<p>Hi, people have been telling me that it works in your favor if no one from the past few years get into a school that you apply to. I think this is a bunch of baloney, but I can't find anything on the internet regarding this topic? Does anyone who has extensive knowledge on college admissions shoot down/verify this belief?</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>“I think this is a bunch of baloney” </p>
<p>Your baloney radar is right. To argue otherwise implies that the college feels beholden to your school – as if they have any leverage over their decisions. They don’t care about anyone at your HS having hurt feelings. The college will look at every applicant, each year, independent of history – to fill that year’s needs. Period.</p>
<p>^ Except for feeder schools…</p>
<p>“Feeder schools” has started to become an urban legend. T26E4 states it well that each "college will look at every applicant, each year, independent of history – to fill that year’s needs.</p>
<p>Some high schools produce a large number of high quality applicants every year. If a significant number of these high quality applicants consistently choose to apply to a particular selective university, then it may appear to be a feeder. Also, some high school GCs have close relationships with adcoms at a particular college and will encourage the best students to apply every year - even if they do not have any actual advantage with adcoms. This may also create the appearance of a feeder.</p>
<p>However, there are simply too many applicants from too many high schools to allow selective universities to make commitments to specific high schools.</p>
<p>No.</p>
<p>It helps if your HS has a pre-established reputation with said college’s or university’s admissions staff for generating well-prepared and well-rounded students. It also helps if your HS has a predetermined high yield rate for its accepted students actually enrolling at said college/university.</p>
<p>If you’re an ACT 36/A+ football player from a rural school in an under-represented state, then that likely makes you a geographic URM for many schools as the first applicant from your HS.</p>
<p>RML, I’m not buying it. For instance Lawrenceville’s matriculation results seem to be much better than their average stats warrant. [Lawrenceville</a> School Profile | Lawrenceville, New Jersey (NJ)](<a href=“http://www.boardingschoolreview.com/school_ov/school_id/378]Lawrenceville”>Lawrenceville School (2023 Profile) - Lawrenceville, NJ) I think the good old boy network still exists. To paraphrase Monty Python “It’s not dead yet”.</p>
<p>Not only is there no evidence to support the theory, in fact the very opposite may be true! While an individual applicant does the college game once in their life, the colleges and high schools are engaged in a long-term dance with each other. It’s a dance based on trust and mutual respect. If a college thinks that a given HS isn’t helping steer it’s fair share of good applicants to them, or, more importantly, thinks a HS isn’t helping enforce ED agreements, there is little they can do. Except for one thing. By flatly denying future applicants, they can send that HS a message.</p>
<p>So if you’re at a HS where nobody has gotten into a school you’re considering the past few years but get into peer schools, ask the GC if someone broke an ED agreement a few years back.</p>
<p>Nope. Doesn’t work that way.</p>
<p>It’s baloney!</p>
<p>Schools have a profile just like students. If students who look like matches to the school apply and get rejected year after year, it could be the school profile that’s holding them back.</p>
<p>I met a student in the top ten percent at her high school that got a little over 1300 on the SAT. That’s a good sign that the school has a low, low profile among colleges.</p>
<p>I actually feel bad for her because she failed out of college and doesn’t understand why. She clearly wasn’t academically prepared for college.</p>