<p>The school naviance shows only one or no student applied to some of Midwest and western LACs from the high school (a public, Northeast) in the past. The school sends a dozen of kids to top universities, including HYP, every year; however very limited kids to LACs, even to WAS.</p>
<p>Is there a disadvantage factor, applying to LACs who do not know well about this high school other than its profile?</p>
<p>Admissions officers at small colleges take the time to learn something about the high schools of applicants, and they want to build a diverse student body, not just kids from the same few schools, so I believe there is no disadvantage to applying as long as the student’s application is strong.</p>
<p>College applications from my kid’s public to elite LACs are few and far between. My daughter applied to 6 LACs and did get accepted to all, including Williams and Swarthmore so doubt the high school was a disadvantage. I think there may be a disadvantage if you have someone else, especially with a similar profile, from your school applying. For example, D’s friend (with a slightly lower class rank) was waitlisted at all of the schools D applied to and was accepted. However, she was admitted to other schools just as selective. There are just so many white females from a certain area the school can take.</p>
<p>I would think that coming to a midwest LAC from the northeast, and from a school that didn’t typically send students to that midwest LAC, would be more of an advantage than a disadvantage. Schools are looking for diversity, including geographic diversity.</p>
<p>I agree with beth’s mom: It can be an advantage to apply to a private college from a good school that normally doesn’t have students applying to that college.</p>
<p>^^agree. The biggest disadvantage for you might be that your GC may not know the college well. Oftentimes, GCs and college reps have a close relationship, built over the years. If the college rep doesn’t know your GC or your HS, the school rep may not feel the same bond if he/she did. (Did you read the Gate Keepers?)</p>
<p>Our experience was a bit different from that suggested here. Fwiw, one of my kids applied to schools very far and somewhat unusual from our public school. The admissions seemed to be a bit more ‘by the numbers’ than the schools which are more familiar with our local schools. So, for example, my kid didn’t get merit from that far away school because they said the gpa was low-- but our schools are MUCH tougher than theirs and the gpa was only low by their far-away standards. In contrast, same kid got merit at a better-ranked school that was more familiar with our good, suburban public school. </p>
<p>So if your kid has strong numbers for the target school, I would think coming from somewhere different would help. If, however, your kid’s numbers are lower, they may not get the consideration that they would have if they were coming from a high school with which the admissions committee is more familiar.</p>
<p>Looking at the school naviance, there are only 1/10 of data points of Cornell, Emory or other top univ. for few NE top LACs. It shows results as if Wesleyan Univ. is harder to Cornell univ. and Williams or Swarthmore are easier than Wesleyan. It has two data points for Oberlin, however, one by a (current) Harvard student and another with very very low stats. There is essentially none for other LACs outside NE.</p>
<p>GC gave us very different impression of the selectivity for each LACs than this site do. It is hard to believe any reasonable relations with the colleges that is not popular in the HS.</p>
<p>Sounds like we need to expect the unexpected.</p>
<p>I never heard of a naviance or CC for that matter before D decided on which colleges to apply to. Our HS counselor was familiar with LACS (his son was a sophmore at Williams) and gave her a list and an idea of her chances of admission. However, a rough estimate of selectivity can be gleaned from the freshmen profiles of the school or college guides such as Fiske. We would have reached the same list without the aid of the counselor.</p>