<p>I'm about 6% of my class. A girl who's in the 2% with similar scores and very different but impressive ECs also applied to Brown, and I'm very intimidated that because she applied I have no chance as what are the odds they'd take two people from my school.</p>
<p>Also, a LOT of the top 5% of my school applied to WashU. Considering I've showed a great deal of interest to the school, would the fact that many "GPA superior" people have applied kill my chances?</p>
<p>Overall--- how much do other people from your school applying affect you. Is it basically if you'd get in without them applying you'll get in with them applying, or if someone better applies does it curtail your chances?</p>
<p>I know what you mean! I'm applying to Stanford and two other girls from my school are. They're both ranked higher (2 and 3; I'm 5) and one has higher SAT scores. I don't know why I'm intimidated. Selective school deny so many 2400's while they let in people with lower scores. I think it's all about individuality and expression. I don't think the admissions people care that much. Last year I had 7 people apply to UPenn in my school. Everybody that deserved to get in, got in.</p>
<p>Yeah. For some reason I really underestimate myself. I have a 2190, 3.86 UW w APs, but for some reason don't feel like I'm good enough, just because I've gotten a couple of Bs or something. I feel like the best school I'll get into is GW (which at least I really do love). It's so frustrating! I'd love to hear opinions about how inter-school competition affects admissions.</p>
<p>I know what you guys mean, except I'm really at a disadvantage with my SAT score. I just can't do well on them. However, my extracurriculars beat out the other applicants'. So, I guess I have some leverage.</p>
<p>Whoa. Intense school. I'm really mad I didn't do ED to Brown :(. I visited the school in November and knew the second I stepped on campus, but it was unfortunately too late. BAH.</p>
<p>Salpert ...is WashU another name for WUSTL? If it is you will be happy to hear
that from my school the kids who show demonstrated interest get
accepted over the kids with the higher GPA+SATs.</p>
<p>Yep, WUSTL. And ahhhh I hope so! Though some people may say its "overrated" it really is such an amazing place, at least for me. Only downside is those last 3 letters- STL. Yech. But I love the school enough for that.</p>
<p>I think I"m one of the only kids who really showed much interest from my school- WUSTL has no suplement and is common app so a lot of kids just through it in for kicks.</p>
<p>people always talk about ivy feeders, who send a rediculously large amount of students to top schools. they probably have like half their class applying to the same couple of schools. how does that count?</p>
<p>from what i've heard, colleges also compare you with students who have applied in previous years. if the person one grade ahead of you applies with a really strong application, will that affect chances also?</p>
<p>I applied SCEA to Stanford along with two other kids at my school. I have very strong ECs, average stanford ACT, and weaker grades. Another girl had strong grades/ACT/moderate ECs. The last person had moderate ECs and very strong grades/SAT. He was the only one accepted. Last year, Stanford accepted 3 people from my school though
I don't know if that helped lol</p>
<p>When I first got involved with the college admissions process I attended a meeting at my child's high school that had a prominent college counselor speak. This college counselor previously worked as a senior admissions officer at both a top Ivy League school and a top small Liberal Arts College for over 20 years. He said that the admissions committee always looks at applications from the same high school at the same time. This gives them context as to the difficulty of a certain high school. In cases where many kids from a given school apply to the same college, (lets say 10 or more), this universe of applicants becomes a subset of the entire applicant pool. The admission results of this subset often mirror the admission results of the entire pool. This means that you are competing against the kids from your high school.</p>
<p>I checked this out using data from the Naviance system for 10 of the top public high schools in our area. The results confirmed his statement. For colleges that have an acceptance rate of 10%, generally, the acceptance rate for a given high school will also be 10%. This number is a bit flexible for a small sample size. If a high school has 10 kids apply, usually 1 will be accepted. For a give year it could be 2, maybe three, but probably not more than that. It also could be zero. The average GPA and SAT for the pool of accepted students will also be close to the college's overall average.</p>
<p>Interestingly, all of the high schools in my area performed about the same. They all had 10% accepted, with roughly the same average GPA and SAT scores.</p>
<p>The same holds true for the second tier of colleges, as well as for the third tier. Roughly the same acceptance rate and same average credentials for each high school as for the total applicant pool.</p>
<p>For a high school that only has a handful of kids applying to a college, this doesn't hold. But if there are 10, 20 or 30 kids from one high school applying to a college, they really are competing against each other to be accepted.</p>
<p>However, the data also show that the highest GPA or highest test scores are not always a guarantee for acceptance. When academic credentials are similar, that's when the other factors, like recommendations, extracurriculars and essays count.</p>