How do colleges know if your school is competitive or not?

<p>I'm applying to USAFA and in the candidate packet I received it mentioned that they will also look at how competitive your high school is. How do they know how competitive it is? Do they base it off of like how big the school is, like the whole 1A, 2A,3A,4A,5A, etc. thing? Or do colleges have databases that show them the competitiveness?</p>

<p>They probably use things like the high school profile that your GCs send to all colleges, plus past experience with graduates from your HS, other colleges that grads from your HS attend, Newsweek and US news rankings, etc.</p>

<p>Standardized test scores. </p>