Do colleges look at the high school you went to, and does it affect applicates into getting into schools?
Yes. Your counselor sends a school report, which includes (among other things), AP/IB/DE courses offered, the GPA and grading scales used, demographics, and ranking system (if there is one). This lets admissions counselors see whether applicants were taking full advantage of opportunities offered and how they compare to the rest of their peers.
For example, Applicant A took 5 APs but their school only offers 5 AP classes. Applicant B took 5 APs but their school offers 20 AP classes. When comparing them, Applicant A obviously took more advantage of their opportunities.
Oh okay, thank you so much! In Chicago, we’re tested into getting into high schools, and there’s 11 schools in which enroll students who scored the highest, but I’m at Chicago’s most difficult IB program at another school, so will they have a better chance into getting to better colleges than me just because they’re schools are much ore competitive and harder?
I think you can be fairly certain that at the most competitive colleges and universities, the AOs are at lease somewhat if not very familiar with the top high schools - public and private - in the nation (or at least those within the geographic area they usually draw from ).
See if your IB program publishes matriculation data i.e. where kids from your school go to college. Note this is in no way, shape or form any guarantee at all that you’ll get into any of those colleges. But, at the very least it will give you some sense of the paths taken by those who came before you. If you see “a lot” of kids going to a specific handful of schools each year, then chances are the CCs in your HS have decent working relationships with the AOs in those colleges. Make sense?