Top Schools in Seattle by Harvard / Princeton / MIT Placements
Polaris — the Atlas's count of graduates over the past five years who matriculated to Harvard, Princeton, or MIT — singles out the very top of the senior class and rewards schools that cultivate elite-college pipelines rather than schools that produce a strong median student. In Seattle, this measurement reshuffles the public-school leaderboard substantially and elevates the city's two flagship private schools into direct comparison with Seattle Public Schools' largest comprehensives.
Lakeside School in north Seattle leads the Seattle Polaris list with thirty-one Harvard/Princeton/MIT matriculations over five years — by far the highest total of any Washington school. Founded in 1919, Lakeside is one of the oldest and best-endowed independent schools in the Pacific Northwest, with a 5-12 enrollment of about 875 and an endowment that crossed $260 million in 2024. The school's most famous alum is Bill Gates (class of 1973), who began his programming career on a teletype terminal that the Lakeside Mothers' Club leased in 1968. Lakeside's matriculation count exceeds the next nine Seattle schools combined.
Holy Names Academy on Capitol Hill, founded in 1880 by the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary and the oldest continually operating school in Washington state, takes second with six Polaris matriculations. Holy Names is a single-sex Catholic high school of about 614 students and has been named a National Blue Ribbon School four separate times. Roosevelt High School in Ravenna is the highest-ranked public school at rank three with five matriculations; Mercer Island High follows at four (also five matriculations).
Ballard High at rank five and Ingraham High at rank six are the two largest Seattle Public Schools comprehensives in the top six. Ingraham hosts the Seattle Public Schools IB Diploma program and serves as the dual-language high-school continuation for students coming up from Hamilton International Middle School. Garfield High at seven, with one Polaris matriculation, is more visible nationally than this Polaris count alone suggests; the school's Highly Capable Cohort, which has been the largest such program in Seattle Public Schools for decades, sends students to top universities every year. Evergreen High in Burien (rank 8) is in the Highline district. Bothell (rank 9) and Shorewood (rank 10) close out the list.
The most striking pattern in the Seattle Polaris data is concentration: Lakeside alone accounts for more than half of the matriculations on the list, and the top two schools (both private) together account for nearly two-thirds. Among public schools, Roosevelt, Mercer Island, Ballard, and Ingraham account for the bulk of the remainder. The pattern is consistent with Lakeside's national status as a feeder for the Ivy-plus universities and with the way Seattle Public Schools' Highly Capable Cohort historically clustered at Garfield (and now spreads across Lincoln, Ingraham, and Roosevelt as well).
A note on scope: this ranking orders public and private high (and K-12) schools in the Seattle region by their five-year Polaris matriculation count to Harvard, Princeton, or MIT. Matriculation data is sourced from a combination of school college-counseling reports, public matriculation lists, and verified independent reporting. SAT, AP, and SBA figures are shown alongside Polaris but do not drive the ranking; private schools without OSPI Report Card data appear with blanks for those columns by design.
Ranked schools
- 001LAKESIDE SCHOOL(PRIVATE SCHOOL — INDEPENDENT) · KING31 HPM
- 002HOLY NAMES ACADEMY(PRIVATE SCHOOL — INDEPENDENT) · KING6 HPM
- 003ROOSEVELT HIGH SCHOOLSEATTLE SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1 · KING5 HPM
- 004MERCER ISLAND HIGH SCHOOLMERCER ISLAND SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING5 HPM
- 005BALLARD HIGH SCHOOLSEATTLE SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1 · KING2 HPM
- 006INGRAHAM HIGH SCHOOLSEATTLE SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1 · KING2 HPM
- 007GARFIELD HIGH SCHOOLSEATTLE SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1 · KING1 HPM
- 008EVERGREEN HIGH SCHOOLHIGHLINE SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING1 HPM
- 009BOTHELL HIGH SCHOOLNORTHSHORE SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING1 HPM
- 010SHOREWOOD HIGH SCHOOLSHORELINE SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING1 HPM
- 011THE NORTHWEST SCHOOL(PRIVATE SCHOOL — INDEPENDENT) · KING1 HPM
- 012SEATTLE PREPARATORY SCHOOL(PRIVATE SCHOOL — INDEPENDENT) · KING1 HPM
- 013CHIEF SEALTH INTERNATIONAL HIGH SCHOOLSEATTLE SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1 · KING—
- 014NATHAN HALE HIGH SCHOOLSEATTLE SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1 · KING—
- 015SHORECREST HIGH SCHOOLSHORELINE SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING—
- 016INGLEMOOR HSNORTHSHORE SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING—
- 017THE BUSH SCHOOL(PRIVATE SCHOOL — INDEPENDENT) · KING—
- 018BISHOP BLANCHET HIGH SCHOOL(PRIVATE SCHOOL — INDEPENDENT) · KING—
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