<p>Our daughter is a very good student, standout in her private school with very good LOCAL extracurriculars, but she's not nationally ranked or recognised at anything. Does this automatically put her in the second tier of colleges? We haven't even started the search but I'm already discouraged.</p>
<p>You aren’t looking at a normal applicant pool on CC. My son barely had local ECs, but he had other things going for him, and he was accepted to all three top-tier colleges he applied to.</p>
<p>Also, just because you haven’t heard of a school doesn’t automatically make it not worth anything.</p>
<p>Cheer up!</p>
<p>Sounds like she would be one of 93% who don’t make it into HYPS (like my two daughters). There are still plenty of great schools out there.</p>
<p>My son has few EC’s, and has been accepted to CWR, Drexel and U of Michigan-instate. We are still waiting on Carnegie. He has a high GPA though. His EC’s are focused in music and show depth. No sports or leadership. DON’T WORRY!</p>