<p>With some notable exceptions, GC's at normal public schools know almost nothing about applying to the elite colleges. College admissions are not the biggest part of their jobs. They have to deal with discipline problems, psychological problems, irate parents, scheduling, and bureaucratic issues. In addition, most of the people who do go to college are probably going to state schools or community colleges. GC's also deal with potential high school dropouts and people who are not going to college finding jobs.</p>
<p>Your GC has not left a good impression on you or anyone else that you tell this story to. The number one rule of college admissions is know what year the student is in. At any rate, the main thing your GC will do in the application process is fill in the GC recommendation and make sure that your transcripts are sent to the colleges. If this one likes you, keep her.</p>
<p>At the private high schools, the GC's are normally better because the parents are paying for it and expect results. You can still apply to West Point if you want to.</p>
<p>In terms of applying to the elite colleges. The number one thing they care about is difficulty of curriculum. Take the most advanced courses offered at your high school. Then they care about gpa/rank. The two are considered together since gpa is useless by itself. The rank tells them whether your hs grades easy or hard. Then they care about standardized test scores. Colleges publish SAT 50% ranges showing the scores that 50% of the admitted students received. For example, if the SAT 50% range is 1400-1540, then 25% scored below 1400, 25% scored above 1540, and the rest scored between 1400 and 1540. You want to apply to about 9 colleges where 1-2 are safeties, 4-5 are matches and 3-4 are reaches. A school is about safety if you score about the 75% mark, a match if you score at about the 60% mark and a reach if you score at about the 40% mark. (more on this later)</p>
<p>After you qualify on academic measures, they look at extracurriculars (EC's), essays and recommendations (GC and teachers). Elite colleges want well rounded freshman classes, but not well rounded freshmen. In your EC's you want to show long-term commitment to one or two activities rather than a long list of activities without much involvement in any. They want unique candidates. This is how they make the final cut between people who all have outstanding academic measures. In addition, the competition at the top 10-15 colleges is absolutely insane. They don't have room for everybody who they would like to accept. They may have 4 or 5 applicants for each slot who are virtually identical, and so this introduces an element of luck.</p>
<p>Large public universities are more numbers driven, and the gpa/rank and standardized test scores are close to the whole story in a lot of cases.</p>
<p>There are different kinds of colleges: Large public universities, private universities, and Liberal Arts Colleges (LAC's). LAC's have much smaller classes and the professors know you. Large public universities probably have better facilities, but larger class sizes. In the middle are private universities that are typically (but not always) smaller than the publics, and are larger than the LAC's. (Harvard falls in this category.) The prestige of a college is not the most important thing. You need to pick colleges that fit you personally. Colleges can be urban/suburban/rural. They have have sports teams or not. You should visit colleges near you that you don't even plan to apply to just to see different types of colleges.</p>
<p>In addition, you need to know about SAT II subject tests since some colleges require them. You also need to know about different types of admissions such as ED (early decision where you apply to only one college and if they accept you, then you have to attend), EA (early action where you apply early and get a decision back sooner), Rolling Admission (where there is no set deadline but they let you know a few weeks after you apply), and RD (regular decision). Under RD, you apply at around Jan 1st (give or take a few weeks), and they let you know by April 1.</p>
<p>Concerning the SAT 50% ranges: In order to maintain diversity on college campuses, colleges give preference to certain types of applicants such as legacies, recruited athletes, under-represented minorities (URM's), people who give at least $50 million to the college, and VIP's. In addition, ED applicants have statistically lower scores (they also have less time to get ready for the SAT). Because of all of this, applicants in the lower half of the SAT 50% range probably had some "hook" in order to be accepted. If you have a hook, then take it into account. </p>
<p>Next summer, you should be picking out the colleges that you want to apply to.</p>
<p>UVA is a public university that does spend alot of time in looking at everything about the applicant. It is much harder to get into UVA is you are out-of-state (OOS). State legislatures will often require that 70% of the accepted applicants be from in-state.</p>