5 Chicago High Schools rank in Top 100 in 2022 List of Best Public High Schools

While Chicago Public Schools has more than 160 High Schools, these five Chicago High Schools climbed into the top 10 percent in a recent national survey. The top 5 Chicago area high school a part of the Chicago Public Schools selective enrollment program for the educationally gifted:

1. Jones College Prep High School, South Loop Neighborhood

2. Walter Payton College Preparatory High School, Near North Side

3. Northside College Preparatory High School, Budlong Woods

4. Young Magnet High School, West Loop

5. Lane Technical High School, North Center Neighborhood

How do I apply for one of the Chicago, IL Selective enrollment High Schools?

The application process for the Chicago, IL selective enrollment High Schools is broken into to three phases:

1. Explore

2. Apply

3. Selection

Does the student need to live within the City limits of Chicago to apply?

Yes, students have to live in Chicago to enroll and attend a Chicago public, charter, or contract school. The student does NOT have to live in Chicago in order to apply, participate in the testing process, and even be selected, but the student must provide proof of city of Chicago residency by July 1st, for the upcoming school year, in order to enroll and attend a Chicago public school.  If your child is not accepted into one of the elite selective enrollment high schools, here is a neighborhood boundary search of the top high schools in the chicago suburbs.  

Finding the Best Chicago Neighborhood Elementary School for Your Child

In order to find the best Chicago Neighborhood elementary school for your child, I advise clients with school age children that looking to purchase a new home in the Chicago area there may be a couple of different approaches. Before you start narrowing down your Chicago Home search by neighborhood, you should decide whether you want your child to go to a public school, a magnet school, a private school, or a charter school. Some of these are more difficult than others to gain admission to, and charter schools in particular pretty much operate on their own rules, so it might be hard gaining entrance to one of those schools.

With regard to the cost of a good elementary school education, the easiest way to get your child into one of the top Chicago elementary schools is simply to move into that school district. However, you should be prepared to pay for that privilege – here are the average home prices of the top school districts, or click on the link to search all properties and homes for sale within the boundaries of the school:

• Bell - $1,122, 437
• Alcott - $1,370,691
• Blaine - $1,479,210
• Coonley - $1,026,497
• Oscar Meyer - $2,049,196
• Skinner West - $1,066,175
• Burley - $1,526,414
• Audubon - $1,266,356
• Waters - $839,809
• Nettlehorst - $1,619,778
• Hamilton - $1,211,297
• Sauganash - $625,906

From the figures above, it’s pretty obvious that there is a definite trade-off in moving into a school district just to obtain a great education for your child – you have to be willing to pay top dollar for the privilege of moving into one of those neighborhoods.

As recent headlines in the news have shown, parents are sometimes willing to pay an enormous amount of money to get their children enrolled in a reputable and influential school, although those headline events referred to college programs. The truth is that gaining access to an elementary school which develops students specifically for admission to the top area high schools is going to cost you, one way or the other. While it might actually be cheaper to enroll your child in a private, charter, or magnet elementary school, moving into a school district where the best elementary schools are located is a great alternative as well – if you can afford it.

How Chicago Schools are Ranked

Once you’ve decided on the type of school you want your child to attend, you can develop a short list of candidates by researching the rankings of all those elementary schools in your area, and then choose from among them. For instance, the rankings of Chicago-area elementary schools are determined by taking into consideration scores from the PARCC English Language Arts test, the PARCC Mathematics test scores, and information received from the National Center for Education Statistics, the Illinois State Board of Education, and the U.S. Department of Education. While there are various systems used to rank Chicago elementary schools, you can count on Reading and Math skills to be heavily factored into the scheme, and you can find out how schools are ranked at either niche.com, schoolsparrow.com, or schooldigger.com.

Cost of Chicago Elementary Schools

If you move into the school district of an elementary school which you’ve selected for your child, you won’t incur any additional cost for his/her attendance, and you won’t have to worry about any admission requirements – your child will automatically be accepted because of residency guidelines. However, the cost of private schools will be an entirely different matter, and it will depend on whether you choose a school with some kind of religious affiliation, or one which is non-sectarian.

Enrolling your child in a Catholic school for example, might only cost you between $6,000 and $8,000 per year, whereas the annual price tag for a non-sectarian private school might easily be upwards of $20,000. For the average middle-class family, this is probably almost out of reach, unless both parents are working and have good jobs. In terms of the quality of education received at a private school, you might expect to receive more one-on-one attention for your child in a private school, since class sizes tend to be smaller, and students typically spend more time with instructors.

Which Chicago elementary schools send the most students to the best high schools?

This would be another way that you can use to identify the best elementary schools in the Chicago area, and in contrast to using the ranking system, it provides a real-life, solid base for evaluating just how good an elementary school is at educating its students. Because students are required to pass a test in order to gain admission to these top high schools in the area, there is no subjectivity involved in the process – the students with the best test scored are admitted to the area’s top high schools.

There is a full 30% of Chicago elementary schools which send zero students to the Top 5 high schools in the area, while 25% of successful test-in students come from 29 of the best elementary schools in Chicago. This shows a clear pattern of excellence from these elementary schools, and if you’re really looking for the best school to send your child to, any of these might be good choices, simply on the basis of performance. To find out which area elementary schools do in fact send the most students on to the best high schools in Chicago, you can follow this link to a listing which identifies those high-performance elementary schools.

When does the application process begin for the Chicago, IL Selective Enrollment High Schools?

For the 2023-2024 academic school year, the application process begins on Wednesday September 21, 2022 and end on Friday December 2, 2022. You can begin the application at GoCPS.

When is the admissions exam administered for the Chicago Public Schools Selective enrollment application?

• For current CPS students, the exam will be administered on October 22, 2022.
• For non-CPS students, the exam will take place on week-ends at designated CPS testing sites on the following dates:
• Non-CPS Students
• The CPS High School Entrance Exam dates for the 2023- 2024 school year are below:

1. Saturday, November 5, 2022Sunday, November 6, 2022
2. Saturday, November 12, 2022
3. Sunday, November 13, 2022 For Non-CPS students, these are the four testing dates for this application cycle. Please hold these dates now to ensure that you are available to test if you are planning to apply to a CPS high school.

How are the students grades factored into the application process?

Grades / GPA

• Grades from the previous school year (7th-grade final grades) are used as part of the selection process for Selective Enrollment High Schools and designated high school Choice Programs.
• The grades used for this process are the grades identified on the student’s official transcript. In order to maintain accuracy and integrity, letter grades cannot be weighted or analyzed outside of the information that is listed on that official transcript.

• • Current CPS Students - Final grades from your seventh-grade year will be used. If grades are missing, please submit official transcripts to your current school to input into ASPEN. All grades for current CPS students are pulled from ASPEN.

  • Non-CPS Students - For most schools within the city, grades will be submitted by your current school. If you do not currently attend a school that works directly with our office, please submit official transcripts from your completed 7th-grade year to [email protected].

What is on the CPS entrance exam?

The CPS High School Entrance exam is an achievement skills test that assesses students in four subject areas: reading comprehension, vocabulary, grammar, and math word problems. For more information, see the guide to the CPS HS Admission Exam on the Resources page of the GoCPS website.