Methodology of Nick’s High School Rankings

In the high school rankings, I followed the same philosophy as what I did for the college rankings. That is, the entire Wikipedia is taken as input. And then I pick all the Wikipedia articles that correspond to all the schools to be ranked. I simply count the references from all the articles to all the schools. The schools that have higher inbound links in the end will have higher scores.

Rankings are conducted in national level as well as state level. Public schools and private schools are ranked individually. Overall rankings are to combine both the public and private schools altogether.

This simple methodology may not work as well in high school rankings as in college rankings. Universities and colleges tend to have broader connections with other articles in the Wikipedia. This connection may come from alumni entries in the Wikipedia or activities that the institutions have been involved. The problems that appeared in college rankings persist here, and sometime are even enlarged. As I have indicated in college rankings methodology, Kent State Shooting (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shooting), happened in May 4, 1970, may have contributed to Kent State University’s rankings. Here, a more recent tragic event, Columbine High School massacre (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbine_High_School_Shooting) have certainly played big role in the school’s rankings. One potential remedy is to count the influence of all alumni. I expect this be the immediate next step for both the high school rankings and college rankings projects.

Please check my college rankings methodology http://www.nicksrankings.com/methodology.html for further reference.