Our public school, according to Naviance, has about 40 acceptances to Cornell per year and 5-15 acceptances to the other Ivies per year. Our RD acceptance rates to those colleges, though, are very close to the RD acceptance rates to those colleges nationally. (ie: 5%, 8% only).
Statistically speaking, A LOT of our students apply so there will be multiple acceptances. If at another high school, only 3 students apply and 1 student gets accepted and the other 2 get rejected, there’s not much evidence to suggest the one student who got accepted was the determining factor that kept the other two out.
My kids went to a small high school of mediocre quality. I saw a young woman who desperately wanted to go to a certain school that is desirable but not ultracompetitive, get rejected, because the school instead took her friend, who had only used it as a safety…
My two oldest did not apply to schools where his good friends really wanted to go. This wasn’t because he thought for sure he had a better chance, but let’s just say he didn’t want to crowd the field of applicants. I was proud of him. With the applications of my other kids, it wasn’t an issue because they were the only ones from the school applying to the schools on their lists. There is some value in a mediocre school I guess.
My daughter, who was salutatorian and a Stanford legacy, did not get into Stanford. The valedictorian, also a Stanford legacy, did. It’s just the way these things work.
The boy I was a nanny to went to Yale. This was a number of years ago, but he had a group of friends who had gone to school together since K (at a Country Day school) and went on to a prep school together, and 5 of them all went to Yale together. High school is in the west, and from their small class, probably about 100, 12 kids had been NMF. Everyone, from their teachers to their parents, said they were a fluke,a rarity, and it would probably never happen again.
At the biggest suburban school, grad classes of about 900, there are many headed to Ivies and Stanford every year. They compete against each other, yes, but not as much as you’d think. Even from the top public inner city school where half the students don’t evengraduate, they had 4 go to Stanford last year.
Our school has anywhere from 1 to 4 kids get into Harvard each year, similar numbers for Y, usually less for Princeton and MIT. Not always the same kids sharing schools.
“HYPS has never taken more than one from my high school each year in recent history.” Maybe so, but that doesn’t prove there is a quota and only one will get in. Our small numbers say otherwise, about 2-4 students getting in to any of those schools. In a class with a larger number of outstanding students than usual, more got in to these schools. In a class with fewer outstanding students, fewer acceptances. Nothing to indicate any quota–and these numbers were unsurprising knowing the individuals in the applicant pool. I don’t doubt there are only so many they will take from the tippy top schools, but it seems more likely to me that your school on average is producing one kid who is going to get in to these schools and just happened to be 1 in the years you looked at.
You can have a history of one/year-or whatever number. But if no one sufficiently qualified applies this year, nothing says anyone from your hs will get an admit.
And remember, it’s not about who’s tops in your own hs, on a hs scale. It’s about building the college class.
If another local hs produces more compelling kids, the college may take some of them, instead of from your hs. Even if your hs is competitive, there can be many reasons someone else gets the nod. There is no hard and fast formula. You still have an app to submit, a case to make.
There are 30,000 high schools in this country and of course there are homeschoolers and internationals. So,e of you have really got to get over this delusion that Affluent Suburban High School is so very important to these colleges that they just HAVE to ensure they pick one from your school every year or else the world would implode. It’s also arrogant to not get that they have tons of these kinds of students already and the breath of fresh air this year could be the kid from rural Montana or Alabama whose high school has never had a kid apply to an elite college. It’s highly, highly arrogant to think that your hs is soooooo important in the scheme of things.
@compmom, you assert something as fact that you cannot actually know:
It is the same mistake the OP is making. You have assumed that she was rejected because of the friend. The friend was obviously a stronger candidate, but there is no evidence that the first student would have have gotten in *even if * the friend hadn’t applied. Lots of students ‘desperately’ want to go to schools that are a reach for them but don’t get in.
Of course colleges compare applicants from same schools, but as most posters have pointed out, they are fine with taking more than one candidate from a given school- as long as the candidates are comparably strong. Equally, colleges won’t take a weaker student even if they are the strongest applicant from that school.
This was one thing I did not waste my time worrying about. I encouraged both of my kids to apply to the schools they wanted to attend. The schools their classmates applied to was not my business and not anything I could or should have any say in.
And shockingly sometimes a college will take a student with a lower GPA or SAT score over one with better stats, because there’s something else about the applicant they like better.
Collegemom you make a good point. The assumption made was certainly not scientific. The student who did not get in had a lot of things going for her, and it was a shock to all that she didn’t get in (her sister attended the school as well). But yes, it is very possible that this assumption is false. Nevertheless, this rejection alerted kids in our small school to the idea that their applications needed to be serious, because the potential- let’s leave it at that- to affect another’s application is there.
" this rejection alerted kids in our small school to the idea that their applications needed to be serious, because the potential- let’s leave it at that- to affect another’s application is there." Sorry, but students need safeties and I don’t think a student should be pressured not to apply to a safety or made to feel that they are stealing their friend’s spot.
We were at a University of Chicago presentation when the OP’s question came up. The UC rep gave what seemed like a stock answer when he told us a story about how one year they got five applicants from the same high school out east. This school was not a normal UC feeder, but they were struck by how these students matched what UC was looking for and they offered all five admission, and all five attended. The next year, they received a larger number of applications from the same school, but they ended up not accepting any of them as they felt the match was not there.
On the other, geography does matter to flagship state schools that see it as part of their mission to serve the entire state. Those schools still draw a large percentage of their students from wealthy suburban high schools, but in the interest of diversity, the admissions standards are easier for urban or rural schools.
I wonder if the school that the uchicago admission rep spoke about is my older son’s school. They actually accepted 6 ppl and 5 attended. The one who didn’t is my son, although chicago was his very close second choice.
I would not completely dismiss OP’s statement. Of course it depends on the school. Many of the larger suburban schools in my area get multiple kids into Cornell. Our very small school only gets one ED applicant into Cornell every year. Is it deliberate? Who knows. It is just the pattern that has been observed for years.
I would encourage any student to make their list independent of what they are hearing from other students. Last year, our valedictorian was denied at Cornell, and the student who was accepted was not one of the top 10 students and did not take the most rigorous classes. I’m sure there were aspects of her application that made her attractive for the program she applied to. I am making no judgement, just stating facts. The point is, one never knows who will get in and who won’t.
Mathyone, my son made that choice on his own. Noone mentioned it to him. His class was only 80 students, with maybe 10 achievers. He had a better chance than his friend at getting into a certain LAC, and chose not to apply because his friend really wanted to go there. My son got into his first choice and his friend went to the LAC. There was no pressure involved, and his friend certainly never broached the topic. Our school did not at the time have the kind of competitive atmosphere many schools have, for better or worse:I hear it has changed now. Only one student in 10 years went to an Ivy, for instance.
Even if nobody else is applying from your specific HS, there may be multiple candidates from the very similar HS in the next town. It is likely that an applicant is judged to some extent vs other similar candidates (big city magnet HS, small rural HS, competitive well-off big suburban HS). Of course there is competition among the top students from any high school, even if the school does not rank.