I’m just wondering if my high school just kind of sucks. It’s not a small high school, its about 400 per class and it’s the only high school in my semi-rural town on the outskirts of San Diego County. The only reason I ask that is because it seems like every other high school has at least a handful of students that it sends to top schools every year. My high school on the other hand has not sent a student to an ivy league since 2012. Most of the time when a student gets into a top 20-top 30 school it is for athletics rather than academics. The valedictorian of the graduating class this year is going to community college and almost everybody at my school does horrible on the SAT or ACT. (If you want perspective, I got an 1870 and people think that’s a great score.) I can count on one hand how many people scored higher than me. I only know of one person in our class who scored above 2000. I know several people in the top 10 of my class who got in the 1500’s on the SAT (Out of 2400) and the #1 class rank in my class only got an 1830. From the Class of 2015, the best ranked schools that will be attended from that class are NYU and UCSD. Only about 25-30 people are even going to a four year. This town is mostly middle class so money isn’t the main issue, but I was talking to my cousin that goes to High School in Irvine and she said that over 40 students at her school this year were National Merit Scholar Semifinalists. I’m not sure anybody at my school in the last several years has been a National Merit Scholar Semifinalist (And they do offer the PSAT at my school during the school day, so its not because of that.)
Basically what I am asking is are a lot of high schools like mine or does my high school just suck? It’s not a poor community, not a rich one either but definitely not poor. Why do you think my school is the way it is?
Your high school is average. Because believe it or not, most people don’t go to “top public school in the state/region/country” and “crazy competitive”. Thos website just gives you a warped perception of academic average.
As others have said, the SAT scores are not good. The average is slightly over 1500, but assuming it is 1500 works. A score of 1800 would be 1 standard deviation above average. That means of the entire population of students that take the test, about 16% score an 1800 or better. Your 1870 is a good score in a vacuum - you did better than about 84% of all people taking the test. But if only 5 or so out of 400 did better than you, your high school is probably below the population average.
Well a lot of these people are getting high 1500’s (like 1560-1590) so they are slightly above average but yeah that’s what I thought. I’m trying to get my SAT up for when I retake in October. But I’m 29th in my class (I didn’t really start trying until Sophomore year, had I tried freshman year I probably would be like top 10-15, but my UC GPA is 4.18 capped and 4.36 uncapped though so that’s what matters considering I want to go to a UC School.)
But yeah my friend is 3rd in our class and she got a 2080 and that is the highest score I know of by far. Other than that the only scores I know of higher than mine are 1940, 1890, 1880. One of my friends who is ranked 14th in our class has taken the SAT 6 times and the highest score he has gotten is 1520, the first time he took it he got 1440. I think that is honestly the reason that hardly anybody from my school goes to a good college because the SAT scores suck so bad. Do you guys think the reason the scores suck so bad is because of the students, the teachers, the community or what?
Some schools lack good ACT/SAT prep, if you don’t have prep classes or the curriculum is behind for the sections. Is it a public school? Is there a nearby good private school? Some schools just don’t send to Ivies. My school has a lot of smart people, but many of them only look to local schools and don’t even apply to good schools
It is a public school. There are private schools in San Diego County that are considered to be pretty good (Francis Parker, La Jolla Country Day, Bishops) but the town I live in is a good 45 minutes to an hour away from those schools. Most families probably wouldn’t be willing to pay for private school for there kids (All three cost like over $20,000 a year to attend) but a few parents do.
The school offers an SAT/ACT prep class but I personally just prepped myself because I figured the prep class can’t be that good considering how bad everybody does on the SAT/ACT at my school.
@RHSclassof16 my school doesn’t offer any SAT or ACT prep, and we’re similar to you with most people achieving the average. The top 10 usually do way better though. We usually send one or two to Ivies. This year, we had three students get accepted to Ivies (which is a huge deal-Yale, Princeton and Columbia). Only one chose to attend the Ivy they were accepted to (Princeton). The other students chose Duke and Washington and Lee. And one football player was recruited by Stanford (and twenty other schools) and chose there.
It is literally impossible that every high school sends multiple people to Ivy Leagues each year - look up how many high schools there are (make sure private schools are included), and compare that with the number of people enrolled in a given year at all of the Ivy Leagues combined.
Chase’s second choice was law, but unfortunately he inherited his mother’s short temper and sharp tongue, so I would probably be bailing him out if jail every other day for contempt .
The students at your school are preselected based on socioeconomic class because of the geographic area it draws on.
If there are private schools present, they will further draw off the motivated and good students leaving the publics with an even poorer cross section.
It sounds average. My high school was like this.
There’s no reason to worry about it. Colleges want you to do the best you can in your own circumstances, not other people’s. If you want higher test scores, look for prep books in the library.
That’s average! Compared to the schools here, though, it may seem bad.
At my high school (government funded public), only 50% of students take the SAT, average score is about 1250. Only about 3% of students are in APs. It’s in a poor town, although it’s not very dangerous. This is what I’d consider a bad school!