Lower Merion Has PA's 8th-Best Public High School, Says U.S. News

ARDMORE, PA — Lower Merion has one of the best public high schools in Pennsylvania, according to U.S. News & World Report.

U.S. News recently released its 2026-2027 Best High Schools list, which evaluated more than 27,000 public institutions for college readiness, test scores and more.

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In the new list, Lower Merion High School ranks eighth in Pennsylvania and 380th nationally. It's also the 396th-best STEM high school, according to U.S. News.

Lower Merion's Score

U.S. News used six ranking indicators to determine each school's overall score:

• college readiness (accounting for 30 percent of each school's score)
• college curriculum breadth (10 percent)
• state assessment proficiency (20 percent)
• state assessment performance (20 percent)
• performance of underserved students (10 percent)
• graduation rate (10 percent)

Overall, LMHS scored 97.88 out of 100.

The publication primarily weighed data from the 2023-24 school year. At that time, LMHS had a 96 percent graduation rate, and 52 percent of students passed a least on AP exam.

LMHS also served a more economically diverse population than many other high-ranking Main Line schools, with 22 percent of students considered economically disadvantaged.

Controversy Around The School Rankings

U.S. News says its annual school rankings give families a way to evaluate local education options.

"Every student deserves a pathway to success, and that journey often begins with selecting the right school," Dr. LaMont Jones, the U.S. managing editor for education, said in a statement. "The 2026-2027 Best High Schools rankings empower families with the valuable data and transparency they need to help make the best educational choices for them.

U.S. News has some of the most influential school-rankings lists in the country. The publication even licenses its name so schools can use their ranking in promotional materials.

But with a heavy emphasis on AP and standardized test scores, critics say the rankings lack nuance and heavily favor wealthy communities.

This points to a larger problem with American education as a whole, according to a 2023 blog post on the National Education Policy Center's website.

"By reducing lots of different school quality factors to a single number, all U.S. News rankings oversimplify academic quality," wrote Harry Feder, who leads a nonprofit that's critical of standardized testing. "Because U.S. News seeks to rank in volume with insufficient investigative resources, its criteria fail to capture the nuances of the complex institutions."

Click here to learn more about the U.S. News rankings methodology.