Does Your High School Matter?

Hi, Do colleges actually care about where you went to high school? If you went to a more prestigious school do colleges take this into account when they review your application? If it does, does it matter a lot?
Thanks a lot

Each HS sends a school profile along with each transcript so the applicant is reviewed in the context of the HS he/she attended.

What matters most is how you do in relation to your peers at your own high school. Taking the hardest courses available at your high school, and graduating among the top 5% at your high school are important to colleges, honors programs and scholarship committees.

The way your high school makes a difference is in what courses, clubs and resources you have access to, and how many admissions reps visit your school personally (which is nice if you meet them, but not a necessity for getting admitted). For example, my daughter attended a public magnet high school for that offered 22 Advanced Placement courses. That made a difference in her experience and achievements, and subsequently the strength of her application to universities. The high school was also visited by more than 40 college admissions reps, so she could meet those from some of her target universities. By contrast, the public high school in my home town only offers 8 Advanced Placement courses. Students will only be compared by whether they took advantage of the courses available at their high school, but it still makes a difference in how many courses you can bypass when you start college and how prepared you are for advanced courses when you get to college. There are of course AP courses available online, but you will not be viewed negatively for not taking advantage of those even if your high school does not offer that many.

There are a small number of mostly private high schools that are known to be teaching students who are mostly at a very high level, and many of those students get recruited by some of the top universities in the country. Obviously, attending such a high school can be an advantage, but most students do not attend such a high school.

Universities realize that most students do not have a choice of which high school they attend. They live in a location chosen by their parents, and attend the local public high school. For this reason, what is most important is how you perform at your high school, and how you do on the standardized tests. The standardized tests (SAT/ACT) and to some extent AP exams are the primary ways the universities have to compare you to students outside your high school, so be sure to study well in advance for these tests and do your best. Some top students who score the highest prepare for years to ace the SAT/ACT – to do really well requires more than a review a couple of weeks before the exam.