New Trier Ranks 139th On Newsweek's Best High School List

Newsweek named New Trier High School the 139th best high school in the country, the school's highest ranking in the past five years.

New Trier also has the eighth highest score of 30 Illinois high schools on the list.

In a feature published Monday, Newsweek listed the nation's top 500-highest scoring high schools based on several pieces of data:

• Graduation rate (25 percent of score)
• College matriculation rate (25 percent)
• AP tests taken per graduate (25 percent)
• Average ACT/SAT scores (10 percent)
• AP courses offered (5 percent)

For a detailed look at the how the scores were calculated, click here.

According to Newsweek, New Trier has a 99 percent graduation rate and a 98 percent college matriculation rate, while the average number of AP tests per New Trier graduate is 1.9, and the average SAT score is 1293. These figures translated to a score of 0.618 on Newsweek's scale.

The magazine used different criteria to evaluate the schools this year. Here are New Trier's rankings from the past five years:

• 2010: 851
• 2009: 761
• 2008: no ranking
• 2007: 455
• 2006: 414

The evaluation parameters used this year were determined by Wendy Kopp, CEO and founder of Teach For America; Linda Darling-Hammond, a Stanford University professor and founder of the School Redesign Network; and Tom Vander Ark, CEO of Open Education Solutions and former executive director of education for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.