Though still the top ranked high school on the North Shore, Evanston Township High School slipped to 22nd place in Illinois and 746th in the nation, according to The Washington Post’s annual “America’s Most Challenging High Schools” list.

ETHS was ranked 10th in the state and 303rd in the nation in 2016, but it remains in the 97th percentile nationally. The newspaper released this year’s rankings on Friday.

Fewer dropouts, a larger number of graduates and a rise in the number of schools on the national list contributed to the ranking, an ETHS news release said.

The Post’s “Challenge Index” formula ranks schools by using a ratio: the number of International Baccalaureate, Advanced Placement and Advanced International Certificate of Education exams given by a school each year, divided by the number of its graduating seniors. The “test-to-graduates” ratio at ETHS is calculated using the number of its AP exams, according to the news release.

The Post also includes each school’s Equity and Excellence rate, the percentage of all graduating seniors who had at least one score of 3 or higher on an AP exam during high school, the news release said. The E&E rate, though not used to rank schools, was 50 percent for ETHS based on 2016 data — more than double the national rate.

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