Blog · From the data · October 2, 2026

The UC score puts Harvard-Westlake 61st. The school's own list points to New York.

Parents ask me for one number. I understand why. Reading a stack of school profiles takes a whole afternoon, and one score feels like an answer. So Reach gives you one. The UC Reach Score counts a school's admits to the six most selective UC campuses, counted at each campus, for every 100 seniors. Harvard-Westlake scores 62. That is 61st of the 1,107 California high schools we score. A parent in Studio City reads that and feels like the question is settled.

It is not settled. It is one question, answered well.

Here is the other question. Where did the students actually end up? Harvard-Westlake answers that one itself. Its Harvard-Westlake School Profile 2025-2026 prints a matriculation list. That is where a school says its graduates enrolled. The list runs 192 numbered lines, by the classes of 2021 through 2025. The biggest name on it is New York University, with 26 graduates. Next is the University of Chicago with 14, then the University of Michigan with 13. This is a school with 283 seniors saying, in its own document, where the kids went.

Three of the ten colleges with the most graduates on that list are in California. One of those three is a UC.

That is the gap, in one line. The UC Reach Score counts UC admits and nothing else. If a class leaves the state, the score cannot see it. A year of graduates heading to Chicago or Michigan or New York does not move the number at all. Neither figure is wrong. They measure two different things, and families keep being handed the first one without the second.

We rank schools on those printed counts too, one graduating class at a time. On our New York University board, Harvard-Westlake sits 2nd of 251 schools, at 26 a year. Same school. Same years. A different spot in line.

So use both, and ask each one its own question. Ask the score: how often does a class here clear UC's top six campuses? That question matters in California, and it is figured the same way for all 1,107 schools. Then ask the list: where did these graduates enroll? That is the question most parents are really asking. The school is the one that can answer it. The list is the school's own published document. We copy it as printed, with the class years stated the way the school states them.

Pull up your own kid's high school on Reach. Read the score. Then scroll down to the school's own list, if it has one. If the two tell different stories, the list is the one that says where students went. The score is the one you can hold up against the school across town. No list at all tells you something too, and it is a fair thing to ask about on a tour.

One number was never going to be enough.

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