<p>Hello everyone :)
Does MIT take into consideration the fame of your high school? For example if two people have exactly the same stats, but one went to the best and most competitive private school in the country and the other went a mediocre public school, will they have the same chances to get into MIT? If not will the one that went to the better school have an advantage?</p>
<p>If two people achieve the same result, the one that did it with fewer resources will be more impressive and also more likely to make good use of other, bigger resources (like an MIT education).</p>
<p>Also, there are many public schools that are very, very good.</p>
<p>On the flip side of what lidusha (correctly) said, they will consider your schedule’s rigor when evaluating your grades. But that has more to do with the classes you pick than your school. You should be excelling in the hardest classes available, regardless of where you are.</p>
<p>But overall, being from a top school won’t give you an advantage.</p>
<p>Well, it will give you an advantage in the sense that you will have more opportunities to learn and to develop your interests. Whether you take those opportunities is up to you.</p>
<p>I went to a magnet high school in Chicago (Whitney Young) for seventh grade that accelerated me one year in math and two years in science relative to where I would have been otherwise, and also gave me the opportunity to learn how to program in Java and C++ as an elective. That I was accelerated in math and science and started programming at a young age is less impressive when you consider the program I was in and the opportunities it gave me, but I would nonetheless say that being in this program gave me a huge advantage when I started applying to college, not because of the program but because of the path it set me on. Who knows, maybe if I had gone to a worse school I would have gotten into MIT anyway, but the opportunities I got at Whitney Young definitely affected my life in a way that steered me much closer to MIT.</p>
<p>I think given the choice you should always go to the best school available to you, though I would try to avoid paying for a high school education if possible. Going to a good school is not going to be a disadvantage.</p>
<p>If you get a 2400 going to a run of the mill public school it’ll be more impressive than a 2400 coming from the top private school in the country. That said, rigorous schedule is what matters. Where you go to high school doesn’t matter too much, just the results you get.</p>
<p>High school ‘fame’ doesn’t matter. And no one really cares about the US News/Newsweek ranking of high schools.</p>
<p>However, if you go to a well-known magnet school/private school and you are at the top of the class, this is better than if you were valedictorian at a run-of-the-mill public school. This is because the classes are harder and there is more competition.</p>
<p>That said, if you are average at a magnet school and would have been #1 at a regular high school, you would have been better off in terms of admissions to stay at the regular high school, even if that represents the same performance.</p>
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You also might be better off not going to MIT, just in terms of probability of survival into adulthood.</p>
<p>^Ha ha, maybe so.</p>
<p>Actually, I agree with you that in the long run it’s best to take the best educational opportunity and challenge yourself, assuming that it is not so challenging that you are in over your head.</p>
<p>I was just arguing in terms of the admissions results.</p>
<p>MIT looks at what opportunities you have taken advantage of in the context of where you come from, your family situation and your high school. If you come from a high school where 25% of kids go on to 4-year colleges, they will look at your situation differently than if you go to a high school where 99% of kids go to a 4-year college. If your school doesn’t offer AP classes, they will look to see how else you were able to challenge yourself, whereas if your school does offer AP classes and you didn’t take advantage of that, that would be a negative sign. They are familiar with many high schools in the country, and will make a huge effort to understand your situation during the admissions process.</p>