Hello,
So recently I’ve been contemplating about the role of going to a competitive school. Is there an advantage, in any case, for applying to any college? I attend a top 40 school in the country and #1 in the state (Boston Latin School) . My school is one of the hardest and most competitive and i’ve always thought about how other schools that are less competitive can be an advantage for the students, in terms of obtaining a higher gpa than a student’s gpa from a more competitive school.
Thoughts?
Boston Latin School has a connection with Harvard.
One of the Kennedys attended.
Boston Latin is also an exam school
High School rankings are more useless than college rankings. Going to a school, that has a history of sending students to elite colleges has advantages of knowing how to play the game. But this difference is more like the top 2k vs bottom 5k with the other 20k in between.
The HS education, network, and environment should matter to you as well.
You’ve been brainwashed 
College rankings are very subjective and based entirely on opinion. The reason Harvard and those other schools are ranked so high is because they have alumni who have media and political connections that skew it in their favor. In fact, outside of finance, their majors are very limited. If you compare technological resources, degree offerings, etc with bigger schools, Harvard would be ranked near the bottom of the list. It’s actually a pretty mediocre school.
Boston Latin is a very well regarded, excellent school, and top colleges and universities, especially on the east coast, will be familiar with the quality of the education and preparation that Boston Latin students receive. So yes, in that sense, coming from Boston Latin will help in college admissions.
Generally, in college admissions, admissions representatives handle a particular geographic region of the US (as well as internationally) and travel throughout their assigned region, visiting high schools, college fairs etc. They develop relationships and familiarity with schools in their region and will certainly know Boston Latin.
Beyond that, the high school ranking is fairly meaningless-- it doesn’t matter to admissions officers whether someone is applying from the #1 ranked NJ or #20 ranked NJ high school. What matters is the specific applicant’s preparation, not what the high school ranking is.