Staples High School ranks highly for fourth consecutive year

Caitlin Jacob ’24, Paper Features Editor|October 17, 2022

Screenshot by Caitlin Jacob ’24

Staples High School ranks highly along with schools such as New Canaan, Weston and Darien.

Staples High School has been ranked as the number one public high school in the state of Connecticut, overall, and the number one in college preparation for the fourth year in a row, according to this year’s annual rankings by Niche. In addition to ranking highly in the state of Connecticut, Niche has also declared Staples the 145th best public high school in the nation.

Each year, an expert team at Niche, a website used by Staples students and parents, evaluates public, private high schools and universities to determine how they rank on the state and national level. The Niche team takes many factors into account when curating their rankings including test scores, diversity and budget.

Upon receiving these rankings, William Plunkett, the director of counseling at Staples High School reflected on his department’s efforts to understand students as individuals. Plunkett has worked at Staples for over 10 years, and has been in his current position since 2017.

“I think we do a really good job of getting to know students and what their needs and goals are,” he said. “We make sure there is good information available to them and that they’re connected to different resources.”

While many current students and alumni have said the workload as a Staples student can be daunting, a large number of recent graduates have claimed the stress of Staples has prepared them for adulthood.

“I was worried about drowning in my [college] STEM classes, but the academic rigor of Staples forced me to develop invaluable study habits and time management skills,” Raina Mandayam ’22, a current freshman at Cornell University, said. 

Though Staples has ranked consistently high over the past few years, Plunkett acknowledges the improvements his department has made to achieve such a standard.

“A big focus for us in the past couple years is our push for post high school planning beyond college and thinking about career development,” Plunkett said. “Last year we started a series of webinars called Spark Your Future. There was a large number of Staples grads who were able to share their perspectives.”