<p>I'm pretty sure 95% of the people on this forum exagerrate about their high school being competitive like "ohh the high shcool only accpets 15% of the applicants and you need to perform and do stuff, it's my daughter's first B grade yadaydayda". So basically I live in New York City, which has 4 well known "specialized" high schools which select students from a test that measures a student's math, reading, and logic skills. I got into one of them(brooklyn Tech), though the best of the 4 was stuyvesant. Will being in one of these specialized high school's help or hurt me in College admissions? The school doesn't rank and the courses are naturally more difficult than the other typical high schools in New York. </p>
<p>Do students in these school (just like me) get a hook because the courses are more rigorous? I know a friend from a very ghetto high school which has a poor graduation rate. Basically in freshmen year he didn't try at ALL and got a 94.5 average while i worked my @ss off at my school to only end up with a 93.4 </p>
<p>Now what hogwash is this? my school doesn't rank so officers have no idea where I stand. I may now feel that i made a wrong decision to go into a harder school. advice please??</p>
<p>There are benefits to both noncompetitive and competive schools. As for your concern, yes college counselors will look at what school you went to and factor that in which will help justify your average, in a way it is a hook! At the same time if you go to a sucky school that has never sent anyone to an Ivy school and you apply that is also a hook of sorts since you are showing initiative. I choose to stick to a completely noncompetetive school after weighing out the pros and cons. </p>
<p>Do you wonder why your school doesn’t offer a class rank? 1st it breads an overly competitive environment. Second it would be a meaningless statistic. A person who is ranked 99/100 at your school would be the same as 1/100 at your friend’s non competitive school. For these reasons a lot of schools don’t offer class rank anymore and honestly I don’t really think class rank matters a whole for admission; GPA is much more important.</p>
<p>Like the person above said. Going to a noncompetitive school can have it’s perks. Easy GPA & "hook’ of no one being accepted from that school before. BUT the cons drastically outweigh those perks IMO. </p>
<p>Student Body that doesn’t care and won’t push you to try your best; which means the school will be a difficult place to build good ECs that help in admissions. You’ll also have so-so teachers so the quality of your education won’t be as good. No AP tests or lower scores on them; which makes it harder to get into a top school. If you aren’t as well educated, it’ll appear in your person essay’s writing style for instance… </p>
<p>…Lastly, and possibly most important, you will be underprepared for college. What good does it to you to get into college, if you end up dropping out or graduating with a 2.1 GPA? </p>
<p>In short I think you made the right choice so I wouldn’t worry too much about your friend. </p>
<p>Hi! I went to Stuyvesant and my sibling goes to Btech :). Both are amazing and very very competitive schools! In all honesty, I had a very similar gpa to yours by the end of my junior year and still ended up in an ivy league. Just make sure that you’re taking a competitive course load. Trust me, I know that it is especially tough when you compare your gpa to those from other schools and they not only have higher gpas but weighted gpas as well. Correct me if I am wrong, but Brooklyn Tech doesn’t weigh their averages based on APs (This is based off of my experience in Stuy, my sibling does not take APs). In all honesty, it is extremely difficult to say whether or not that will hurt you. The best advice that I can give you is to differentiate yourself from your peers with a unique extracurricular or emphasize a passion that you have both through extracurriculars and your essays. Unfortunately, a majority of your peers are going to be applying to these highly competitive schools, and naturally these schools cannot accept THAT many students from specialized high schools. So if you’re just following the pack, there is a large chance that will hurt you. That being said, regardless of which college you go to, you will be beyond PREPARED for what is going to come. Trust me on that! I won’t get too specific on this post, but PM me if you have more questions. </p>
<p>EDIT: Also, do not worry about ranking. Colleges are familiar with specialized high schools. Ranking in these types of high schools would make an already extremely competitive culture more toxic. You made the right decision to go to Brooklyn Tech! </p>
<p>First, going to a magnet school generally means that you’ll do better in college. Everyone at my school comes back and says how easy whatever top college they went to is.</p>
<p>Second, yes, they will understand that courses at your school are harder, and still select students who appear to have slightly “lower” grades. My school’s admission rates to top Ivies/Stanford were several times the admission rates published.</p>
<p>If I was an admissions officer, and I had an applicant from a magnet school, and one from a regular school, and the magnet student had slightly lower grades, I would still want to take them. Colleges provide so many resources, and it would be dumb for them to provide them to students who haven’t used all the resources available in high school. </p>
<p>@fluffypuppy oh the bad thing is… Btech does weight aps in fact by 1.1 so a 100 in an ap would be a 110 in ur weighted average, but only ur unweighted scores show. Do colleges strip these artificially grades off? because that would be great if they recalculated gpa. they also average in those non-academic subjects like health and gym. this really pisses me off bc I have low 90s for those classes. </p>
<p>I wouldn’t worry about it! I am really not that familiar with unweighted gpas and weighted gpas. I presume that on your transcript your school includes a UW gpa as well. If so, colleges might look at that, but they always take in mind that you took an AP class. Idiotic requirements in my HS that pertained to other non-academic subjects lowered my gpa, but I did significantly better in my academic subjects and I don’t think it hurt me at all in admissions. </p>
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