Does going to an underrepresented school help admission chances?

<p>I don't honestly know how to phrase this, so I just used the best wording that I could.</p>

<p>When applying to a college, does it help to not have many students from your school be admitted somewhere? For example, some schools I'm looking at have never admitted students from my high school, while for others, it has been a few years since they have. Conversely, would having had students from my high school accepted last year hurt my chances at all?</p>

<p>I’ve never heard of something like this, but it is possible. If a college had students from your high school attend, they may look at those students’ academic performance and factor it into their decision. However, if they do that I’m sure it would hardly make any impact on their decision of whether or not to accept you.</p>

<p>I highly doubt it.</p>

<p>The state your school is in might make a small different, but most colleges make it clear that one person’s admission is completely independent of the admission (or rejection!) of other students in the high school. As for whether a school has never admitted a student, keep in mind that there are 35,000+ secondary schools in this country and each school only has a small fraction of that number to admit into their freshman class. As a result, tens of thousands of high schools go “underrepresented” each year - so it is really not anything uncommon or noteworthy.</p>

<p>So applying to a university that hasn’t admitted students in recent past from your school certainly won’t harm you in any way concerning admissions, but I don’t imagine it would really help you either.</p>

<p>Okay, that’s what I had thought. I have seen people in chance threads mentioning that it has been years since someone from their school had been admitted somewhere, so I thought that I should ask.</p>

<p>i don’t think it would have much affect at all either</p>

<p>It should have minimal effect to none. It’s a probability game. The only situation where it might affect things is if the college you are applying to had a specific issue with your school, i.e. grading, rigor, ethical issues, etc. then they might put a specific flag in your file. But that is extremely unlikely.</p>