<p>But the funny part is, a lot of schools were completely left out....fabulous schools...many of them private schools....and in some cases whole counties are missing from the ranks under the state/county search. So the entire process is bogus. Perhaps some schools opted out of the silliness. Its not to say the Gold Medal (top 100) schools arent wonderful and deserve to be acclaimed. I am just saying its more USNWR ranking games and provides more parents with more fodder to gloat and obsess about. UGH!</p>
<p>Maybe USNWR should just hire professional cheerleaders! LOL.</p>
<p>now this has just gotten out of hand. ridiculous. there might soon be a high school confidential website with a forum full of kids and parents obsessing about high school.</p>
<p>.... nice to see my public is in the top 100 gold medal schools.....
....wonder if that is a good or bad thing when being considered as
an applicant to college...hmmm.... </p>
<p>The really silly thing about all of this is that I believe the rankings are based soley on the number of AP exams taken by students in the school. The higher the percentage of students that take the exams and the more exams those students take, the higher the schools ranking. I don't believe they take AP RESULTS into account. </p>
<p>From a philisophical point of view, I believe that good public high schools need to provide a wide range of programs, not just college prep programs. Students who are interested in technical careers don't need to load up on AP classes but have other interests that they should pursue. I school that meets the needs of these students as well as providing a strong college prep program is, IMHO, a better high school than one that is only concerned with pushing AP classes so it can increase its rankings in USNews.</p>
<p>Shennie is absolutely wrong. USNWR's ranking in fact weight AP results 75% and AP test number 25%, a big difference from Newsweek's Challenge Index rankings.</p>
<p>OP is also wrong in the suggestion that some schools opted out. All the data are acquired from the states and College Board. Schools didn't actively participate in providing data. </p>
<p>Counties are missing because their schools aren't strong enough as determined by the first two criteria about disadvantaged student performance.</p>
<p>Some states are missing because they didn't have good data for 2005-2006 school year, or didn't provide them.</p>
<p>By thinking about private schools, you completely ignore the main purpose of the rankings: to help disadvantaged students. Ranking the private schools wouldn't make sense because most disadvantaged students don't go to private schools!</p>
<p>No, I am NOT wrong. The state I live in didnt have all its counties even listed...I know..I checked....and the BEST schools, based on College Board rankings which is based on AP scores, PSAT and SAT scores and numbers of kids going to college, in my state are in my county.....its a skewed process and if you look carefully on the USNWR listings...its NOT based on college board...its based on some private company which polled schools.</p>
<p>I dont want to name names..but some VERY prestigious schools in New York for example did not even appear...and THEIR graduates routinely get into the Ivy League and top LAC's. So why arent THEY in the top 100? Somebody has bad data and that is why.</p>
<p>I am not picking on the schools that got the Gold Medal. Congrats to them and those kids. I am just saying its an incomplete list by a LONG shot.</p>
<p>I know of high schools in Los Angeles that were also missing...and whose kids get into Stanford and Berkeley and USC and UCLA by the boatload. This list is totally bogus. Sorry.</p>
<p>Counties are missing because their schools aren't strong enough as determined by the first two criteria about disadvantaged student performance.</p>
<p>++++</p>
<p>No, that is NOT correct in my county's case. Not even close. Send me a private message and I will fill you in.</p>
<p>USNWR just wants to sell magazines. Its a marketing ploy. Period.</p>
<p>Actually what Chronicidall makes total sense, my school ranked in
the top 100 is in a rural area and defintiely does not push APs, in fact it
activley discourages nonqualified students from enrolling in APs they cannot
handle.</p>
<p>It is a rural school but does offer a number of APs, the results though are
usually great (almost everyone ends up with a 5/4). Also interestingly,
my headmaster was more surprised than I was that we had
made it into the top 100 when this</a> linkwas sent!</p>
<p>A number of those schools require admissions testing and applications to get in, even though they are public (TJ, Stuy, BxSci, etc.). They are getting the cream-of-the-crop kids who (in many cases) choose to leave their local schools. I would expect that Stuy kids will take lots of APs and score highly on them. These rankings, to me, say more about who attends the school than how great a job the schools do in educating the kids. </p>
<p>The high schools who should be getting kudos are the ones who are getting more kids to take AP exams and NOT discouraging them just because they might not make 4s or 5s. The experience in and of itself is valuable, and in
communities where the student might be the first one to even graduate from high school, it can be a life-changing one at that.</p>
<p>Also looks like IB exams weren't factored into this assessment -- correct me if I'm wrong!</p>
<p>My principal mentioned something along these lines yesterday afternoon on the announcements. Nice to know where I can find this data. Apparently my school is a bronze level school. When I heard this announcement, I said to myself: "***? This hellhole got an award???" Needless to say, I got some snickers from those around me in class. :P</p>
<p>Yeah, this list is bad. I go to a private school in the kc area that is not on here but some of the public schools near by are on this list and if you asked most anybody in the area they would know that these school are far easier and dont produce as many top tier students as the private ones not on the list. Parents send there kids to these private schools instead of going to the public school that are on the list in order to recieve a better education.</p>
<p>I find it odd that there are such large disparities between the Newsweek and USNWR lists. For example, North Carolina has 7 schools in the top 100 for Newsweek and 0 for USNWR. If the methodologies produce such different results, it's hard to put much faith in either of them. The #4 Newsweek school isn't even in the top 100 for USNWR. College rankings are much more consistent, if equally trite.</p>