Several North Texas high schools are among the best in the state when it comes to sending students to Harvard, Princeton and MIT.
Six high schools in the Dallas-Fort Worth area clinched spots in the top 10, according to new data from PolarisList, which ranks the best high schools in America based on one metric: the number of students they sent to those three elite colleges.
Click here for a look at the Texas schools that ranked from No. 1 to No. 49.
Schools were evaluated by the number of total students sent to Harvard, Princeton and MIT between 2015 and 2018. The rankings include multiple ties.
In Texas, St. John's School in Houston ranked in the top spot, followed by Dallas' St. Mark's School of Texas at No. 2 and The Hockaday School at No. 3. The schools had 25, 21 and 16 acceptances to the three universities respectively during the multi-year period.
Plano West Senior High School was the top-ranking public school in North Texas, the second-highest public school across the state and the No. 5 school overall, according to PolarisList's metric.
Other top schools in and around the Metroplex include Denton’s Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science (No. 6), Plano East Senior High School (No. 7) and Highland Park High School (No. 10).
The data analysts at PolarisList said they chose Harvard, Princeton and MIT to study based on "a combination of their selectivity and their accessibility to lower income students."
"Selectivity is important to us because it means these schools have their pick of the lot when it comes to applicants," according to PolarisList. "If a high school is able to send students to one of these three schools, it means that the school has created an environment to support high achieving students, whether it's in academics or extracurriculars.
"Accessibility is just as important to us because we believe a college is only as good as its student body, and a student body is at its strongest when it encompasses a diversity of experiences," according to the firm. The three colleges are among those with the highest number of students receiving Pell Grants, meaning their parents are low-income.
The ranking takes into account student matriculation, not simply the number of students who were accepted, as top students are often accepted into multiple institutions.
PolarisList also publishes a national ranking. In that group, Thomas Jefferson High School in Alexandria, Virginia, sent 96 students over the past four years, and Stuyvesant High School in New York City sent 94 to lead the country.
