My Alma Mater ranks 31st among top high schools in the nation.
Let's hear it for Lincoln Park. Tray Ball reprazent! Gyeeah boy!
Notice also that 51% of students at LP qualified for subsidized lunches. That might tell you a bit about the environment in which I occasionally attended high school.
Another interesting fact: the rankings are based on number of Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) tests taken divided by graduating seniors. I think this is an interesting way to skew the test results. My high school class started out with about 750 students and lost about half of them on the way to graduation. Our index would be significantly lower if they somehow included the half of the class that dropped out. Of course, I have no idea how the other schools on the list fare with drop-outs, so maybe that would level out. Also, maybe things have changed in the 10 years (yikes, I have a reunion coming up!) since I left LP and they're retaining more students. However, if that were the case they'd need a whole new wing.
I also did not know that some high schools that don't have the International Baccalaureate program still offer the IB tests. So students take those things voluntarily??? Talk about masochism! Of course, with a six out of seven on the French IB I skipped over and got credit for five french classes and placed into Intermediate conversation my freshman year at U of I, so they certainly can be helpful.
Go LP!