I go to a pretty competitive high school and my dream school is Wake Forest and am planning on applying there in the fall. There are about 4 or 5 other people in my graduating class of 170 that are also planning to apply to wake that have similar and maybe even a little better stats than me. all of us are qualified to get accepted. I was just wondering is there generally a cap to how many people from one school an relatively competitive out of state college will accept?
Any college will say that they have no min/max/quota. Believe or don’t believe.
That said, if WF traditionally accepts 2-3 per year from your HS, expecting 10 this year is unlikely.
Not sure about WF, but we are near Duke and I heard they have more like regional targets for certain areas that are prime feeders. For nearby areas, this may be a school district and/or some top private schools. For example, a school district has 3 high schools and they all together are considered one pool. I think there’s some flex but again, as @skieurope said, you’re not going to get huge variation.
Sometimes priorities change too. Duke used to take pretty significant numbers from a nearby private school. Then the policy seemed to change and their number of admits was cut in half and nearby public schools saw more kids accepted. Lot of upset parents (with connections) at the private school that year and I’m not sure if the policy change ‘stuck’ or not.
I think once you get farther away from a school the size of the pool increases – so for east coast colleges the intermountain west (AZ up through MT) might be considered one pool of students with rough admissions targets, for example. But then when you get out to CA where they see a lot of applicants, the geography for a pool narrows again.
Of course, you can’t control any of this so not worth worrying about. Put your best foot forward and apply to a set of colleges that includes safety and matches
Good luck!
Though simply one example, Lawrenceville sent 34 students to Princeton over a three year span.