage JFK High School (Plainview)
• No. 176- John F. Kennedy High School (Bellmore)
• No. 196- Great Neck South High School (Great Neck)
• No. 214- Herricks High School (New Hyde Park)
• No. 219- Syosset High School (Syosset)
• No. 276- Earl L. Vandermeulen High School (Port Jefferson)
• No. 343- Sayville High School (West Sayville)
• No. 350- Smithtown High School West (Smithtown)
• No. 376- Elwood-John H. Glenn High School (Elwood)
• No. 386- Half Hollow Hills High School East (Dix Hills)
• No. 394- Wellington C. Mepham High School (Bellmore)
• No. 408- Paul D. Schreiber Senior High School (Port Washington)
• No. 427- Mount Sinai High School (Mount Sinai)
• No. 436- Northport High School (Northport)
• No. 438- Half Hollow Hills High School West (Dix Hills)
• No. 443- Bayport-Blue Point High School (Bayport)
• No. 444- North Shore Senior High School (Glen Head)
• No. 447- Oceanside High School (Oceanside)
• No. 450- Bethpage Senior High School (Bethpage)

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.

RELATED:

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“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

Here are the top 10 high schools in the United States, according to Newsweek:

1. Thomas Jefferson High (Alexandria, VA)
2. High Technology High School (Lincroft, NJ)
3. Academy for Mathematics Science and Engineering (Rockaway, NJ)
4. Union County Magnet High School (Scotch Plains, NJ)
5. Bergen County Academies (Hackensack, NJ)
6. Gretchen Whitney High (Cerritos, CA)
7. Middlesex County Academy for Math Science & Engineering (Edison, NJ)
8. International Academy (Bloomfield Hills, MI)
9. Academy of Allied Health and Science (Neptune, NJ)
10. Walter Payton College Preparatory HS (Chicago, IL)

See the full rankings here.

Photo: Flickr/CreativeCommons/alamosbasement