Do colleges really select only one or two applicants from the same high school, meaning people from the same school who apply to the same college are in direct competition with one another? Or is this just a myth?
Sometimes, but I doubt that colleges will come out and say that.
Besides, my classmates go to the same school as me. It’s really not much of a competition 
They don’t have a set number.
Also, it depends what you mean by “colleges”.
Your state flagship absolutely doesn’t, especially if it has rolling admissions.
Top 25-40 universities and LACs? they want the best students, and not all applicants from your high school will be the best students the high school has ever seen 
so obviously only the best in the bunch will make the cut, then these will have to measure up to others in their region.
No. I’ve seen the number of matriculants from the HS I went to to any number of colleges vary a lot year over year.
Where do you kids get this idea anyway?
Some colleges do, others do not. I have spoken to people of different roles in the College Admissions totem pole, and most say that if you are qualified for the school, you are qualified for the school. However, one thing I have noticed is that you could be compared. By that I mean if you are applying to a college and there are 5 other students applying to a college and you all took AP Physics with Mr. Smith, the colleges may see it strange that they all received As and you received a C. I am unsure if that makes sense or not, so I will attempt to summarize it really quick. They will not only accept a certain quota from a certain school; however, it may give them a better insight(bad or good) into how you performed in high school. Final note, many college admissions officers who represent a specific geographical area will read applications by high school, so even if they do not admit it, they have a subconscious comparison going on.
I don’t really think so. My kids when to a high school with less than 60 students per graduating class. One year 2 of them went to Dartmouth. Another year two students headed off to the USC School of Cinematic Arts, which is pretty tough the get into. Can’t tell where there might be more overlap in admissions, since kids only can attend one school, and at least at our kids’ school you don’t find out where everyone was accepted.
@PurpleTitan I had never even thought about this until today, when I revisited that old featured thread “How High Is the Heat in Your Local College-Admissions Pressure Cooker”, where this opinion is shared by many commenters. Thanks for the answer, though.
Because the most selective schools have a wealth of qualified students to choose from, there are other factors that do come into play, such as geographical location or type of community they are from. This is part of balancing the class.
If the student is in Texas, the Texas public universities’ admission systems are heavily rank-based, so students effectively are competing against their classmates. However, it would not be for one or two spots, unless the class is so small that the top 7% is one or two students.
@JustOneDad, I assume the geographical factor you’re talking about is the one represented in this chart of Princeton students by state? (http://admission.princeton.edu/sites/admission/files/map-full2018.gif).
In this case, if you’re from, let’s say, NY, are you more “in competition” with students from your geographical area than with students from the Midwest? Also, is it reasonable to say that it would be harder for a New Yorker to get into Princeton than an Arkansan?
I dunno what that chart represents. It’s a shame they couldn’t score any entrants from CO, ND or AK. Maybe they had a couple lined up and one of the other schools picked them off.
Don’t get fixated on the geographical. There are many different levels of selection. They go after the best students first, but then they have to look and see where that leaves them in terms of balance.
I know it’s very common for the prep school crowd to tell my kids about how hard it was to gain admission from their competitive schools. That would tend to indicate something.
Thanks!