<p>Last year I transferred from a public middle school into a boarding school (fairly prestigious). While I found the work at boarding school more difficult I also found that my effort had increased from my previous years attending public school. Even with the increased effort and hard work - my grades dropped from a unwavering 97-100 at public school to around an 84-85 average at boarding school. My question is when college application time comes and I have to compete against students attending public schools (where getting high A's and A's is considerably easier I'd say), will colleges recognize the difference between boarding school and public school grades?</p>
<p>Yes - your boarding school will send a document explaining their courses, grades, etc. This will put your grades in the context of your school. You’re not exactly competing against the students in public schools - they’ll treat each student in the context of their program.</p>
<p>Why don’t you talk to a college advisor at your boarding school? Ask if you can get a Naviance account. Most independent schools and competitive public high schools subscribe to Naviance. This program tracks college acceptances, deferrals, wait lists and rejections from your schools, and plots these with gpa and SAT scores. You can view the scattergrams and see the outcomes for people with your gpa. You can use the SAT range estimate from your SSAT test.</p>
<p>If they will not give you access to Naviance (usually this is given to Juniors around January), then ask a friendly Senior if you can take a peek at his/her account. Start tracking Senior results this year by making more friends from the Senior class. See who gets inducted into the Cum Laude Society. </p>
<p>Usually grades at public school drop going from middle school to high school, especially for students tracked in the honors/AP courses. </p>
<p>Colleges state that they look at applicants within the context of their school and the opportunities presented to them. Are you taking advantage of the opportunities your boarding school offers you? Don’t be discouraged when you look at how many accepted students are in the top 10% of their class. Many independent schools and competitive public schools do not rank, so perhaps only 60% (varies by college) of applicants are ranked.</p>
<p>College admissions officers are assigned territories, and part of their job is to understand the various high schools within that territory. If your school has a good track record of applicants/acceptances from colleges that interest you, then the Admissions Officer from your territory knows how to evaluate candidates from your school.</p>
<p>adcoms also manually raise/lower your gpa depending on where you come from. For example, I can expect .5 or so added to mine because of the school i go to</p>
<p>^Some do (and law and med schools supposedly do), but others won’t manually raise the GPA, since they understand it in the context of the school already.</p>
<p>But either way, there shouldn’t be need to worry. Burb Parent’s suggestions and advice are good - additionally, some of those students at public schools might not have the same EC opportunities as you will. I know that if I had been number 1 at my public high school, I’d likely have gotten into Harvard based on the school’s past results (didn’t apply from BS, though), but I wouldn’t have been challenged as much, as prepared, and I wouldn’t have had many EC opportunities. On the other hand, in boarding school, I was exposed to languages I couldn’t have taken at the public high school, took math competitions unavailable at the public school, and was even paid to fly to places such as Baltimore, Buffalo, and Texas for country-wide competitions. My grades were lower, but the opportunities and challenges I received definitely made up for it on my application.</p>