West Windsor-Plainsboro High School South - Awards, Recognition and Rankings

Awards, Recognition and Rankings

During the 1992-93 school year, West Windsor-Plainsboro High School was awarded the Blue Ribbon School Award of Excellence by the United States Department of Education, the highest award an American school can receive.

In its 2013 report on "America's Best High Schools", The Daily Beast ranked the school 129th in the nation among participating public high schools and 8th overall (and second for non-magnet schools) among schools in New Jersey. The school was ranked 132nd in the nation and seventh in New Jersey on the list of "America's Best High Schools 2012" prepared by The Daily Beast / Newsweek, with rankings based primarily on graduation rate, matriculation rate for college and number of Advanced Placement / International Baccalaureate courses taken per student, with lesser factors based on average scores on the SAT / ACT, average AP/IB scores and the number of AP/IB courses available to students. In August 2011, The Star-Ledger's Inside Jersey ranked the school 1st among the 330 public schools in the state of New Jersey. One notable feature of High School south was that it combines AP Physics B and C courses of CollegeBoard into one as a course known as Advanced Topics in Physics Honors. This required special permission from CollegeBoard; this was approved when AP Courses were first made. It is the only school that offers such a course.

In the 2011 "Ranking America's High Schools" issue by The Washington Post, the school was ranked 9th in New Jersey and 407th nationwide.

The school was the 62nd-ranked public high school in New Jersey out of 328 schools statewide in New Jersey Monthly magazine's September 2012 cover story on the state's "Top Public High Schools", after being ranked 16th in 2010 out of 322 schools listed. The magazine ranked the school 21st in 2008 out of 316 schools. The school was ranked 9th in the magazine's September 2006 issue, which included 316 schools across the state. The school was ranked 5th in the 2004 issue, while West Windsor-Plainsboro High School North was ranked 1st during the same year. Schooldigger.com ranked the school tied for 53rd out of 381 public high schools statewide in its 2011 rankings (a decrease of 29 positions from the 2010 ranking) which were based on the combined percentage of students classified as proficient or above proficient on the mathematics (93.1%) and language arts literacy (96.5%) components of the High School Proficiency Assessment (HSPA).

On the New Jersey High School Proficiency Assessment (HSPA), 97% of the 2009-10 class passed the verbal section, while 96% were proficient on math. The school offers several honors and Advanced Placement (AP) courses in various subject areas. The school does not rank students, but it uses a weighted GPA. Many students from the school are accepted to highly selective schools around the country, including the Ivy League.

The school's 2010 graduating class had the second-highest SAT scores in rankings calculated by the New Jersey Department of Education, with West Windsor-Plainsboro High School South having a combined score of 1,843 on the three sections of the test, behind the 1,860 achieved by Princeton High School students.