<p>Do colleges understand if you go to a school with 4000+ people and most of them are insanely smart? My graduating class is 1,100 kids and our school is the 5th best in state and 1st best public school in state. This actually hurts me since even a good gpa gives me a low ranking. A 3.85 places you in top 20% and a 3.96 places you in top 10% Will colleges understand the competition?</p>
<p>Colleges will have a profile of your school that describes everything from the size of your school to it’s academic strength and reputation. </p>
<p>Small LACs will take the time to review your school’s specific profile and will have an admissions person assigned to your region. But the Ivy’s and the large flagship schools really are a numbers game since there are so many over-qualified applicants. Your child’s GPA is the single most important factor for admission. It will get your child past the first round cuts, and into the pile for further review. Even if test scores are insanely high, unfortunately and perhaps unfairly, GPA is the most important factor. It may be really tough to achieve a GPA high enough to be considered by the Ivy’s at a very rigorous and competitive high school. May be better to be a big fish and star performer in a smaller pond. Always good to be from a unique or under-represented region or demographic, meaning apply to schools far away from where you are, cast your net wide and don’t just apply to top tier schools. Good luck.</p>
<p>I’m doing pomona ed1</p>
<p>
The top LACs will do this, the lesser ones without the resources or staff may not.</p>
<p>
Not true. Ivies are more like the top LACs in that they evaluate holistically - they have the budget and staff to do this even for 50,000 applicants. Not saying they don’t have a filtering mechanism, but they claim to at least look at every applicant as more than a set of numbers. Public flagships are almost always a numbers game, though there are bound to be exceptions.</p>
<p>
Not true. GPA plus rigor is the gold standard, but that’s only if they have to get that far. Certain people can get in with any set of grades and courses, within reason, they’re the developmentals and athletes. For everyone else, it’s grades and rigor, within the context of your school. High grades but low rigor will doom you just as fast as middling grades but high rigor.</p>
<p>
Star performer in a small pond doesn’t really get you very far unless you are very, very good and make the extra effort to break out of your middling school. And geographic diversity rarely comes into play at Ivies, they simply get too many applicants from too many good students. Geographic diversity is more likely to come into play at the top LACs, where they often don’t have top candidates from every area - but they aren’t going to take a middling student just to have one from everywhere. As for grades, rigor with a 3.7+ GPA and 32+ test scores will get you strong consideration at every Ivy, you just need to do the selling job via essays and ECs to get the rest of the way.</p>
<p>I have 5 APs junior year. I have 5 APs senior year with calc 3/Lin alg senior year.</p>
<p>I recently saw a profile of Thomas Jefferson High in Virginia. It’s said that they receive around 50 acceptances from Cornell, 40 from Duke, 20 from Princeton, 15 from Stanford, etc. So I guess the schools do consider the competitions.</p>
<p>@pastwise My school is ranked 150 in the nation if that helps. </p>