<p>Pearl obviously has never been near a good prep school. </p>
<p>If all things are equal, the public school kid gets the nod. But things aren't usually equal.</p>
<p>Ivies have on average 35% of kids from private schools while only 5% of American kids attend private school.</p>
<p>There are many excellent, non magnet, public schools where average SAT scores are as good as all but the very best private school's. They are mostly in wealthy towns. So this makes you look at financial aid stats. At ivies, an average of 60% need no financial aid. That means their parents make over $150K/yr. Top 3% of American population. At some privates the inancial aid number is even lower.</p>
<p>So the rich still control top schools. A kid from a random public with q 2050 doesn't stand much chance at a very top college if they are not an athlete or URM.</p>
<p>OP, where did the 2050 kid from your school go? State U honors program would be my guess.</p>
<p>i think he just went to university of washington. My school does not push anybody towards a top college. Although I think the class president with a lower score than 2050 went to notre dame.</p>
<p>Did you guys ever think that prep schools are made up of the brightest kids? The application process is brutal and the best prep schools have admissions rates under 20%. The kids that are there beat many other kids for their spot so this insures that only the cream of the crop are at the school in the first place. So of course come admissions time the kids are getting many acceptance from top colleges. They probably would've got into these top colleges from ANY school they went to because they are bright and hardworking. Don't give the schools too much credit, its mostly the students.</p>
<p>yes it is mostly the students, but the school also plays a major role. I've known a number of fairly bright kids in my school who turned into bad students because they weren't motivated.</p>
<p>I'm not sure about other schools, but in my school, they preach that scores don't matter and learning is the most important thing. They almost try to turn any kid who cares about "scores" a poor loser who doesn't care about the true meaning of education.</p>
<p>It definitely depends on the specific school. My public, non-magnet hs has an SAT average 100 pts higher than the national average. Lots of kids go to ivies. (I will admit that it's a pretty wealthy town.) My friend's private hs has an SAT avg around the national one. I don't think we have much if any grade inflation at my school. In challenging classes, we have tests where a B+ is great. An A on an essay is automatically figured in as a 95 (no A+). At my friend's private school, where they use a number system, she says the top kids are very close with 99s and 98s, meaning that 100s must be rather common. Yet she claims there's no grade inflation, apparently everyone is just "really smart." So don't generalize regarding public and private schools.</p>
<p>i may have found a school profile on the school site, but it doesn't tell the number of AP classes offered, which sadly is only 2. The rest of my classes are called "college" instead of AP. I hope adcoms would have a way of knowing this</p>
<p>Ask your GC for the profile they send with transcripts. Regional reps know the high schools. They won't hold low nu,mber of APs against you if the school only has a couple, but keep in mind much of your competition self studies, or takes APEX or other AP online classes. Many take community college classes. They go EPGY and CTY, apply to RSI and TASP, etc. There are all sorts of ways to compensate for a crummy high school. If you're a URM, non educated parents not doing those things won't hurt as much. If you're white and Asian your competition will tend to have done outside prep.</p>
<p>An Asian with a below average (for the school) SAT will find himself competing with kids from similarly bad schools who have self motivated themselves into RSI.</p>
<p>You need to get real mrcsp. You need to raise your SATs 300 points to really have a shot. And even then, nothing says ivy league.</p>
<p>I talked to an admission's counselor at a liberal arts school with a great reputation about this very subject. She told me that in her experience, prep schools were over-rated. She said that she thinks that prep school kids and public school kids are equally prepared (and maybe the public school kids have a slight edge). just fyi</p>
<p>Where I live, success in public school (both public high schools in my city are in Newsweek's top 250) is far more respected than success in our local private high schools. My schools top 2% invariably go Ivy, while the next 3-8% go to Cal or UCLA. </p>
<p>I guess my point here is that some public schools are better than many privates--it just depends on where you live.</p>