My daughter has a really good resume but she also has a couple of uber-motivated schoolmates with even better resumes. Is it true that many T50 colleges will compare applications from the same high school? What impact would it have if her stats, GPA, EC’s, awards, etc. weren’t quite as good as her two schoolmates, but really good otherwise? Is there a limit on the number of students a college will take from a high school? Would a very good resume be hurt by two great resumes from the same high school?
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Yes. Students are reviewed in the context of their HS and compared to their classmates. In terms of numbers that a school will take, that depends on the college. You can ask the school guidance counselor about the historical trends.
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Are you asking if your child’s application will be reviewed side by side with others from their high school…and you are worried that others have better applications?
If so, I don’t believe this is done. Your kid’s application will be viewed as an individual application. I don’t think most colleges line up applications from one high school and compare them.
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Yes, her application will be considered in the context of other applicants and students from her school, both current and historical.
It certainly isn’t the only factor, and the fact that there are higher achieving students likely won’t eliminate her from consideration.
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No. There is no min/max/quota per HS.
That said, the AO will be well-versed on other applicants from the same HS.
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IMO, Other factors, at least in past cycles, are legacy, ED, full pay, diversity, and recruited athlete. So if the classmates also have any of these attributes, then they could be selected by a T50 ahead of your daughter.
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Others have covered the issue well, but I would just emphasize the following point.
The scenario in which Applicant A from High School would normally have gotten into College, but because in that particular year Applicant B from High School also applied, Applicant A did not get admitted . . . is almost never going to happen. For a lot of reasons.
First, it makes no sense for colleges to have quotas or such.
Second, usually there is going to be one or more Applicant Bs every year. Like, unless you are clearly the top student at your HS in every way (in which case this is a non-issue, as you are everyone else’s dreaded Applicant B), there are going to be some other students who have “better” qualifications in some way. And there is a good chance some of them will apply to the same colleges. But as long as everyone is being sensible with their college lists, everyone can end up somewhere they are excited about. And you never really know who will end up where–in high schools with a lot of highly selective college placements, there are “surprises” every year.
But that leads to the third important observation–even if you get lucky some year and there is no such Applicant B from your high school applying to your favorite college, there almost surely will be one in the next high school over. And that regional reader looking at your application will see that Applicant B too.
So seriously, this isn’t worth worrying over. There are very likely going to be other great applicants at your HS. There will very likely be other great applicants at other high schools nearby. But these colleges have more than one admission slot, so don’t worry about that. Just identify a reasonable range of colleges where you fit the best, and submit your best applications, and it will work out.
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Colleges look at several factors when evaluating students from a given high school. First, as mentioned in the OP post, they compare applicants from the same HS to each other. Schools try to diversify geographically and by feeder school so there is competition between students at a feeder HS for admission to a given college. They also evaluate students based on the available resources of the school (if the school offers 12 AP classes but the student only took two, this student will be evaluated differently from one who took three APs at a HS that only offered four). Second, they look at how accepted students from that HS performed in the past. Third, they look at the yield rate of the HS. If students from a highly ranked HS in the northeast all want to go to Ivies and use top LACs as safeties (if there is such a thing as a safety today), Williams and Amherst will get wise and not accept qualified students from the HS who likely will not matriculate.
As AOs try to build classes, there are a myriad of factors applicants cannot control. Did they accept too many students from your HS last year? Are they trying to get more kids from the Midwest? Does the basketball team need a point guard? Are they trying to expand a given academic department? If you have a strong guidance counselor, they may help you game the system and find schools that would be particularly interested in you. For example, a strong regional school in PA might be trying to build a national reputation and they are trying to attract students from other states; good news for a kid in FL, but a bummer for a kid from Philly.
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Applications from one region are viewed together, and there is generally a goal forhow many students from each region will attend. It is likely that whoever reads your D’s application will also be seeing the other ones from your high school. There are not “quotas” for schools, but clearly, no school wants 20% of its class from one high school.
Remember that the student ranked #1 at a school is no more attractive than #5, and the application will be viewed on its own merits. If these other students are, in your mind, more impressive, they will need applications that convey that as well. AOs are viewing only the application, so packaging and presentation is important.
One more thought… This is one way ED keeps these student from competition head to head – if they have different college preferences, or if the others aren’t willing to ED but you are. I’m not pushing you in that direction, but for some, it’s a reasonable strategy.
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It’s probably impossible to know. Schools will say they don’t but families will say those same schools do. I read it on here.
Here’s the other thing- your student has no idea if others have better resumes. That’s an assumption kids make because they see kids in higher level classes or better grades - and that’s not all that makes a resume. At top schools, an evaluation of a student will likely be holistic. At my son’s HS, a student got into Princeton - wasn’t even in the top 25 of 600 - so you never know.
Also, why top 50 - what’s that matter? You think anyone cares that you went to Wisconsin, Florida, UC Irvine, Ohio State or Georgia (all top 50 US News) vs. Colorado or UMASS or Delaware or Oregon - because I’m sure in 99% of the time, they are not differentiating. Maybe some have special programs - like ASU or Michigan State are top rated in supply chain, etc. and companies put extra emphasis.
btw - you can also make that claim I did above with private schools. And in today’s “internet” world, companies are able to spread their wings even more. And if it’s grad school one is worried about, the where matters even less.
The whole thing is silly - most “smart” kids will end up at state flagships or close to home regionals - and now there’s a growing reliance, with the cost of school on chasing merit - and it’s why a school like an Alabama has more national merit scholars then any in America. And they ain’t sniffing the top 50.
Your daughter should control what she can and it sounds like she’s already doing great.
One last thing - I highly doubt they are all applying to the same schools. And while there may (or may not be) internal competition - the competition for seats at highly selective schools will be greater with kids she never knew existed.
Fair question - but I think this isn’t something that needs to be worried about at all.
Good luck.
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I note as an aside that although conceivably yield protection could happen sometimes, the top LACs are not very plausible candidates for that. This is a little old at this point, but LACs like Amherst, Wellesley, Swarthmore, Williams, Pomona, Middlebury, Wesleyan, and so on were quite high on Table 3:
The sort of poster child for possible yield protection is Tufts–so much so it is sometimes called Tufts Syndrome. That might be a bit overblown, in fact, but Tufts is down at 40, and it is at least plausible that is getting into the range Tufts might be frustrated about serving as backup to the over 20 East Coast schools above it–including many LACs.
As a final thought, yield protection is also only plausible if you get enough desirable applications you are confident will yield. This is plausible for a school in Boston like Tufts. But Rochester, say, down at 96, is TOO low for that to be plausible. Rochester is a great university, but I gather not a ton of people see it as their top choice for location. So Rochester really needs to just admit more students, then fight for them with things like merit aid. Yield protection almost surely would be suboptimal in a case like that.
Anyway, my point is I wouldn’t typically worry about yield protection leading to any sort of distortion of admissions from most high school and college combinations. The exception might be if truly a lot of people in your high school are all applying to a college in a popular location but not as a top choice. Absent that, I wouldn’t be concerned.
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As stated you are compared to your own school /region
The Aos know these schools well. This is their job. So all you can do is be the best you. Don’t worry about what others have done. It’s the complete package of the student.
Maybe the student that cured cancer also wrong a horrific essay and didn’t get great teacher recommendations??
Don’t assume your child isn’t competitive with their peers. Again, you do you and let others worry about themselves. There are colleges for every student out there so apply widely to schools that she would enjoy going to even if their 5th on the list. If not, don’t list them.
Good Luck.
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Niceunparticularman, I was referring to the situation with my NY HS in the 1980s, where 98% of students went to college and 15% went to Ivies. All the students who wanted to go to Yale or Harvard, also applied to Williams, Amherst, Colgate, Bowdoin, and a host of other strong LACs. The guidance counselors at my HS told the kids who really wanted to attend a top LAC - say, Williams - to make that clear in their essays, interviews, etc. Otherwise, some of these LACs would not accept qualified students from my HS because the yield rate was so low.
I realize that we live in a slightly different world with more kids applying to college and acceptance rates in the single digits, but the dynamic still exists. If a college accepted 15 students from Anytown HS over the past three years, and only one matriculated then the AO learns to save those slots for students from different high schools who are more likely to enroll.
I know that for some big magnet school it is definitely done. DD had 25 kids applied to UMich out of 50 in the magnet. 1 was accepted in EA, 24 were deferred to RD. DD was eventually waitlisted and accepted, but attended GaTech. Only 1 kid that was accepted EA actually attended UMICH.
Same with GaTech. Almost the whole magnet applied. All were waitlisted. DD was the only legacy. She applied EA, was deferred to RD, then waitlisted. Came off waitlist 2 days before May 1st after email to admissions. That year 4 kids (the only year with so many kids) went to GaTech from her HS. She was the only girl. I think COVID melt+ legacy with an email to admissions that she got accepted to UMICH and CMU (that both we could not afford) allowed her to come from WL.
Next year our friend’s son from similar magnet was too waitlisted at GaTech and UMich. That repeats year after year with many students in that program…If this is not the system, I do not know what is…
On the other hand, kids not from the above magnets and a bit “weaker” schools in the same school district seem to have a simpler way to get to top technical OOS schools…
This is kind of logical… If a college has 20 spots for kids in a given state (based on regional diversity) and most of strongest kids are sitting in 2 magnets, you cannot draw only from those 2 magnets… So “weaker” kids from other schools have a better chance.
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When I taught in a competitive private school, the college counselors would make sure that highly similar students had different “target” schools to apply to. In the public school district, the top kids from each class usually know each other (from various competitions) and can figure out a way to distinguish themselves from the others.
The class of 2023 was the first time we actually witnessed one student (A) being waitlisted almost everywhere while another student (B, same ethnicity and similar family income) with almost identical stats was accepted in at least 4 schools A was waitlisted. The differences include that B was NMSF while A missed by 1 point, B holds a state championship in one EC, A was the school math club president, B had a private admission consultant working with them, and B applied to 20 schools. From these two samples, the class or 2024 students came to various conclusions - do shotgun, hire a consultant, win state competition, avoid schools your “rivals” apply to, etc. However, unless some tragic events happen in their lives, I’m certain that 10 years from now both A and B are going to be exemplary contributors to our society, maybe in different ways but neither would be “better” than the other.
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This was our experience as well.
"From these two samples, the class or 2024 students came to various conclusions - do shotgun, hire a consultant, win state competition, avoid schools your “rivals” apply to, etc. "
Or B may have represented themselves better on paper. I am always leary of drawing conclusions without the facts – nobody actual saw both applications, and that is how the AOs made their decision. With that said, that may have been the value added by the consultant. And the consultant may have understood better the serendipity of the process and suggested more applications (rather than shotgunning). I
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Likely so, and quite possibly the direct result of hiring a private consultant…
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And I realize you essentially stated the same, so I think my emphasis of the point really stems from my own curiosity about the value added by private consultants. We never used one, but we did look into it - way out of our price range, which made me wonder: are they worth it? Maybe they really are.
if it is not a lottery school then I would not worry so much. Make sure and ED to a school that you like and be prepared to pay what they are asking for.
This is essentially the strategy most college counselors recommend around us. Or, you can apply to a school where this madness and shenanigans are unnecessary.
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