<p>cookiemom - I don't know all the details about your son but it sounds like he was in a somewhat similar situation to my son, who went to a large public high school which is not geared to admission to top colleges and who is now a junior at Stanford. In my son's case, he earned top scores on his SAT 1, SAT 2s (a lot through self-study on those as much of the material wasn't covered in his courses), and his AP exams. I am guessing that if a student does EXTREMELY well on ALL of these tests compared to other applicants, a college can't deny that he or she is well prepared regardless of what school he or she comes from. He also attended CTY and our state's science Governor's School and sought out a summer internship related to his interests (which he was very lucky to get), as well as taking part in the usual school related extracurricular and community activities. I also worried all through high school that he would suffer from not attending a prep school, as some of his classmates left the public schools after eighth grade to go to prep schools. We kept telling him that if he took advantage of all of the opportunities he had, everything would work out fine, and in his case it did. But I know how you feel, I too would have been upset if it hadn't worked out for him and would have felt that I should have sent him to a prep school more geared toward preparing students for top college admission.</p>