<p>why does it matter, would knowing the answer to this question actually help the quality of your own application? </p>
<p>word of advice: just do your ultimate best in your app, it's pretty much the only thing in your control, so don't let any other side thoughts derail your journey</p>
<p>it's regional...and hs based...</p>
<p>however, if you go to a really competitive school and the gc is smart enough to say, "okay these 20 people really want to go to x and will accept x" and so forth for lots of schools, there can be no quotas. colleges don't want to get burned with yields</p>
<p>well you have 10 2400s from your high school who all have a gazillion hours of community service play 15 varsity sports are presidents of the best clubs wrote the best admssions essays and found cures for cancer all apply to say school X.
would school X really turn down all the others just for 1 of the 10 because they wont take more than 1 from the same high school? No
school X would gladly take all of those students because they are obviously academically prepared and can contribute much to school X
they dont compare and neither will they sort applications by school so they can look at them in that order. there are a jillion high schools in the nation (not to mention international applicants) and it would be a waste of their time to go through and sort and look at students' apps from the same high school.
if you're qualified you'll get in, if you're not or they're just playa hatin, you wont</p>
<p>Let's look at this with some common sense. </p>
<p>All of the apps from your high school might go into the admissions office at different times. Each app will be entered into a database, and if they sort the applicants it'll probably be by alphabetical order. It is highly, highly, highly unlikely that once they get all 10,000 apps they'll sort them according to HS. That's beside the point and way too tedious. </p>
<p>So let's say they look at each app by the order it comes in, or by alphabetical order, or by no particular order at all. Will they remember that so and so went to High School X and, 910 apps down the line, see another individual from High School X and promptly remember that the first person also went there? Most likely not. You'll be evaluated on your own merits and, given the way the evaluation system works, it's highly unlikely that you'll be compared directly against another individual from your school. </p>
<p>You'll be evaluated in the CONTEXT of your school. Your counselor will send them a report, and you'll be looked at relative to the general strength of your class. And if your school is very well known, like Stuyvesant or Andover or TJ and etc, there probably will be remarkable applicants from it and the admissions officers will probably somewhat expect these remarkable applicants. But even if they say, "Even though most of the people from Exeter are qualified we can't accept more than around the top 20," that's still not you being directly compared to your fellow applicants - it's more like the admissions officers know the rigor of your HS is high, and thus even if your application is good it's still not the best relative to the strength of your HS class in general. So you're really still just being evaluated with your school in context.</p>
<p>You'll probably be competing against other applicants from your school just as much as you will be any other applicant.</p>
<p>Sartorialiste- Though you're kind of assuming they would do it by hand. If I'm not mistaken, most schools take your applications and enter it into their own database system, somewhat like Microsoft Access or even Excel. Although each student's file can be called up, it probably wouldn't be to hard to sort by high school. That being said, it's probably not done all that often. I have some anecdotal evidence that supports it, but I mean.. it's all anecdotal, and I'm just another high school student. However, I'll reiterate that colleges might sort by high school where they get a significant amount of applications... UNC would probably sort the Academy of Math and Sciences and William G Enloe separately, and Harvard want to make sure that not everyone they accept is from Andover, Exeter, and Deerfield.</p>
<p>I go to a really competitive high school and my college counselor told me that last year, over 150 students out of a class of 650 students applied to Johns Hopkins U. If you've ever been on a college tour, deans love to be able to say that they have students from all 50 states and wouldn't want too many kids from the same city, much less the same high school. So obviously, you are compared to other applicants from your high school, even if they do not take all the apps out and compare them side-by-side.
Also, I don't remember which open house this was, but the admissions dean told me that the admissions officers compare your transcript to your high school's school profile. The profile includes the # of AP courses offered at your school, as well as certain policies with programming, etc. This serves to check whether you made the most of your high school career.</p>
<p>^Holy ***** 150 applications that's insance, how many got in? Yeah, the Vandy admissions officer told my school that they took 9/15 applicants from the school next to us and Dartmouth took 4/6 kids from my high school, so they may take if you're good and can contribute something.</p>