How it works

Most school rankings blend test scores, surveys and reputation into one number. We show one thing parents ask about: where a school's graduates went after high school. Every figure links to the document it came from.

Where the numbers come from

The state: how many went to college

The New Jersey Department of Education publishes a School Performance Report for every public high school. It counts graduates enrolled in college using National Student Clearinghouse records, which cover about 97% of US college enrollment. We show:

• the share of the Class of 2022 enrolled in college by fall 2023 (16 months after graduation), and the Class of 2023 by the fall after graduation;
• of those enrolled, how many went to four-year or two-year colleges, public or private, in New Jersey or out of state.

The state gives the main rate as a range, such as 93–96%, because some students can't be matched to college records: students who study abroad, or who asked their college not to share their records. We show the range as published. These are the most recent figures the state has released.

The schools: which colleges

Many high schools publish a school profile for college admissions offices, or a list of where their seniors were accepted or enrolled. We find these documents on the schools' and districts' own websites, link to them, and note what each one contains. We never republish the documents themselves.

Next, we'll read the college lists out of these documents, so each school page shows the colleges themselves, with counts wherever the school publishes them.

The directory

School names, towns, grades and enrollment come from the federal Common Core of Data (National Center for Education Statistics).

What the data badges mean

Schools publish very different things, and the difference matters. A list of colleges that accepted someone can include many acceptances for a single student, so it is not the same as where the class enrolled. Each school carries the badge of the best document we've found:

• A Where graduates enrolled, with a count for each college
• B Where graduates were accepted, with a count for each college
• C Where graduates enrolled, college names only
• D Where graduates were accepted, college names only
• E No college list found yet

Badges are assigned automatically and checked by hand over time. If a badge looks wrong, it probably is, and we'd like to know.

What this site doesn't do

It doesn't rate how good a school is. A school's outcomes reflect who enrolls there as much as what happens inside it: magnet schools that select their students will always show strong results. Use these numbers as one honest input, alongside visits and conversations with families who know the school.

Privacy

• We never publish student names, even when a school or a newspaper has.
• When we show colleges, small counts for a single class are grouped so that no individual student can be identified.
• We collect documents politely: one request at a time, and we honor each website's robots.txt.
• This site uses Cloudflare Web Analytics, which counts visits without cookies and without tracking you across sites.

Coverage

We're starting with the public high schools of Bergen and Hudson counties, New Jersey, and will add the rest of New Jersey, then other states.