Students at Diamond Bar High School devote much time following challenging academic standards in hopes of expanding their chance of entering a prestigious college and chasing after a luxurious life. However, the hard work and effort Brahmas’ have put in have resulted not only in an improvement for their academic knowledge, but also an improvement for their school’s national standing.

Diamond Bar High School received a national ranking of 54 in the recent addition of Newsweek magazine, while placing in the Top 10 schools of California with a ranking of 7. In addition, DBHS is the one of two schools in the top seven of California that is open to public and does not require its students to take an entry exam.
“Our ranking is a result of our hard work with our students, our excellent staff, our supportive community, and the commitment to responsibly increase access to rigorous courses to a greater number of students,” DBHS Principal Catherine Real stated through an email sent out to parents and staff.

Newsweek released its rankings of over 700 schools in The Daily Beast on Aug. 26. The rankings were based on six criteria that included the school’s college acceptance rate, graduation rate, percentage of students enrolled in college level courses, percentage of students with free or reduced lunch fees, and average scores of the SAT or ACT. Out of these indicators, graduation rates and college acceptance rates have the most importance in terms of ranking.

DBHS placed in the Top 100 nationwide in the categories of rigor level, ACT/SAT scores, and graduation rates. The school boasts a 99.8 percent graduation rate followed by a 94.9 percent percentage for students that are college bound. Meanwhile in terms of the school’s rigor criteria, DBHS contains 39.6 percent of students who take college level courses and has an average SAT and ACT score of 1742 and 27.2 respectably. Overall, the school’s ranking at 54 places it over 200 ranks higher than its previous ranking of 283 back in 2013. This jump has DBHS overtaking rival schools like Walnut High School in the national school rankings. In addition, DBHS and WHS are the only two California high schools from the same district that are in the Top 100.

“This is a remarkable achievement when considering it’s estimated that there are more than 30,000 public and private high schools across the country,” Walnut Valley Unified School District Superintendent Robert Taylor said through an email to all WVUSD staff members.