U.S. News & World Report 2017 America’s Best High Schools

May 02, 2017

Each year, the U.S. News and World Report publishes a report detailing a list of the most competitive high schools in the United States. The criteria involved in categorizing each school is comprehensive. It primarily includes attendance metrics, test scores, and evaluations to rank each school. This year, U.S. News and World Report placed schools in one of three categories either gold, silver, or bronze to signify their prestige and competitiveness. The 76 schools that compose this list consist of schools from all five boroughs. Approximately, 35% of these schools based their admissions on a rigorous entrance exam while other factors such as academic performance, interviews, and attendance metrics are used as additional determinants.

Roughly 30% of these schools give priority to students based on district and zone guidelines. In other words, students who live in the immediate and surrounding neighborhood are given the most priority. Then, there is roughly 10% of schools whose admissions standard is almost exclusively based on middle school academic performance. The other 15% consist of schools whose admission standard includes an educational option and audition requirement. The remaining 10% are schools whose admission standard are limited unscreened. In other words, there are no formal requirements and students are admitted randomly on an availability of space basis.
All our Urban Assembly high schools that made this year’s list are limited unscreened schools. This is particularly impressive given that limited unscreened means that our schools do not have any formal admissions requirements, yet our schools have generally outperformed schools that do have stringent admissions requirements. These include:
Urban Assembly School for Criminal Justice, Urban Assembly School for Applied Math and Science, Urban Assembly Academy of Government and Law, Urban Assembly Bronx School for Law, Government and Justice.

We are impressed with their performance this year and we look to forward to tracking their continued progress.