College Success Awards

Celebrating high schools that prepare students to succeed in college

In 2018, GreatSchools released this first-of-its-kind report recognizing and celebrating high schools that excel in ensuring students are prepared for college based on school-level postsecondary data collected and shared by their states.

The Award also underscores the need to open up new sets of data so we can shine the light on success and find the schools that are preparing students to enroll in and stick with college. Improved transparency of this information will help schools, parents, educators, and policymakers support students to succeed in college and beyond. It is also critical to enhance and expand the data available to include performance by student group to ensure schools are preparing all students for college and productive futures.

Download the full report for information about our findings, the criteria, methodology and data used to determine Award winning schools, best practices employed by winning schools, considerations for future research and recommendations for expanded data collection and transparency.

In 2018, the Award recognized 814 schools across nine states where high school level data on college preparation, enrollment, course remediation and persistence were available: AR, CO, FL, GA, IN, KY, OH, MI, and MO. In 2019, sixteen more states made available this important data, making it possible to offer the Award in twenty-five states.

In addition to shining a light on high schools that succeed in preparing students to enroll in and stick with college, the Award aims to build a demand for college success — not simply traditional measures of preparedness — in our high schools. To that end, we have highlighted promising practices from Award-winning schools with the goal of inspiring further adoption of the interventions they have used to support their students’ success in college.


For more information about this report, contact pr@greatschools.org.