<p>Hi!
I am currently a freshman at one of the best private schools in the south.
My school arranges for people from Ivies and other colleges to speak to the seniors who have questions about certain colleges. </p>
<p>I really want to go to an Ivy. My grades are decent but not exceptional. (I skipped 2 grades in math and my math grade really brings down my GPA) My school is highly competitive and I think I am probably in the top 20%.
Over 10% of the graduating class at my school gets accepted into an ivy.
I want to switch schools to a lesser known school (and hopefully be top of their class) but I don't think that they have as close of a relationship to Ivy leagues as my current school does. </p>
<p>If I do switch schools, will college admissions think I am taking the easy way out?
Is the relationship my current school has with colleges beneficial in any way? </p>
<p>I just am not sure if switching schools and being top of the class will help my chances at getting into an Ivy or staying at my current school. </p>
Yes. Some high schools are “feeder schools” for certain universities and not for others. Sometimes an Admissions Officer will have a close personal working-relationship with a high school’s guidance counselor that has developed over many years which helps the GC push for specific students every year. As Admissions is a highly subjective process, key relationships sometimes translate into more kids getting accepted from certain schools and not a lot from others. </p>
<p>“Over 10% of the graduating class at my school gets accepted into an ivy.”</p>
<p>You also said that you are in the top 20%. Those numbers do not work in your favor for getting into an ivy league. Switching to a lesser known school where it’s easier to be in the top can only help if you somehow manage to be valedictorian or salutatorian. </p>
<p>“I just am not sure if switching schools and being top of the class will help my chances at getting into an Ivy or staying at my current school.”</p>
<p>If you’re not sure, then don’t switch yet. Try and boost your grades; running away is not the solution. The solution is to improve. You’re only a freshman. It’s entirely possible to move from the top 20% to the top 10%. </p>
<p>If you are in a HS that gets 10% of it’s class accepted into Ivies, that’s a HUGE number. Most schools don’t get one student in the entire class into an Ivy, let alone 10% of the class. Even our HS, which is one of the top public HS in the country with open enrollment (i.e. everyone in the district goes there), is lucky to get 5% in a given year. So going there is a tremendous advantage.</p>
<p>Also, the 10% who do get in are not necessarily only the top 10%. Some of those kids in the top 10% might choose to go to lesser schools like Stanford, Amherst, Williams, Chicago, Duke, MIT, Middlebury, CalTech, etc. So there’s hope for even those in the 10 to 20% tier.</p>
<p>intellectual vitality - you want your high school life to be built around strategy to get into colleges that belong to a certain football league instead of deciding to go after what will give you the best education and make you the best student. People like that aren’t very interesting and colleges may notice.</p>
<p>brand name monger - you are not looking for fit or what the colleges are all about, if it just happens to be in a certain football league it’s fine for you. Colleges can pick up on this too.</p>
<p>You may or may not get into an Ivy from where you are. But prep schools like yours also do very well in placement for their next tier of students. Something that the other school may not do as well. You didn’t say much about it.</p>
If you go through the “Common Data Set” of each ivy, as well as Stanford, Amherst, Williams, Chicago, Duke, MIT, Middlebury, CalTech, etc, and look at the C10 data for those schools, the vast majority of accepted students (85%+) are in the top 10% of their high school’s graduating class. So, while there’s hope for those students in the 10-20% tier, I think kids need to understand the true competitiveness of top-tier schools. IMHO: If you’re not in the top 10% of your high school’s graduating class, you should be sending the majority of your applications elsewhere.</p>
<p>@MrMom62 I would change up the wording there. Stanford, CalTech, MIT, Williams, Chicago, Duke, etc. are not “lesser schools”, they just aren’t part of the Ivy League. Also, 5% accepted to an Ivy is still huge, especially for a public school. My school likely only gets 2-3% despite being ranked as one of the top 100 high schools in the nation.</p>
<p>Ummm, “lesser schools” was sarcasm, which I thought was obvious.</p>
<p>Regarding the Top 10% figure for Ivies, the top private HS in our area has 20% of their students on average becoming National Merit Semi-Finalists year after year. (It’s more of a function of who goes there, not what they do - but still, it’s an amazing number.) I can guarantee you that even if they aren’t Top 10%, each and every one of those 20 kids is qualified for an Ivy, and most of them do make it or to the equivalent non-Ivy. There are times when “Top 10%” is meaningless, which is why so many top HS don’t rank.</p>
<p>Last year, one quarter of our graduating class made it into Ivy-level schools and our #1 college of matriculation (technically it was tied) was Harvard. This year, it is Penn so far (with 4 ED acceptances in a class of 73). Then, there are people like me who are in that top quarter (right around the 90th percentile), but I may or may not go to an “elite” school, as I may take a NMF scholarship (but I may go to an Ivy or Ivy-level school).</p>
<p>I definitely think it’s easier to get into an ivy-level school if you’re valedictorian (and have some decent ECs and scores), even if you’re at the worst high school in the country. After all, colleges “look at you in the context of your school,” as many admissions officers say during information sessions. If you’re already valedictorian, then what more can you possibly be “in the context of your school”?</p>
<p>For what it’s worth, my kids attend a tough public school in an urban area…by tough, I mean 70% on some sort of lunch aid and widely varying incomes. Even so, about 10% are getting into Ivys and 2nd level (georgetown, stanford) every year…I will say, though, that their scores, ECs are about the same level as the private schools around us…its just that only, say, 25% of them are aiming for this as opposed to 60% at higher income schools. …but within those groups, competition is fierce. </p>
<p>^^Horrible advice. There are tons of schools in this country where being valedictorian means little and they don’t go to an Ivy or anywhere close. I can guarantee you that the top AA baseball team in this country is nowhere near as good as the worst team to make the MLB playoffs, and they’re “only” the tenth best team in the majors (Top 33%). </p>
<p>Colleges look at your coursework in the context of your school, but a student who has 8 APs out of 20 still is going to have an advantage over a student who took 2 out of 2 on offer. Colleges don’t say it, but absolute rigor does count for something, which is why some schools can churn out 15 Ivy admits a year, whereas some schools are lucky to get one every five years, if that.</p>