The 50 smartest private high schools in the US

Top private high schools offer a lot of perks, from the newest classroom technology to pristine athletic fields. But when it comes down to it, nothing is more important than the quality of a school's academics.

Niche, a company that researches and compiles information on schools, just released its 2016 rankings of the best private high schools in the US, from which it also ranked the schools with the best academics - the smartest private high schools across the country.

Niche determined the bulk of the ratings by weighing the composite SAT/ACT score, caliber of colleges graduates attend, and percentage of seniors who go on to four-year colleges for more than 8,000 schools. Niche also looked at student-teacher ratio and survey responses from parents and students. You can read the full methodology here.

Read on to see the 50 private high schools with the smartest students in the country.