Competitive High School?

Applying to College
1

<p>This may be in the wrong section, but my question is this: How do you know if you go to a competitive high school? Do you strictly look at the rankings by US News & Rankings? Or do you look at how many kids were accepted into Ivy League/Top Tier schools in the past year? </p>

<p>I always see people saying they went to competitive schools here on CC, and being a student, I'm just not sure where my school would fit in. If people could give criteria for competitiveness of school, it would be helpful, just to understand what everyone means by competitive on CC chance threads and in general talks.</p>

2

<p>Umm…well…umm…its hard to explain…just depends on what classes your school offers</p>

3

<p>I think you would normally just know if your school has a reputation for being harder than others. I have friends who go to another school so I know that mine is harder; I don’t know how you know otherwise. If you don’t have much of an idea of how competitive your school is, it’s probably average.</p>

4

<p>In my opinion, here’s the thing: if you take AP and honors classes each year and have all straight A’s, yet you class rank is still floating somewhere at the veeeeeeeeery bottom of 1st quarter or lower-- you know immediately that you are going to a competitive school. It just means that the standards are much much higher than you would expect, so it is hard for non-geniuses to stand out no matter how high their GPA gets. Simply because there’s going to be those 150 annoying people that took 10 times more AP classes than you. (I’m in the same situation, by the way)</p>

5

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<p>From reading College Confidential, I have concluded that there are about 1200 high schools in the “top 100 high schools in the US.”</p>

<p>In a similar way, from reading colleges’ common data sets, I have concluded that about a third of American high school students are in the “top 10%” of their graduating class.</p>

<p>Do you think I could just attribute these phenomena to rounding error?</p>

6

<p>I think colleges can determine whether or not your high school is competitive or not based on national data and past applicants</p>

7

<p>In my case, I used to consider my high school competitive because there is a magnet IB program that awards more IB Diplomas than any other school in my [insanely large] school district, as well as many students taking APs. Now my school has been rezoned, with many AP students transferring - now with half my school being bused (sp?) from inner city, I wouldn’t consider it as competitive.</p>

<p>I think your school’s rank has little to do with if it is “competitive” - the percentage of students taking challenging courses makes it competitive, because this is what affects your rank. </p>

<p>i.e. Your low grades at a tough school (one with no grade inflation) can be contextualized with a high class rank.</p>

<p>But a student who comes from a magnet school that draws students who take mostly weighted courses is what I consider a competitive school - a person with a B average taking AP courses could be in the bottom 50%.</p>

<p>– But a more practical answer is that there’s a school info/stats sheet that sometimes lists the courses offered, the awards the school has one, etc. that may come with your transcript. And this can be used to determine if you went to a well-performing school.</p>

8

<p>Looking at your school’s average SAT scores can give you an idea of how competitive it is. I know a nearby public school whose average SAT scores are roughly 540-560 on each of the sections. That may not sound like much, but for an average (i.e. counting both smart and not-so-smart students) it’s very competitive.</p>

<p>And like AlinaBond said, if you find yourself having around a 4.0 GPA but are far from cracking the top 10%, then you know your school’s competitive.</p>

9

<p>Ok so here’s the situation at my school, and I’d appreciate if people told me if this was “competitive” or not:</p>

<p>Our school offers about 20 APs as classes (you can take up to 26 though) but your schedule limits it to at most, 6 per year, although scheduling problems occur, or so I’ve heard. So, your limit is 5 per year. Additionally, most people can’t even take APs sophomore year (unless you waivered and somehow the board approved it, which only happened to 3 people that I know of). Each grade has 700-750 people and our school doesn’t rank, but according to the GPA information that I’ve heard, weighted GPA above 4.0 is kind of common. Personally, I have a weighted GPA of around 4.3-4.4 and I’m probably in the lower part of the top 70 students or so (top 10%). The average number of honors/APs taken by a person is about 2-3 per year, and at least 50 people each year take 5 APs junior year and then again in senior year. </p>

<p>Compared with other schools in our county, we have the fastest math program (our school has pre-calc, academic and honors, as a sophomore class because you are allowed to skip pre-algebra in middle school). People take AP Calc AB or BC after Pre-Calc Honors and then we’re able to take Calc 3 as seniors through the local community college. In extra-curricular things we also rank pretty well, among the best in the state for certain things, and sometimes we make it to nationals for others. </p>

<p>As for the people who get into Ivy Leagues/Top Tier schools, from last year there were maybe 15-20 acceptances to Ivies, including Harvard/Yale/Princeton. Then there were people who got into and went to places like UChicago/Duke/Northwestern/Berkeley/Carnegie Mellon/etc… and according to my counselor, this is also a very average turn out for our school. </p>

<p>When I look at US News & World Report it doesn’t even have my school being mentioned, not even as an honorable mention. It feels like my school is competitive internally, but then I come here on CC and everyone uses having a competitive high school as an excuse for low GPA… but like I said in our school theres a lot of GPAs that are high, and then there’s a lot of GPAs that are low, which makes the average fairly… well, average. </p>

<p>Would you consider my school competitive from this? Is there anything else I’m missing?</p>

10

<p>Yes, it seems like your school is quite competitive.</p>

11

<p>Definitely sounds competitive. That’s not necessarily an admissions boost, though, because you’ll have lots of people from your school applying to top schools, and adcoms tend to compare those applications. You have to stick out both in the overall applicant pool and in the applicant pool from your school. While it’s not impossible for all applicants from a particular high school to be admitted to a top school, it’s quite rare.</p>

12

<p>My D’s HS: average ACT 31. 36 ACTs 2%. 4.0 GPAs 2%. NMFs 14%. HYPSM admits 6%. State flagship, 85% apply, 96% of those admitted. 4-year college admits 100%. Complete math through calculus, 98%. Intel Schools of Distinction award winner. Oh, and no AP courses. </p>

<p>Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using CC App</p>

13

<p>Judging competitiveness by acceptance to Ivies (etc) is a poor measure because in states with strong flagships, many top students simply choose the flagship and aren’t interested in the Ivies. It’s a very east coast centric measure of competitiveness.</p>

14

<p>I think the best way to measure it is through the API score system, greatschools.org gives you scores and compares different surrounding high schools!</p>

<p>Chance me pleaseeee!
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/1190750-please-chance-me-ucs.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/1190750-please-chance-me-ucs.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;