William P. Clements High School in Sugar Land - part of Fort Bend Independent School District - was the second-highest ranking Houston-area school. These Texas high schools send the most students to Harvard, Princeton and MIT The Texas high school that sends the most students to Harvard, Princeton and MIT is right here in Houston.Two high schools in the Houston area clinched spots in the top 10, according to new data from PolarisList, which ranks the best high schools in America based on one metric: the number of students they sent to those three elite colleges. Several other Houston-area school ranked between Nos. 11 and 49.Click through the slideshow at the top of the story to see the schools that ranked from No. 1 to No. 49. More than 49 schools are included because multiple schools tied for the No. 49 spot.Schools were evaluated by the number of total students sent to Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts; Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey; and Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge between 2015 and 2018. In Texas, St. John's School in Houston ranked in the top spot, followed by St. Mark's School of Texas at No. 2 and The Hockaday School at No. 3, both in Dallas. The schools had 25, 21 and 16 acceptances to the three universities respectively during the multiyear period.William P. Clements High School in Sugar Land - part of Fort Bend Independent School District - was the second-highest ranking Houston-area school, tying with two other schools in Dallas and Austin for the No. 10 spot. About half of the top 10 was made up of public high schools.The data analysts at PolarisList said they chose Harvard, Princeton and MIT to study based on "a combination of their selectivity and their accessibility to lower-income students.""Selectivity is important to us because it means these schools have their pick of the lot when it comes to applicants," according to PolarisList. "If a high school is able to send students to one of these three schools, it means that the school has created an environment to support high-achieving students, whether it's in academics or extracurriculars."Accessibility is just as important to us because we believe a college is only as good as its student body, and a student body is at its strongest when it encompasses a diversity of experiences," according to the firm. The three colleges are among those with the highest number of students receiving Pell Grants, meaning their parents are low-income.The ranking takes into account student matriculation, not simply the number of students who were accepted, as top students are often accepted into multiple institutions.PolarisList also publishes a national ranking. In that group, Thomas Jefferson High School in Alexandria, Virginia, sent 96 students over the past four years, and Stuyvesant High School in New York City sent 94 to lead the country.
Note: Hayleigh Colombo of Columbus Business First, sister publication to the Houston Business Journal, also contributed to this report.www-bizjournals-com. cdn.ampproject.org/c /s/www.bizjournals.c om/houston/news