Melrose High In Newsweek's Top 6 Percent of High Schools Nationwide

Melrose High School has been ranked the 24th best public high school in Massachusetts by Newsweek magazine for the second year in a row, Guidance Director John Buxton informed media outlets this week.

Six percent of all the public schools in the U.S. made the magazine's list, which according to the magazine's website, ranks Melrose High School as the 1,287th best public high school in the nation.

Melrose High School is one of 27 Massachusetts public high schools to make the list, one spot ahead of North Reading (1,288th) and just behind Andover (1,122th) and Lynnfield (1,116th).

Newsweek's rankings are based on three factors, according to a FAQ on its website. First, the magazine takes the total number of Advanced Placement (AP), International Baccalaureate (IB) or Cambridge tests given at a school each year and divides by the number of graduating seniors. Melrose High School offers AP.

The magazine then takes into account the percentage of students who qualify for federally subsidized lunches, as a measure of the percentage of low-income students at each school. Finally, it uses the school's "Equity and Excellence" (E&E) rate, a statistic developed by The College Board — the non-profit that administers the SATs and AP tests — that is the percentage of all graduating seniors who had at least one score of 3 or above on at least one AP test sometime in high school.