The Top 20 Public High Schools
In many ways, by the time your kid has made it to high school in New York, the hard part is done. Gone are the debates over which neighborhood you should live in or how you're zoned. By high school, it pretty much comes down to the application.
NYC high schools aren't zoned by neighborhood. Instead, kids can, and do, go to any school in the city, based on their application (which explains the crush of teenagers on the subway at 3:30 in the afternoon). Some of the top schools base their admission on tests, as well, while a smaller number require auditions.
So ? unlike with the elementary-school list ? we've paid less attention here to where these schools are located, and much more to how they stack up versus their peers. (That said, we limited our pool to Manhattan and to public schools.)
Suffice it to say that all of these schools are excellent. Admission to all of them is incredibly competitive. The teachers are, for the most part, terrific. So consider yourself (or your kid) lucky to get into any of them.
As with the other lists, our slice is subjective, based on our reporting, on the Department of Education ranking system (every one of these schools was given an "A" grade by the city), by other ranking services like SchoolDigger.com, US News & World Report and GreatSchools.org, and by our innate horse sense of living and reporting in the neighborhoods where these schools are based.
There are more than 400 public high schools in our city. However you go about deciding where you or your child should go, this list is a good place to start the processing of whittling it all down. Happy hunting.
55 E. 25th St.
Enrollment: 432
Average class size: 30.3
Beacon High School
227-243 W 61st St.
Enrollment: 1,162
Average class size: 30.5
Central Park East High School
1573 Madison Ave.
Enrollment: 445
Average class size: 23.6
Eleanor Roosevelt High School
411 E. 76th St
Enrollment: 507
Average class size: 27.7
Fiorello H. Laguardia High School of Music, Art and Performing Arts
100 Amsterdam Ave.
Enrollment: 2,605
Average class size: 31.9
Food and Finance High School
525 W. 50th St.
Enrollment: 433
Average class size: 23.5
High School for Dual Language and Asian Studies
350 Grand St.
Enrollment: 353
Average class size: 21.4
High School for Mathematics, Science and Engineering at City College
240 Content Ave.
Enrollment: 406
Average class size: 22.7
Lower Manhattan Arts Academy
350 Grand St.
Enrollment: 336
Average class size: 20.1
Manhattan Bridges High School
525 W. 50th St.
Enrollment: 541
Average class size: 24.1
Manhattan/Hunter Science High School
122 Amsterdam Ave.
Enrollment: 453
Average class size: 22.4
Manhattan International High School
317 E. 67th St.
Enrollment: 325
Average class size: 20.6
Manhattan Village Academy
43 W. 22nd
Enrollment: 429
Average class size: 20.1
Millennium High School
75 Broad Street
Enrollment: 626
Average class size: 29.8
New Explorations into Science, Technology and Math School
111 Columbia St.
Enrollment: 544
Average class size: 26.5
New York City Lab School for Collaborative Studies
333 W. 17th St
Enrollment: 579
Average class size: 30.1
New York City Museum School
333 W. 17th St.
Enrollment: 436
Average class size: 26.7
School of the Future High School
127 E. 22nd St.
Enrollment: 380
Average class size: 24.6
Stuyvesant High School
345 Chambers St.
Enrollment: 3,297
Average class size: 31.4
Vanguard High School
317 E. 67th St.
Enrollment: 444
Average class size: 20.7