By Patrick Donachie
Queens high schools occupied three of the top 10 spots in a list of the best high schools in the city, with Townsend Harris High School in Flushing earning the top spot.
The annual list was created by the New York Post. Out of the 40 schools tracked, 13 of them are located in Queens. It was the most of any other borough besides Manhattan, which took 16 of the slots on the list.
According to the Post’s list, nearly 6,000 students from across the city applied to Townsend Harris for 306 freshman seats last year. The classes are all honors, at the Advanced Placement or College level, with research opportunities at Queens College, NYU and Rockefeller University, according to the Post.
The Post determined the listings by weighing a number of factors, including a school’s four-year graduation rates, the number of students taking AP exams as well as the percentage of students who score a passing grade on those exams, the number of students taking SAT tests and the average score on those tests, and the percentage of students who scored above an 85 on Regents exams.
The Baccalaureate School for Global Education in Astoria was listed at No. 4. Scholars’ Academy, which is located in Rockaway, was listed at No. 5. The average SAT score at the latter school was over 1,700.
One of the newer schools on the list was Maspeth High School, located at 54-40 74th St. The school opened in 2011 and has a graduation rate of 97 percent. The Post listed it 27th in the list of the 40 best schools. All of the students at Maspeth take four years of Latin, according to the Post.
Several schools in northeastern Queens made the list, including Benjamin N. Cardozo High School in Bayside, which came in at No. 20, Francis Lewis High School in Fresh Meadows, which came in at No. 22, and Bayside High School, which was included in the list at No. 34.
The Queens Gateway to Health Sciences Secondary School, located next to Jamaica’s Queens Hospital Center at 160-20 Goethals Ave., was included at No. 25. The school, which boasts a 95.5 percent graduation rate, includes four years of science and math and a program in which students work alongside medical professionals, according to the Post.
Reach reporter Patrick Donachie by e-mail at pdona
