The Bergen County Academies, commonly referred to as the Academies due to its seven academic and professional divisions, is a tuition-free public magnet high school located in Hackensack, New Jersey that serves students in the ninth through twelfth grades from Bergen County, New Jersey, United States.Admission to the Academies is highly competitive, as the school typically accepts about 270 of the more than 1,600 applicants every year through a process that includes letters of recommendation, exams, and interviews. Founded in 1991, BCA has been included as one of the 23 highest performing high schools in the United States by The Washington Post and in 2015 was ranked by Newsweek as the #5 public high school in America. In its listing of "America's Best High Schools 2016", the school was ranked 11th out of 500 best high schools in the country; it was ranked fourth among all high schools in New Jersey.BCA is often excluded from national high school rankings because "despite their exceptional quality, their admission rules and standardized test scores indicate they have few or no average students."BCA is a Blue Ribbon School, a member of the National Consortium for Specialized Secondary Schools of Mathematics, Science and Technology, admitted to the Coalition of Essential Schools, home to five Intel Science Talent Search finalists in the past five years, and a Model School in the Arts as named by the New Jersey Department of Education.
