The three schools' statuses went from unranked to gold or bronze as a result of using the correct data in the rankings. (Jetta Productions/Getty Stock Images)
After the online release of the 2018 U.S. News Best High Schools rankings on May 8, it became evident that there were errors in the rankings of a small number of high schools in South Carolina.
Because of a database problem in compiling 2015-2016 state assessment scores, three high schools were incorrectly evaluated and categorized as "unranked" in the 2018 Best High Schools rankings on usnews.com.
In addition, other South Carolina high schools had calculations based on their state assessment data that weren't correct but which didn't affect their rankings.
As a result, U.S. News has changed the data and ranks for the three South Carolina schools and the data for 118 unranked schools in the 2018 Best High Schools rankings published on usnews.com. Incorrect data have been removed.
The table below shows the three South Carolina schools whose status went from unranked to gold or bronze as a result of using the correct data in the rankings.
| School | Updated national rank & medal status | Updated STEM rank | Updated magnet rank | Updated state rank |
| Academic Magnet High School | 43 (tie) Gold | 37 (tie) | 10 (tie) | 1 (tie) |
| Greer Middle College Charter | Bronze | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| James F. Byrnes High | Bronze | N/A | N/A | N/A |
No other high schools' ranks in the 2018 Best High Schools rankings have changed.
To compute the corrected national, magnet and state rankings for Academic Magnet High School, U.S. News used the same numerical rank of the school whose College Readiness Index was closest to the affected school's CRI. To calculate Academic Magnet High's STEM rank, U.S. News used the school with the closest STEM Index.
Part of U.S. News' intent behind ranking the Best High Schools and publishing data for nearly every U.S. public high school is to standardize the reporting and transparency of high school-level data from every state for consumers' benefit – just as U.S. News has done for more than 30 years with the Best Colleges and Best Graduate Schools rankings.
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