<p>Umm. My son goes to a private school that has a lot of HYP admits. Not all of them are Cum Laude members. Also kids in the second quintile academically have gotten into other ivies and highly selective schools consistently. </p>
<p>On the other hand, the school really does not push APs or make a big deal out of them. Or honors for that matter. No grades are weighted. The kids who took APCalc AB get into the very top schools just as much as the ones who take APCalc BC is what the math chair told me. THe kids who do take the AP exams tend to do very well on them, but no one seems too excited about taking AP courses. I was told that 4 well chosen APs are as good as a slew of them. Admissions to colleges seems to hold that as true.</p>
<p>Now, it is a whole different story at a former public HS of ours, and a local catholic school that I know well. The ONLY kids who get into HPY academically have taken the very hardest courses, the AP courses AND were val or sal. In addition they had to have something else going for them, athlete, legacy, intense talent. That is not the case with the independent school kids that I was discussing in the first paragraph. </p>
<p>It is important that you know what the patterns are in your own hs as that is what determines much of how it is going to be for your child. If your HS gets a regular group of kids going to the very top schools, you know that it is on the radar screen of the adcoms there, and they will have a good idea of what kind of courses your child has taken and what the grades mean. AP is not so important in those cases. Some adcoms even know the teachers of some of the courses, and take that into account. Where APs become very important is when your school is not known by the colleges, and the grades may not mean the student underwent a difficult curriculum. Or if your school has kids taking AP courses but not doing well on the exams. Unfortunately if you have a kid in such a school, he will be at a disadvantage in elite school admissions even if the way the curriculum is done is of no fault of his.</p>