Lower Merion High School scored 97.88 out of 100 and landed the No. 8 spot among all Pennsylvania public high schools in the U.S. News & World Report 2026-27 Best High Schools rankings, while serving a more economically diverse student body than many of its high-ranking Main Line peers.
The Ardmore school also ranked 396th nationally among STEM high schools in the U.S. News list. Overall, LMHS placed 380th out of nearly 18,000 ranked schools nationwide.
As we reported Aug. 18, both Lower Merion School District high schools landed in the nation's top 2%. Harriton High School actually outpaced LMHS in the state list, finishing 6th in Pennsylvania and 339th nationally, making it Montgomery County's top-ranked school. LMHS is the county's second-ranked school, followed by Plymouth-Whitemarsh at No. 22 statewide.
What the numbers show
The rankings drew on 2023-24 school year data. That year, LMHS posted a 96% graduation rate and 52% of students passed at least one AP exam. The school enrolled 1,757 students with a student-to-teacher ratio of nearly 12-to-1.
One figure stands out: 22% of LMHS students are considered economically disadvantaged, a notably higher share than other high-ranking Main Line schools, according to Patch's analysis of the U.S. News data.
How the rankings work
U.S. News evaluated more than 27,000 public high schools and ranked nearly 18,000, working with research firm RTI International. Six indicators drive the scores: college readiness (30%), state assessment proficiency (20%), state assessment performance (20%), college curriculum breadth (10%), underserved student performance (10%) and graduation rate (10%).
The methodology does attempt to account for demographics. The "state assessment performance" indicator, weighted at 20%, compares a school's test scores against what U.S. News predicted for a school with similar demographics. A separate 10% indicator measures outcomes specifically among Black, Hispanic and low-income students.
Dr. LaMont Jones, U.S. News's managing editor for education, said the rankings aim to give families data and transparency to make informed school choices.
Critics question what rankings measure
Not everyone sees the list as a reliable gauge of school quality. Harry Feder, executive director of FairTest, a nonprofit that scrutinizes standardized testing practices, wrote in a 2023 National Education Policy Center blog post that "standardized test scores, and the rankings that use them, strongly correlate to parental wealth and education and thus measure socio-economic status more than anything else."
Feder argued in the same post that reducing school quality to a single number oversimplifies academic quality and that U.S. News lacks the investigative resources to capture the complexity of the institutions it ranks.
U.S. News licenses its rankings to schools for use in promotional materials. The full list of Pennsylvania's top public high schools is available on the Patch statewide rankings page.
