Adlai E. Stevenson High School, District 125, is located in Lincolnshire, Illinois, and is one of the most highly sought after schools in Illinois. It operates one comprehensive high school serving all or part of the communities of Buffalo Grove, Lincolnshire, Long Grove, Prairie View, Deerfield, Mundelein, Hawthorn Woods, Vernon Hills, Lake Forest, Lake Zurich, Riverwoods, Kildeer and Mettawa. Consequently, the desirability of the school has caused a huge demand for homes within the portions of these towns that lie inside the attendance boundaries shown in the map below.
Obviously the school district boundaries do not match those of the cities, so, when looking to buy a home within the Stevenson attendance boundaries, it is important to know what school district the home belongs to. Here is a high level overview:
Buffalo Grove – Lake County only / north of Lake Cook Road
Long Grove – all of Long Grove except for a small piece in the northwest
Lincolnshire – all of Lincolnshire goes to Stevenson
Vernon Hills – the western half of Vernon Hills
Hawthorn Woods – only the eastern part flows into Stevenson
Kildeer – the eastern part belongs to Stevenson
Prairie View – all of Prairie View goes to Stevenson
Mundelein – a small part of the southeastern portion of Mundelein goes to Stevenson
Deerfield – an extremely small piece at Deerfield’s northwest goes to Stevenson
Riverwoods – the western most part of Riverwoods belongs to Stevenson
Lake Zurich – the eastern portion of Lake Zurich
Lake Forest – the western most portion of Lake Forest flows into Stevenson
Mettawa -most of Mettawa other than the northern most part attends Stevenson
Due to the high academic standards, results, test scores and college readiness of its students, Stevenson High School has long been a significant draw for families with children to the Northern suburbs of Chicago.
Adlai Stevenson High School Awards and Recognition
Stevenson High School has earned a number of awards since its beginning in 1965. The school was the first public high school in Illinois to receive four Blue Ribbon Awards for Excellence in Education from the U.S. Department of Education. Stevenson was awarded Blue Ribbon Awards in 1987, 1991, 1998 and 2002.
Stevenson was ranked as the best public high school in America in 2017. In addition, Niche gave Stevenson A+ ratings in the following areas in 2016: academics, teachers, educational outcomes, health and safety, resources and facilities, sports and fitness, co-curricular activities, food service, and administration and policies.
Several national publications have regularly included Stevenson in their lists of America’s best public high schools. Stevenson was the top-ranked open-enrollment public high school in Illinois in 2015 and 2014 in U.S. News and World Report, and was the top-ranked open-enrollment school in Illinois in the Washington Post’s rankings in 2014, 2013 and 2012.
Stevenson was ranked among the best in the nation’s best STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) programs by U.S. News and World Report.
Stevenson High School is only one of only three high schools in the country to receive the United States Department of Education’s “Excellence in Education” Blue Ribbon Award four times. In addition, Stevenson has been named one of America’s top high schools by both U.S. News & World Report and Newsweek magazines, and has been named a National School of Distinction in Arts Education by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
For the class of 2016, 99.9% attended college. In 2015-2016, 360 students were named Illinois State Scholars. In addition, there were 32 National Merit Semi-Finalists in the Class of 2016 and 38 Commended students.
Four faculty members have been Illinois Teacher of the Year finalists. Stevenson also had the Illinois Biology Teacher of the Year in 2015, and the Illinois History Teacher of the Year in 2014.
Feeder Schools into Stevenson High School
Daniel Wright Junior HS – Lincolnshire-Prairie View School District 103
Aptakisic Junior HS – Aptakisic-Tripp School District 102
Twin Groves Middle School – Kildeer Consolidated School District 96
Woodlawn Middle School – Kildeer Consolidated School District 97
Fremont Middle School – Fremont School District 96
West Oak Middle School – Diamond Lake School District 76
Real Estate Activity within the Stevenson School District
In 2017, 686 detached single family homes were sold in the Stevenson High School attendance boundaries for an average sales price of $506,176. The average home price and number of sales in 2017 for the portion of the towns feeding Stevenson are as follows:
| Town | # Homes Sold | Average Sales Price |
| Buffalo Grove | 266 | $437,630 |
| Long Grove | 128 | $623,528 |
| Lincolnshire | 100 | $570,674 |
| Vernon Hills | 76 | $442,226 |
| Hawthorn Woods | 40 | $494,556 |
| Kildeer | 26 | $800,200 |
| Prairie View | 16 | $322,504 |
| Mundelein | 10 | $364,550 |
| Deerfield | 7 | $247,143 |
| Riverwoods | 7 | $594,143 |
| Lake Zurich | 6 | $358,167 |
| Lake Forest | 3 | $652,667 |
| Mettawa | 1 | $950,000 |
You will notice that Buffalo Grove is at the top of the list and, in fact, most people looking to send their kids to Stevenson do concentrate their home search there. And it’s interesting to note that, while the average Buffalo Grove sales price was almost $438,000 within the school’s attendance boundary last year, outside the boundaries the average price was just a bit over $309,000. Although the homes in the two areas are not necessarily comparable it does demonstrate the higher cost of entry to the school.
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Eddie Nusinow is a long time resident of Buffalo Grove and a real estate agent with Lucid Realty, the Chicago area’s full service discount real estate brokerage. If you want to keep up to date on the Chicago area real estate market or get an insider’s view of the seamy underbelly of the real estate industry you can Subscribe to Getting Real by Email using the form below. Please be sure to verify your email address when you receive the verification notice.