Niche.com, a website that helps to connect colleges and schools with students and families, released its list of the 2024 Best High Schools in America. The school dropped from last year’s ranking of second place to fifth place this year.
Head of Upper School Beth Slattery said the ranking is not of real importance to her and that her focus is on the students.
“It really isn’t important to me because it doesn’t really have anything to do with the lived experience of students,” Slattery said. “My main focus is that the students here are thriving and rankings don’t really address how students are doing.”
Rebecca Lee ’26 said that while the news is disappointing it does not define the student body as a whole.
“At the end of the day, it’s just statistics that do not accurately reflect our school community,” Lee said. “Though it was quite disappointing to hear this news, it does not define who we are as Harvard-Westlake students and a Harvard-Westlake community.”
Similar to Lee, Maya Ray ’25 said she does not feel that the rankings are important and that they are completely randomized.
“Niche rankings are not particularly important to me, but I do like looking at them from time to time,” Ray said. “I feel that these rankings are extremely arbitrary since schools can be evaluated on many different factors. Niche rankings can give you a general idea of what a school is like, but much of the real information comes from how much a student feels like they can thrive and feel supported at a school.”
Slattery said she wants students to be proud of their experience here at the school and not base it on a ranking.
“I want students to be proud of HW based on their experience here, not because of an outside entity telling us we’re great,” Slattery said. “Our brand is strong, but that isn’t nearly as important as what happens here every day.”
