Why do so many members add that they go to a ‘competitive’ public high school when giving their stats? Define competitive, please. It sounds like their grades were lower because they had to compete against other very smart students…but,I feel like grades are earned, not awarded, so it’s confusing to me.
Or does’competitive’ mean how colleges view the school? Like in “my high school competes for student placement at the best colleges”? It just seems that members throw it out there when their GPA isn’t that high, almost as an excuse. I feel like my S doesn’t go to a competitive school, but there is a level of students that do go on to the best schools. This year we had students go on to MIT and UPenn to name a few, even though we are in a ho-hum working/middle class district.
Because it makes them sound even smarter!
It’s the latter where the school has a track record of sending kids to highly selective and elite schools. Generally that means there is a large percentage of kids taking and passing many AP classes, a culture geared towards high academic achievement, etc. It also implies the school has the rigor most elite schools are looking for in their admits. That said, you can’t control what your school does. If it only has 3 AP classes, so be it ( as long as you take them and do well you are demonstrating rigor at the highest level for your school).
How does this all relate to college admissions? Hard to say. S attend a small, relatively new, public charter. Head and shoulders better academics than our regular local options (only school in our area to be ranked “A” 6 yrs in a row where the regular publics are stuck in the “C” level - very sad!). However, this charter had / has no relationship with admission officers outside of FL. To attend info sessions, S would have to go to the higher end privates who would host all the elites on their campus. They seemed to have a pipeline and tradition of sending kids to Ivies, Duke, Vandy, Stanford each yr. They have become a known commodity to these top schools. They have a track record of sending successful kids who do well and graduate on time. That’s very important to elite schools. Not having that, I feel, was a disadvantage to S regarding super elite admissions. Didn’t seem to hurt him with the next rung down as he got many offers at that next level. Of course, if he upped his test scores by 50 points who knows…
There is no clear definition for competitive high school. Regional AOs know which high schools are competitive. In general, those schools have a large number of high stats kids. A large number of students are in AP classes and a large number of students are NM Semifinalists/Finalist. Those schools tend to be in states where National Merit PSAT Cutoff Scores are higher and still a large number of students make it into the list. As an example, our school district has close to 30 NM Finalist and close to 40 finished multi-variable calculus in high school last year. While we had more than 15 known Ivy acceptances last year, one of our neighboring districts only had 3 NM Finalist but one kid from that district got into Yale. It is much more difficult to stand out in highly competitive high schools. You might have a better chance to stand out in a less competitive district. BTW, at least in our area, the houses in highly competitive districts are much more expensive than those houses in less competitive districts.
To me, it’s a school where it’s very difficult to be in the top 25%ish of your class, and one that has a high average SAT/ACT / offers the most rigorous classes available. (From the overall pool of college applicants…not just competitive for the area in which you live.)
Schools like Stuyvesant, TJ, Hunter, Boston Latin, among others have roughly a 30-33 ACT average in a graduating class. Public schools like that would be the most competitive and it would go down from there.
Agreed there is no clear definition for competitive public high schools, but AOs know the deal and if they don’t, the High School’s Profile typically shows key data points, such as class offerings, weighting of honors and AP classes, NMSF, etc. Many of these high schools tend to also be in affluent suburban areas.
At one high school in my area, with about 800 -1,000 kids/class, the average annual ACT score is 28. Grades are certainly earned, but curved in many classes. The competitive nature of these schools is also the primary reason the trend is to not report class rank, as students in the top 50% of these classes might easily be in the top 10% of many other public schools.
I dislike it when HS students mention how special their HS is in this way. They still need the high stats. If their HS is so good they should have tippy top tests scores and also be taking advantage of the offerings- and doing well in them. Their ability to handle the college’s work is no different than those who have more intelligence at the other 99% of HS’s.
My rant.
My Ds HS is the final stop for kids coming through a city wide test in program. It’s tough to get into…2% cognitive scores and a bunch of other criteria. As a result you have a ton of valedictorians, National merit scholars and kids with 12 AP classes or more and a 4.0 unweighted and close to perfect test scores-not even breaching the top ten percent of graduating class.
When my children were in school, about 90% of the kids in our city’s public schools who went to highly selective colleges came from two out of the 30 or so high schools the district had then, and if you included the honors program at a third high school it would have been 99%. (Now there are 37 high schools, and another 30 charters, and the wealth is spread around a little more. But only a little.) Being in the top 5% of your class at one of those 2-3 schools meant that you were probably competitive for admissions anywhere. Being the valedictorian of your class at any of the others meant that you were likely to be going to four-year college somewhere, but not that you were necessarily a candidate for one of the 40-50 most selective colleges.
It was similar with suburban schools, and with privates. Some schools were more rigorous – and culturally more oriented towards high-prestige colleges – than others. There was a wide range. I think that’s still true, although it, too, has softened in the past decade.
So, like it or not, if you were to do something like “chancing” a student who was not obviously a superhero, you would definitely take into account which high school the student attended.
^ very true. The valedictorian at D’s HS school would be a bit better than average at the STEM Magnet school down the street, or my S’ public Charter (college prep type).
I echo what the previous posters say about competitive Public High Schools. It is not only a statistical measurement, but also a culture within the school itself. It literally says in our student handbook that if you want to be Valedictorian you will have to take 15-16 AP classes and you will have to have straight A’s. This is the culture of the school - if you are the type of student who can take at least 10 AP’s classes, the GC’s will do just about anything to help you. If you are a regular student, they honestly don’t care. They switched our Freshman Orientation model from “don’t do drugs or drink alcohol” to “Mental Health”. I think that it says a lot about the pressures students feel in this high school. Being in a “competitive” high school is not necessarily a plus and it doesn’t mean that students who are from less competitive schools will do “worse” in college or the college application process. But some schools are more rigorous than others.
There really are competitive public high schools. These are typically found in suburban middle to upper class areas. The schools tend to be large and the competition vast. It is usually difficult just to get into honors and A.P. classes and grading is fierce. In my son’s public, competitive high school the math department actually weeds kids out of the college track! It is a challenge just to stay in the basic sequence to prepare you for four year college. I was shocked when I realized this. My area has prestigious private schools but the top 5 public high schools in the area are much harder to get a strong GPA and rank at. I have family members are smaller, lower ranked public high school and it is so much easier at those schools to get high grades and the classes you might want to take. It’s shocking.
It’s annoying… sorta like you never meet a “gifted child” anymore. They are all “profoundly gifted.” Like every single one. I don’t come across kids who aren’t in “competitive high schools” or who aren’t in “elite sports”… you get where I’m going.
That’s not to say that there aren’t some schools that are more competitive than others or that have higher expectations or draw from a more academically focused student base. There most certainly are. However, it’s also become grossly over-used and subject to a lot of limited perspective.
That seems to be “competitive” in the worst way, where desired and appropriate courses are artificially put into a shortage so that one has to compete for what is normally offered to all interested students meeting base prerequisite qualifications.
Is the school a specialized pre-health school that does this to give students a taste of the competitive environments that they will see if they do pre-med or pre-nursing in college?
My daughter’s middle school was like that as well. They didn’t have the resources to offer more than one advanced class in any subject. She was fortunate to make the cut but for the kids who were #31 on the list, it totally sucked. And this was a big school, over 1000 students, just very limited resources.
My kids’ high school (large, public, diverse CA high school) is definitely not “competitive.” My S18 graduated this year in the top 3%, 4.5 weighted GPA, 9 or so APs/Dual Enrollment and he was considered one of the top students. He was in the top 3%.
However, I believe that if he was attending one of the higher SES/less diverse schools in a neighboring district, he would have been perceived as a solid but not necessarily outstanding student. This is nothing that I considered when enrolling my kids in our local high school - I actually was really looking to expose them to a range of kids and backgrounds rather than isolate them in a bubble of people I feel are similar to me, but I do think that it helped my S18 in college admissions.
Fingers crossed that he’s up to task (I think he is - he’s a smart kid and a hard worker at school, but he’ll be at college with many students who share his stats but went to much more “competitive” high schools . . . .).
@turtletime you make me laugh! You are so right!
I say it about my kids’ high school. Not to brag, or to excuse bad grades, but to describe the environment. Colleges compare you to applicants from the same environment. 20% of graduates from our HS have a GPA 4.5 weighted or above. Average SAT 1280, average ACT 30.
My D19 would look like a superstar if she had come out of the HS in the rural town where she was born. But we moved. There are pros and cons to the heavy emphasis on academic challenge and perfection here, but it’s a fact that D has to compete on a different level in order to distinguish herself at a “competitive public school”. Note I did not say superior, just competitive.
@turtletime, as an aside, my kids play recreational sports coached by their parents and are not “gifted”, profoundly or otherwise.
I have come to understand that the reason my son’s school weeds students out of the math department and makes it exceedingly difficult to get into honors and AP classes is not due to funding but it is to keep their school ranking high. If they weed students out, they have only the top scores which is what plays into their rankings. It makes them look super successful because they are only skimming off the very top for the state exams. I’ve also come to understand that for everyone else who doesn’t make it into this top group, the school focuses on graduation rate. For the students who don’t make it into the “4 year college bound group”, the school can then boast a high graduation rate which is among the highest in the state. I’ve come to realize that for the students who get “skimmed off” the top, the grading is quite brutal making it nearly impossible to move up into that higher track. The teachers also don’t care if they slam the students with grades because their goal is passing not good grades. It is all really quite remarkable and it took me a while to figure this out. The math department is especially difficult. They have made the assessments so difficult that it is not uncommon after the first marking period for parents to receive calls that their child is being moved into a 2 year course (i.e. a geometry class that takes two years to complete instead of one). Or if the child is on the lower end they will be told to move to the business department and take business math. It’s really quite shameful but I do believe a lot of this is a fallout of the common core math. The math is very difficult now and the school wants their scores rather than student’s college futures so they only keep those who can thrive at the common core math (which is filled with problems) in the college track. 1400 students in this school.