York Comprehensive High School fell between 172nd and 236th in South Carolina in the U.S. News and World Report Best High Schools rankings released Tuesday, landing in the band the magazine declines to rank precisely.
The school reported a 94 percent graduation rate, a college readiness index score of 17.3 and enrollment of 1,511 students in grades 9 through 12. Nationally, U.S. News placed it somewhere between 13,460th and 17,945th out of nearly 18,000 ranked schools.
Those ranges are not a typo. U.S. News assigns exact numbers only to schools in roughly the top three quarters of its list. Everything below that gets a bracket, which means York Comprehensive’s placement cannot be read as a specific position and cannot be compared year over year with any precision. In the previous edition the school drew a similar bracket, between 161st and 230th in South Carolina.
What moved the number and what did not
The graduation rate is the part of the scorecard where York Comprehensive holds its own. At 94 percent, it matches Clover High School and Nation Ford High School, both of which finished far higher in the state rankings.
The gap opens on the two measures U.S. News weights most heavily: performance on state required exams and the college readiness index, which counts how many students take Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate exams and how many pass. York Comprehensive scored 17.3 on college readiness.
How the rankings were built
U.S. News evaluated around 27,000 public high schools this year and ranked nearly 18,000. Schools were scored on six indicators, including state assessment results, graduation rates, performance among underserved students, the breadth of college level coursework offered and results on AP and IB exams.
The company worked with the research firm RTI International on the methodology and used data from the 2023 and 2024 academic year. The figures came from the College Board, the International Baccalaureate organization and state education agencies. No surveys or reputation scores were involved.
The full South Carolina list and the York Comprehensive profile are posted at usnews.com.
Source line: Reporting based on the U.S. News and World Report Best High Schools rankings released Aug. 18, 2026, the York Comprehensive High School profile page, and the U.S. News announcement distributed the same day.
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Thomas Hyslip lives in Tega Cay with his wife and daughter. After 27 years in the U.S. Army and Federal Law Enforcement, he retired to pursue his passion for teaching. Tom is now an Assistant Professor of Instruction at the University of South Florida. In 2 short years he has won 10 awards from the South Carolina Press Association, including first place in column writing, education beat reporting and best podcast.
