On May 6, junior Amanda Bannourah said she walked out of her AP Environmental Science exam feeling mentally drained. Bannourah, along with many other students at this school, has taken multiple AP classes since her freshman year, making CHS one of the top schools in the state. In fact, in a recently released 2013 U.S. News and World Report best high schools ranking, CHS ranked fifth in the state and 622nd in the nation, earning a silver medal.

According to usnews.com, a three-step process is used to determine the ranking of high schools. The first step determines whether each school’s students were performing better than statistically expected for the average student in the state. The second step determines whether the school’s least-advantaged students (black, Hispanic and low-income) were performing better than average for similar students in the state. This third step measures which schools produce the best college-level achievement for the highest percentages of their students, all dealing with AP enrollment. Based on the study, CHS is 93 percent proficient in English and 96 percent proficient in Algebra.

Other schools however, such as Signature School in Evansville and West Lafayette Jr/Sr High School outscored CHS in ranking.

“If you think about it, fifth in the state is actually a really good ranking considering that there are so many schools in Indiana.,” Bannourah said. “I think Carmel manages to be such a good school because we value good grades and taking hard classes, like AP. I take AP classes because a lot of my peers do, and I want to challenge myself.”

According to Assistant Principal Brooke Watkins, CHS excels because of the high expectations and rigor of the curriculum.

“The lever of rigor and expectations we have for our students are a lot different than some other schools, and that goes back to the culture of Carmel and its academia. Whether it’s an elective class or a core class or an extracurricular activity, the bar is raised really high for kids and I think if we set that bar, people will perform to that.”

Based on the report done by U.S. News, CHS has a 50 percent enrollment in AP classes, while Signature School, ranked number one in Indiana, has 100 percent enrollment in either AP or IB programs.

“I think the reasons that some students choose not to take AP classes is because a lot of kids are also participating in a lot of extracurricular activities and sports teams, which makes the AP load much more difficult to deal with,” Bannourah said.

According to Watkins, CHS is always continuing to improve its curriculum and standards in order to ensure that the school continues to improve.

“It’s hard to say how we can improve as far as academics. Principal Williams always says, ‘If you don’t strive to get better, you’ll only get worse,’ and I think that holds true to our school. While we are an excelling school, there is always room for improvement, even if that margin is small.”

Beyond academic improvements, Speaker of the House Meredith Baranowski said CHS is continuing to improve the overall well being of the students.

“CHS student government is using the great resources we have here to make the community better. We see the high school as already such a positive place with a great potential to do good and we want to harness that energy and apply it to those who are in need.”

Bannourah said she agrees with Watkins in that CHS can always be improved.

Bannourah said, “I think it’s an ongoing kind of thing. CHS is a good school, but we could always be better. To achieve that, I think we need more AP enrollment, but other than that, CHS is always improving to fit students’ needs.”