In the newly released 2026 Niche Best High Schools in America ranking, the school dropped from #11 to #40 nationwide. The updated rankings reflect new introductions to the grading system, including an evaluation of the percentage of high school seniors who go on to four-year colleges and a de-emphasis on the “Top Popular Colleges” statistic, according to niche.com.
Niche is the leading resource for comprehensive rankings in K-12 schools, colleges and neighborhoods. The website collects quantitative data and surveys users, along with information verified by the U.S. Department of Education and the National Center for Education Statistics. According to niche.com, the Overall Niche Grade is determined by a composite score of several categories, including academics, sports, diversity, teachers, college prep and clubs and activities.
President Rick Commons said through his exploration of the rankings, he found that the school placed high in college preparatory rankings, but lower overall.
“I inquired about the rankings and I was told two things,” Commons said. “One is that if you look at the rankings, oddly, they have a ranking for college preparatory high schools. We are ranked in the top 10, leapfrogging more than thirty schools ranked ahead of us in the ‘best private schools’ ranking. But then for the overall ranking, we are further down.”
Commons said the athletics grade was especially surprising.
“In fact, Niche gives us A+ grades in every area but athletics,” Commons said. “That’s the real surprise, given that I think our athletics program is broader and more excellent than nearly all the school ranked ahead if us in the ‘best private schools’ ranking.”
Sophia Wong ’27 said the rankings do not offer an accurate representation of the school as a whole, but could impact prospective applicants.
“To me, the school rankings are kind of arbitrary and they don’t matter to me because I’m still receiving the same great quality of education,” Wong said. “But to prospective applicants, the [rankings] could be very impactful because many people, unfortunately, base their applications to Harvard-Westlake on the rankings from Niche. Therefore, this can result in and perpetuate the trend that’s already happening, which is that fewer people are applying to the school.”
Jackson Sunwoo ’27 said the rankings probably won’t influence decisions from a college admissions perspective.
“A good college admissions officer should know the history of the school and its value,” Sunwoo said. “So just because it’s lower, that doesn’t make me regret my decision to go to the school.”
Commons said the Niche Rankings can be difficult to interpret, so he wants to try to find out more about them.
“The criteria for the Niche rankings are always mysterious and probably not to be credited, but I always like being in the top 10,” Commons said. “I admit totally to the fact that it furrows my brow when we’re not somewhere close to the top. We’ll try to learn more and understand more about their criteria and figure out if there is something legitimate that we can improve as a school or whether it’s really just a random thing.”
