Hard high school classes hurt my chances?

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

<p>Even if it sounds like I'm blowing a trumpet, I'm not. I personally think I'm quite retarded compared to the geniuses who roam the CC forums.</p>

<p>This is my highschool's (in MI) average MME (ACT) results:
Northville</a> High School Test Scores - Northville, Michigan - MI</p>

<p>My high school's (public school) average ACT is about 20-40% higher than the state average according to the chart. According to my research, Northville High School has the second highest ACT average in Michigan following the International School (out of private and public combined).</p>

<p>The thing is, my high school is hard because there is concentration of rich people's kids in my neighborhood and they're smarter than average. There's 500 people in my class and according to what ACT national average,there should only be 5 people who has a score of 31 or higher. According to my educated guess, about solid 30-40 people in NHS has a score above 31 (mine being 34) and couple people who have 36. For my sophomore and junior year (no freshmen), I have an unweighed GPA of 3.98. It's a good GPA but not perfect.</p>

<p>Here's my problem:
I have met a lot of transfer students who came to our school because I like to befriend the new kids. Many of them I met in my accelerated math and English classes. They claim that they were very good students (3.8-4.0) in their high school. However, most of the transfer students that I have seen who took honors course got a bad grade (around C) and dropped out into a normal math and English class. It seems like my high school is so fudging tough compared to other High Schools, and its not even a private school. Will the colleges take that into account or will I lose out to some guy in a normal high school who got a 4.0? Will I be granted any kind of advantage? Will it go unnoticed because my high school is not private? Please give me an answer I'm starting to hate my high school. Sigh, I gotta go do some homework.</p>

<p>(I'm a senior, currently applying to many ivies with good amount of solid extra curricular/sport with leadership but I'm not confident on my essays :p)</p>

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<p>most schools do take into account the type of high school you come from… transcripts (at least from my school) are usually sent with the high school profile (size, test scores, dropouts, etc).</p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/1032253-chance-me-please-ivies-others-will-chance-back.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/1032253-chance-me-please-ivies-others-will-chance-back.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Unfortunately I’m in the same situation :(. Except my UW GPA is substantially lower yours (like a 3.2). Really ****es me off knowing I work 4-5 hrs a night on homework just to maintain a 84% average, whereas my best friend works MAYBE 30 minutes a night in the same classes as me at another school and can still retain a 3.9 UW with ease. His high school is a joke, grades are super inflated.</p>

<p>Does anybody know how exactly admissions looks at the competitiveness of high schools? For example, both schools are IB. However, at his school only 24% of students received the IB diploma whereas at my school 100% of the kids got it. Do colleges look at these factors? How about the correlation of standardized tests to GPA? Cuz my SAT scores are significantly higher than his, even though my GPA is much lower. Any ideas?</p>

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<p>The first step in the admissions process is the feeding of all applications to regional representatives, individuals who have worked in the same area enough so that they can recognize what schools are harder, what schools are easier, where there is grade deflation etc. Remember that all of your numbers are always interpreted within the context of your environment. This is why school rankings will sometimes speak more than the transcripts themselves.</p>

<p>The fact that the OP has maintained a 3.98 UWGPA (which is universally strong) in an apparently difficult school is a very impressive achievement. </p>

<p>But for marist453, I don’t think that grade deflation can be entirely blamed for you having a 3.2. It’ll be tough to explain that one.</p>

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<p>They will evaluate you in the context of your high school and surrounding area. You will be fine. Don’t sweat it. Your stats are great, btw!
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/1033742-chances-various-universities-top-tier-others.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/1033742-chances-various-universities-top-tier-others.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;