I have a 3.8 UW GPA, a 1500 SAT, and will have taken 13 APs total by the end of high school. The school I attend is one of the highest-ranked high schools in the US, so I’d be ranked around 90 out of 250 students. My dream school is USC. However, other people from my school will also apply to USC and many of them qualified for National Merit, have a 4.0 GPA and 1550+ SAT scores. Do I pretty much have no chance at USC (or any T20 for that matter) because of the excessive amount of applicants from the same school that have better grades and ecs than me?
I think my ecs are good (I didn’t cure cancer or anything), but a lot of people at my school have better ecs.
Talk to your guidance counselor. He/she will have the best idea of what type of academic stats are needed for USC (or other colleges). If your HS has Naviance that would be an excellent tool to use as well.
In general I’d advise you to stay away from the idea of a “dream college” and instead spend the time and energy to craft a well-balanced college application list which includes reach, match, and safety schools that appear affordable (run net price calculator if needed) and that you would be excited to attend. There are tons of amazing colleges and universities out there.
^^I agree wholeheartedly. A school as highly-rated as yours will likely have a college counseling department far better than CC. What they have to say about your chances will be much more accurate. But in general, the rigor of your school will be taken into consideration, and a university that would only take the top 10 students at one school may consider taking the top 50 at another (an exaggeration but still).
There’s 50,000 high schools in the US. Since rankings are entirely subjective, universities don’t have the time to compare high schools. They’re going to look at your grades and SAT scores, which are excellent, by the way. USC is a hyper-competitive school, and your chances are as competitive as any applicant they get. Just be sure you apply to a variety of schools.
Respectfully disagree with the above. Admissions officers do take the applicant’s HS into account in the admissions process. Most colleges have admissions officers cover certain regions of the country so they do become familiar with a number of the secondary schools in their area. In addition each HS transcript comes with a school profile attached which gives admissions officers a snapshot of the applicant’s HS (things like average SAT/ACT scores, courses offered, % going to 4 year colleges etc.)
You are competing against your classmates at the most elite HS when you apply to colleges. At most colleges, a regional admissions officer does the first read of all the apps from your HS and region, so they’ll have a very clear idea where you stack up.
That doesn’t mean that you won’t have a shot at some highly ranked schools.
Naviance is probably your best guide to chances applying from an elite public HS.
Remember that it is a guide, not a guarantee. If your stats put you in a field of green, you can feel fairly confident. In the middle of a red plot, you can pretty much forget about it. In a mix? You’ve got a shot, but apply widely.
If your school is a private, the guidance department should be the more valuable resource.
You’re actually competing against all applicants to a college. If one HS had an outlier of 5 students with 1600 SAT and 4 of them had a 4.0 GPA and the other had a 3.95, a college would not toss the 3.95 for not stacking up.
But yes, they take class ranking, HS rigor/reputation, course rigor, and GPA into account - It matters (most data on an application matters - I’m surprised how often this question comes up).
What the combination would tell me is that there is grade inflation at your HS - my D had a 3.8 and was just outside the top 10 percent (inside the top 11 percent).
This would negatively impact your application. If the schools is knows for a strong curriculum and student body, that would positively impact your application, as would course rigor (assuming quality AP courses) and SAT.
Historic data from your school - GC or Naviance - would better tell you how Adcoms have balanced these factors in the past.
Top ranked HSs with a high concentration of stellar students almost never submit class rank, unless there are special state-level requirements/advantages, so I wouldn’t emphasize portion of class with different class rank stats in the CDS or similar. USC’s CDS indicates that only 18% of matriculating students submitted rank. The CDS marks class rank as less influential than all other academic criteria and many non-academic criteria.
If your HS is in the USC area, USC AO’s are likely familiar with the school and will evaluate your transcript and GPA in the context of your HS. There may be different expectations for students from your HS than students who attend non-selective public HSs, with a far lower concentration of stellar students. If the HS in the USC area, you’ll also likely also have a large history of past applications in Naviance or similar, which you can review to get a rough estimate of admit rate for students from your HS with similar stats. Note that hooks may not be evident from Naviance and often relate to low stat acceptances.
I feel your pain. S20 goes to an elite test-in public STEM magnet that is consistently ranked the best public high school in the nation. Kids there are literally curing cancer. He is middle of the pack gradewise and SAT wise (but the average SAT is 1525, over 130 NMSFs). So dealing with this issue has been our life recently.
And here is reality. Any top tier college has a soft cap on the number of students they will take. We are VA, so William and Mary, UVA an VA Tech will take a lot more from our high school than other in state high schools. But still, not everyone is getting in. The cold, hard reality is schools have to create a diverse class and leave spots for top kids from other schools.
IDK exactly how the UCs work in this regard, and how generous they are with taking magnet students. UVA will get 200 applications from our school and take half, so the odds are still good. If they are like the VA State Schools, Naviance is your friend. You can tell with 90% certainty whether you will get in, given your stats. But the bad news is yes, there is probably a soft quota.
Here’s the good news. There are a lot of excellent schools out there that love kids from the elite publics, want to get traction with students in these schools, and will accept you and give good merit aid in the hope that you will give them good word of mouth to future classes.
The key is to apply to a few schools where 150 of your classmates aren’t also applying. So, throw away the everyone is applying to MIT, Michigan and Ivys and certain UCs, so I will too template. Think outside the box. Take a look at Texas A&M, or U Wisconsin-Madison or UICU or GA Tech or Pitt or Ohio State or NC State or U South Carolina or Clemson or midwestern SLACs (my kid’s route). Where isn’t half your class applying? That’s a school that will be very interested in you.
And be careful about “dream schools”. Of course give your top choice a shot. But realize that any school could be the place where your research for a professor opens huge professional doors, you make wonderful friends, you have life changing experiences and you meet your spouse. If you go into it with a good attitude.
They make actually like you better, see you as a better fit and
more likely to attend.
It’s competitive across a broad array of schools. Have a good selection of schools you really like. When you have your results pick the best from your group that loves you back.
USC is great but there are imperfections too. No where and no thing is really ever perfect.