<p>I have heard this from multiple people, but is it true that applicants for college are considered against those who go to their school, not those who go to schools around the country? In other words, will I pretty much be judged against the 500+ seniors in my school as opposed to a Joe Schmoe somewhere in California?
Thanks!</p>
<p>Not true. Admissions readers do prepare reports of each applicant from their respective regions, but I don’t think that applicants are actively compared with others from their school.</p>
<p>Multiple people get accepted to competitive colleges from the same schools some years, while other schools don’t send anyone. Colleges want the best applicants. They don’t want to make arbitrary quotas.</p>
<p>You may be misinterpreting how each applicant is judged in context. For instance, if you attend a rural HS in Wyoming and the top seniors each year graduate with Algebra II – you won’t be penalized against the Palo Alto kid who takes AP Calc their Sophomore year. Top schools expect you to excel in your given environment. If you have many opportunities, they expect you to hungrily attack them and excel.</p>
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<p>You are ALWAYS first judged against your classmates – class rank matters to top schools, at least being in the top 10%. But being ranked first in a school that’s unknown to the admissions committee isn’t going to be enough by itself either. So you need to excel among your classmates via class rank and among your national peers via standardized test scores. If you meet those two hurdles, then ECS and community service come into play.</p>
<p>I don’t know if this is true for other schools, but yes, at our school, we are largely competing against each other. Since we’ve been around for a while, admissions committees seem to have established some not-so-invisible quotas for our students. These quotas do fluctuate from year to year but basically a few dozen matriculate at really prestigious universities.</p>
<p>For my HYP alma mater, they have no school quotas. Period. You are in competition with thousands of other students in their pre-determined regions. Sure, there may be 10 kids who apply to Princeton from your school – but in reality, you’re being judged against 3000 kids. The fact is kids from the same school may be very similar. In that sense, you’re are being compared. But if you were a math/science whiz applying to Stanford and the only other applicant is a violin virtuoso – then NO, you wouldn’t be compared to one another. You’d be compared with other math/sci kids and the musician with other musicians.</p>
<p>Why am I so adamant about “No quotas” per high school? Think about it. What purpose does it serve the ultra selective schools? Are they worried about hurting the feelings of your school’s counselor staff? Nope. They have an abundance of more than qualified applicants. The only reason to have quotas is to preserve spots for kids from other high schools. One can argue that for some traditional feeders, they might be inclined to admit a few out of just tradition but beyond them, why would they feel one ounce of pressure? They admit individuals, not members of a high school. They want to craft the incoming class that meets their needs --not to preserve any “warm fuzzies” amongst high school staffers. My local HS 3 years ago admitted four kids – a statistical abnormality (usually 0-2 kid/year). I don’t see any quotas form my alma mater.</p>