Top Schools in Washington by Harvard / Princeton / MIT Placements
Counted by ten-year admissions to Harvard, Princeton, and MIT, the elite-placement geography of Washington schools is striking in its concentration. The state's most selective east-of-the-Mississippi destinations are reached overwhelmingly from a tight band of campuses in Seattle and on the Eastside — with Lakeside School in north Seattle separating itself from every other school in the state by a wide margin, and the second tier dominated by Bellevue and Lake Washington school districts.
Lakeside, the independent K-12 day school founded in 1919 and famously the school where Bill Gates and Paul Allen first encountered a teletype-connected computer, has more than thirty Polaris-tracked admissions over the window — roughly twice the count of any other Washington school. Behind it sit Interlake Senior High School in Bellevue, whose International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme has run since 1997 and whose Advanced Learning track compresses the IB Diploma into tenth and eleventh grade; Redmond High School and Bellevue High School, both north-of-520 anchor comprehensives; and Holy Names Academy, the all-girls Catholic college preparatory school founded by the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary in 1880 and now the oldest continually operating school in Washington state.
A few patterns are worth flagging. Three of the top ten — Interlake, Bellevue, and Newport — are Bellevue School District comprehensive high schools, an unusual concentration for a district that enrolls roughly 20,000 students total. Lake Washington School District contributes another three: Redmond High, Eastlake (just outside this top ten), and Nikola Tesla STEM High School, the lottery-admitted choice school in Redmond whose 1402 SAT mean leads every public school in the state. Mercer Island High School — sole public secondary on its island, with a 97 percent four-year college matriculation rate — and Roosevelt High School, the Wallingford institution whose jazz program has won the Essentially Ellington competition multiple times, round out the Seattle Public Schools presence. The lone outlier is Newport High School in tiny Newport, Pend Oreille County (enrollment 298), which sits incongruously alongside its Eastside namesakes; Polaris's small absolute counts mean a few admits over a decade carry a small rural school onto the list.
Statewide, Lakeside leads by a wide margin (31 HPM acceptances 2022-2025). The Eastside selective publics (Interlake, Tesla STEM) and the Seattle / Eastside private flagships (Holy Names, Bush, UPrep, SAAS, Overlake, Eastside Prep) account for most of the remaining placements. Outside the metro, Bellarmine Prep, Annie Wright, Charles Wright, and Saint George's contribute the South Sound and Spokane representation. The geographic concentration is striking — over 90 percent of statewide HPM placements come from schools inside the Seattle / Eastside / Tacoma / Spokane corridors.
Ranked schools
- 001LAKESIDE SCHOOL(PRIVATE SCHOOL — INDEPENDENT) · KING31 HPM
- 002INTERLAKE SENIOR HIGH SCHOOLBELLEVUE SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING13 HPM
- 003REDMOND HIGH SCHOOLLAKE WASHINGTON SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING6 HPM
- 004BELLEVUE HIGH SCHOOLBELLEVUE SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING6 HPM
- 005HOLY NAMES ACADEMY(PRIVATE SCHOOL — INDEPENDENT) · KING6 HPM
- 006ROOSEVELT HIGH SCHOOLSEATTLE SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1 · KING5 HPM
- 007MERCER ISLAND HIGH SCHOOLMERCER ISLAND SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING5 HPM
- 008NIKOLA TESLA STEM HIGH SCHOOLLAKE WASHINGTON SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING5 HPM
- 009NEWPORT SENIOR HIGH SCHOOLBELLEVUE SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING5 HPM
- 010NEWPORT HIGH SCHOOLNEWPORT SCHOOL DISTRICT · PEND OREILLE4 HPM
- 011EASTSIDE CATHOLIC SCHOOL(PRIVATE SCHOOL — INDEPENDENT) · KING4 HPM
- 012KENTRIDGE HIGH SCHOOLKENT SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING3 HPM
- 013CENTRAL KITSAP HIGH SCHOOLCENTRAL KITSAP SCHOOL DISTRICT · KITSAP3 HPM
- 014SKYLINE HIGH SCHOOLISSAQUAH SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING3 HPM
- 015EASTSIDE PREPARATORY SCHOOL(PRIVATE SCHOOL — INDEPENDENT) · KING3 HPM
- 016BALLARD HIGH SCHOOLSEATTLE SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1 · KING2 HPM
- 017PORT ANGELES HIGH SCHOOLPORT ANGELES SCHOOL DISTRICT · CLALLAM2 HPM
- 018INGRAHAM HIGH SCHOOLSEATTLE SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1 · KING2 HPM
- 019CAMAS HIGH SCHOOLCAMAS SCHOOL DISTRICT · CLARK2 HPM
- 020STADIUM HIGH SCHOOLTACOMA SCHOOL DISTRICT · PIERCE2 HPM
- 021CHENEY HIGH SCHOOLCHENEY SCHOOL DISTRICT · SPOKANE2 HPM
- 022PULLMAN HIGH SCHOOLPULLMAN SCHOOL DISTRICT · WHITMAN2 HPM
- 023LAKE WASHINGTON HIGH SCHOOLLAKE WASHINGTON SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING2 HPM
- 024NORTH CREEK HIGH SCHOOLNORTHSHORE SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING2 HPM
- 025THE OVERLAKE SCHOOL(PRIVATE SCHOOL — INDEPENDENT) · KING2 HPM
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