<p>My high school isn't that great. It is considered the best in the county, but that isn't saying much. Our average SAT score is 1540 (math+verbal+writing) and I think the average for the county is around 1200. My school has the highest pregnancy rate in the county as well as the highest number of drug users. (My SAT score was a 2100 btw) My rank is pretty bad though, but only because of special circumstances, and I am still in the top 5%. I know that Ivies have "feeder" schools that provide brilliant students with excellent stats who excel in a more competitive environment, so will going to a worse school than these "elite" high schools help or hurt my chances of getting in? I honestly wish I went to a better school with a better environment (I won't say academically challenging, because some of the AP courses are notoriously difficult)...I just hope that I won't be seen as competitive enough for a school like Yale because of my background. But on the flip side, I keep wondering if I would ever feel "dumb" compared to people at Yale if I WERE accepted because of this.</p>
<p>the colleges admissions compare you to your district,
so if youre a 2100 SAT student in an area where the SAT score average is 1200, and if you are a giving, active person where pregnancy and druge use reigns freely, then you appeal strongly to yale's admissions committee</p>
<p>Academically, I don't think you'd feel dumb at any Ivy League school. I think you might have a harder time getting in "study mode" freshman year because the kids who took five AP or IB courses senior year are used to continuous studying and fairly carefully planning for social fun/study breaks, but once you got into the swing of things you would be fine.</p>
<p>I think that if you have good essays, recommendations, and extracurricular activities, that 2100 SAT score should let you get in, especially in the context of the county or school you came from.</p>
<p>Hey, I have a queation in similar context. I didnt' know that adcoms compare you to your district... How much do they look at this?</p>
<p>I come from a very similar school and I have the highest SAT scores in my school... but they AREN'T good by standards of the Ivies... but maybe they will look better considering the school I went to?</p>
<p>I'm very confused. Lol. But whatever happens will happen for the best in the long run. =)</p>
<p>not substantiated....but at my school students have slowly stopped
applying to Yale. My school (a Public) consistently sends a couple of students
to Harvard and MIT and quite a bunch to Dartmouth, Cornell and Brown
but for some "reason" has not had a single student make it to Yale
(legacy or not).</p>
<p>Our GC believes Yale prefers private to public schools in our particular
region.</p>
<p>I used to have Yale as one of my top three choices in my sophomore
year and even had them designated as recipients of my SAT IIs taken
then but have since sadly changed my mind given the repetitious nature
of the lack of admissions from my school. As a rising senior I am no longer
interested in spending my meager resources applying to right the odds.</p>
<p>d_rolla: Yale gets info from your GC: percentage of free lunch students, other data about average student performance, info about what's offered at your particular HS. A lot of info can be conveyed.</p>
<p>arwen15: you're looking at an extremely small sample. I'm an interviewer and I've interviewed 20 or so in the last 3 years. There have been two acceptances -- and I'm the HUGE exception in my area. It's extremely possible any given year that I could interview ten or more and have none admitted. The numbers are just that great. I wouldn't assume some "blackballing" by Yale towards your school. Maybe the recent applicants were just nudged by others who had just a little more of what Yale was looking for.</p>
<p>Good luck to all of you</p>
<p>T26E4 thanks for your post....raised a question for me though....</p>
<p>Does the same interviewer usually cover a particular School....this seems to
be true for MIT this year....how about for Yale in the last 5 years....?</p>
<p>"As a rising senior I am no longer interested in spending my meager resources applying to right the odds."</p>
<p>Seems silly to me. Maybe you don't have all the information. A very large number of students at Yale were the first graduate from their school to attend Yale in many years - sometimes the first ever. And a large proportion of students' parents didn't even graduate from college at all. </p>
<p>Yale is EXTREMELY selective -- it has more applicants per spot than any other top college in the country, and last year had the Ivy League record low admissions rate (i.e., the lowest admissions rate ever recorded, for any university) -- and the chance of a guidance counselor getting ****ed off because his/her recommendations went unheeded for a period of 5 years seem about as high to me as the chance that a student from the same school would get in for 5 years in a row. Bottom line is that you shouldn't let your guidance counselor's personal problems keep you from applying to the best undergraduate program in the U.S.</p>
<p>Bottom line is that you shouldn't let your guidance counselor's personal problems keep you from applying to the best undergraduate program in the U.S.</p>
<p>I thought this thread was about Yale. I didn't know it was about Princeton.</p>
<p>I am only kidding dont attack me.</p>
<p>Wow! A reply from PosterX :) <strong>wincing</strong> :)</p>
<p>...does the same interviewer cover a school. though ?.....</p>
<p>arwen: For Yale, it's just who ever is on hand to do the interview for a particular area. No one is pre-assigned certain schools usually. My area coordinator sends me kids from my general area but I've had them from all over as well. </p>
<p>Some volunteer groups may be thinly manned so one particular schools applicants go to one or two folks. It really depends on the situation on the ground.</p>
<p>You call that a not so great high school? </p>
<p>Take my school for instance. Bottom 10% in the state, 90 something percent minority population, maybe 6% or so goes on to a four year college every year, a significant minority on the free or reduced lunch program, and the fact that nobody has EVER applied to an Ivy League school. </p>
<p>People like you have such trivial dilemmas.</p>
<p>Yale should be EXTREMELY selective. However, when sports come into play, the standards seem to be lowered significantly. This year, there is a certain athlete who was recruited with a GPA of 2.0. Some of his high school classmates, who know him well, were really demoralized and outraged when they saw a student with those credentials get admitted.</p>
<p>So, if you are playing the right sport, the right year, I do not think that your "not so great high school" nor your academic credentials will necessarily prevent you from getting admitted.</p>
<p>Hmm... just on the same train of thought, does going to a crazy-competitive (public) school hurt you? My school has about 15-20 people get 2300+ SAT scores, with at least five of them getting perfect scores... so here, getting a score like 2100 would make you look pale in comparison. this is so confusing...</p>
<p>If you look at the numbers…most kids who were #1 in their high school get REJECTED. Also, most kids who were accepted were not #1. Taken together, what this means is that the top schools are looking for academic standouts, but they have to have something else as well. </p>
<p>If you are max-ing out academically at your school that’s great and it won’t count against you regardless of your school. 700’s and mostly A’s is max-ing out, but if your school’s average SATs are lower than the country’s then yours could be lower also. It doesn’t mean that you are beating out the kid next to you for a better grade. But then what else are you offering? It could be anything, but must be demonstrable with awards, championships or outside praise of some kind. Almost anything that you are quietly doing in your basement won’t count. It has to be out there for the colleges to see.</p>
<p>^ or more accurately, it doesn’t matter if you don’t tell the colleges about it. National awards are definitely good, but a number of the “compelling” things on my app weren’t really quantifiable, they’re what I used my essays for.</p>
<p>Arwen, within my counselor’s memory (6-7 years) no one from my HS got into Yale, until I did, last year, no one had gotten into UPenn for a number of years too(and I’m from PA for crying out loud) until one person did my Junior year, my senior year they took 3, the “trend” can reverse…don’t sweat it, if you want to go to Yale, you have to apply.</p>