<p>Just wondering. Am I at a disadvantage because my school does not get more than a few kids into the top schools? Will my school's history affect my admissions even if I have the stats?</p>
<p>Not much I think especially if you’ve maxed out (or near maxed-out) your gpa and course rigor.</p>
<p>
Some high schools, like Stuyvesant, sent 30 to 40 kids per year just to Cornell, less to the other ivies and top schools, but still quite a few by most high school standards. If you don’t attend a “feeder” high school, you don’t have the same strong advantage, but you are not necessarily disadvantaged.</p>
<p>Getting no kids in would be a disadvantage, getting a few in means your school is at least on the radar and has a track record. Better to be known as a school that produces a few top kids each year than completely unknown.</p>
<p>It’s difficult to say. At schools like yours, students have to be in the top 1-3 in the class to get into the very top schools, whereas at some schools being in that top quintile, one is still in the running. That’s because at such schools, the kids are preselected and the normal distributions do not hold. </p>
<p>I feel like if you go to a feeder school, it’s harder to get in because if you don’t have those top notch grades, you will look like a slacker. It could potentially be better if you go to a lesser known school and are really highly ranked</p>
<p>I agree with cptofthehouse. It depends on school size, but generally speaking, if your school is regional in college admissions, it takes very high standardized test scores and a very high class rank to be competitive (1-3 at a small school; top 1 or 2%).</p>
<p>At my d’s school, for example, the top three kids went to Wellesley, Barnard, and WUSTL. They were rejected from Notre Dame, Yale, Georgetown, and probably a couple others. No one outside the top three went anywhere of note. This year, there were service academies and not much else. The next highest ranked admit was American. (There weren’t many who applied to reaches, but none who did were successful.)</p>
<p>But it is an individual sport - at the end of the day, if you have the scores and resume, you can be competitive. :)</p>
<p>My old HS is in the middle of fly-over country. Every once in a while someone who has excellent grades and test scores gets into one of the places people like to talk about here. Coming from a school that is completely off the admissions officers’ radar occasionally can work to a student’s advantage.</p>
<p>However, this isn’t something that you can predict, so make your list, apply, and see what happens.</p>
<p>I think it is especially important to have strong test scores when you are not from a feeder high school, and it helps to have ECs that are not the “normal” high school activities. Something off the beaten path. That helps any applicant, but could really help a student from a high school that is not as strong as some.</p>
<p>@gibby
Those kids from Stuyvesant have been incredible since day one. Heck, that school’s admissions rate is lower than Harvard’s.</p>
<p>@sakacar
I do not think the class-rank “cut-off” is that extreme, or at least that’s not what I have seen in my predominantly hispanic school. Kids in the top 6-7% have gone to MIT, Rice, and Notre Dame.
Those cases are extremely rare, though; we probably send kids to top 25 schools once every couple of years, with some classes not even going beyond the state flagships.
Heck, I personally do not know of any cases where kids have gone to ivies.</p>