I’ve been following the SEHS scores since ’15 and have the cutoff scores for each year. There is a version of the ’15 cutoff scores pdf that also lists the number of seats available for each SEHS. That is the only year I’ve been able to find that particular data listed.

Listed below are the MINIMUM Tier 4 cutoff scores since 2015 with the total number of available Freshman seats listed in [brackets] from that 2015 report. These are the top 5 most difficult schools to get admittance.

————– ’15 ’16 ’17 ’18
Northside[300]: 886, 882, 891, 891
Payton[249]: 891, 890, 894, 896
Lane[1360]: 808, 827, 843, 849
Jones[400]: 873, 877, 883, 887
Young[356]: 862, 866, 874, 876

Of interest (to me at least) are a number of things:
1. The across the board jumps in ’17.
(Which happened to occur the year my oldest was applying.. SMH.)

2. Northside has held steady at 891 for two years.

3. Payton’s high scores are, in part, do to its small student body.

4. The big jumps in Lane’s scores from ’15-’17.

Having been thru this process in ’17 with my oldest, I was kinda shocked to discover that the vast majority of my sons friends and his AC classmates AND classmates from his former Elementary school.. ALL were clamoring to get accepted into Lane. By FAR, 3 or 4 to 1, most of his friends now attend Lane.

I asked him just a couple of months ago: “Knowing what you know now, would you have chosen Lane, Today?” His response was “Yes” and not just because so many of his friends are there.. he also really likes that (according to his Lane friends) they can take MORE AP courses per year than he can. That is not sitting well with him.
(He’s developed a very competitive desire when it comes to his education.. this is something new that has developed in his freshman year and something I’m very pleased to see!)

I had known that Lane was a popular school with teens but I had no idea HOW popular it was until last year. I was mentioning to my wife, then, that if this keeps up, Lane will be THE school in a few years.

And now this– USNews has just released their list of the 2018 Top H.S. in the nation in the last week. Payton and Northside are listed in the Top 100 and are 1 & 2, respectively, in Illinois.

Lane has jumped from 5 to 3, leap-frogging Young & Jones.