<p>Ok, so i've been doing crazy research on college admissions and i read somewhere that admissions will get a profile of the school and the district you go to and see the statistics. Is this true? My school is 35th out of 424 public schools in Washington State. Is this considered a good ranking? Am i at an advantage or disadvantage? The disctrict is 7th out of 216. I am truly not trying to brag here but i was just wondering if this can put a student at an advatage or disadvantage? Thanks.</p>
<p>Yes, it matters because schools will expect that you’ve taken more AP or IB courses than at lower ranked schools, gotten more involved in ECs and still performed well in class. Here’s a recent quote from an adcom at a top 20 LAC on this subject:</p>
<p>“Yes, we factor that in but it ends up being somewhat of a subjective judgment on our part tied into any objective factors we have. I would say our evaluation of high schools works on a sliding scale. Yes, there are high schools that we know that would be considered one of the top places in the country with all of their students going to college and have math classes beyond linear algebra all the way to the other extreme of a high school where there might be only nine students graduating and the top math course you can take is trigonometry…Were not expecting the applicant from the less comprehensive high school to utilize as many resources as the applicant who goes to the top of the line school. We try to make a judgment call on the basis of what students are offered in their high school and how they took advantage of that and how well they did, and that it is as a good of a measure as I can think of because not every student has exposure the same kind of challenges.”</p>