FWIW: At Stuyvesant, with about 900 students in the graduating class, about 120 to 150 students apply to Harvard each year. Acceptance numbers fluctuate from year to year; some years as few as 8 students have been accepted, other years as many as 24 students have been accepted. My guess is that Stuy averages about 12 to 15 admits to Harvard every year, for about a 10% acceptance rate within the school. About the same number of students apply to Yale and Princeton each year, but acceptance rates are slightly less, maybe 8-10 admits per year. On the other hand, upwards of 40 are admitted Cornell every year.
@notjoe At my public high school, I think maybe 3 kids have applied to Yale in 30 years. Me being the only one to get in. On the other hand, my D’s high school sends 4-6 kids to Yale every year. Often over half of the kids that apply get in.
On the GPA note - until recently my D’s school profile used to say that in the school’s 45 year history, only 15 students had graduated with a 4.0. They do not rank, have no Honor Society, etc. But each year they send 4-5 kids each to Harvard and Yale. A good number go to UPenn and Brown. Others go to UChicago, WashUSTL, Stanford, Colby, Colorado College, Emory, Bowdoin - the laundry list of liberal arts powerhouses.
What is unique about the school is that the GCs know the kids well. There are 4 for a class of 125. The kids hang out in the counseling office and the school is totally involved in the process. Knowing the kids, they also make sure that they manage expectations and tell mom, dad and little Johnny the truth about their chances at colleges. No student is allowed to apply to more than 8 schools. The list is allowed to have a couple of reaches, but the rest must be matches and at least one or two safeties. Since a good chunk of the parents come from these same schools, they will allow the kid to apply to their parent’s alma mater is they insist. But if they don’t think they are a good candidate, they will let them know.
I do college counseling and you will be so surprised how different the real world is from CC. There are other threads where posters decry the YHPS bandwagon and state emphatically that in their neck of the woods, most kids never have these schools on their radar. While we may find that hard to believe, I have heard it enough to believe it.
Just my 2 cents.
Seriously people are highly uninformed about how they judge their grades. I had several B’s and got in. Chill.
@Terry1982,
“At my public high school,…”
Since I clearly stated that Harvard applications come from a minority of high schools in the US, there is nothing that I posted that disagrees with what you’ve written here. I estimate that in any given year, applications are generated by roughly 15% of American high schools. That means that in any given year, 85% of US high schools have no applicants. I then estimate that over time, perhaps 20% - 25% of high schools at least occasionally produce an applicant. That means somewhere north of 75% of high schools don’t produce applicants over very long stretches of time.
My sons’ high school is similar in kind to your daughter’s, in that we produce some Ivy applicants each year, and we have some admits each year. Unlike your daughter’s high school, for some reason, our kids don’t favor Yale, and Yale seldom lets in our kids. But over 25% of our admittedly small group of Harvard applicants are accepted over multi-year periods.
I was only answering your guess that out of 38,000 high schools in the US, probably 37,000 produce no Harvard applicants. If one reads through the thread, especially at @gibby’s contributions thereto, one can see that the absolute minimum number of schools that produce applicants is around 1300 or 1400. And that would assume that every single school that had applicants had at least one admit.
“What is unique about the school is that the GCs know the kids well…”
Although choices at your daughter’s school are a little more tightly regulated, my sons’ school is similar. The senior guidance counselor meets individually with each student. Based on the experience of the student, the grades, the test scores, the interests of the student, the counselor guides the student toward appropriate colleges. For the broad middle of students, as well as those bringing up the rear, he does a very good job. He often presents choices to students and parents that are not names that come off the tip of our tongues. He knows the admissions folks at many, many mid-tier schools, and often helps students with their admissions to these schools, and to try to obtain more scholarships, etc. He recommends applying to at least five schools, but he views 10 as an upper limit. A couple of reaches, a couple of matches, a couple of safeties. However, the school permits deviations. My younger son applied to 12 schools.
“I do college counseling and you will be so surprised how different the real world is from CC.”
Maybe not. Just based on what I’ve already posted, I’m already guessing that roughly 85% of high schools don’t produce even a single applicant to Harvard in any given year. And then, even at schools that produce such applicants, not every student or parent is going to have Harvard on his or her radar. Even at my sons’ high school, with a graduating class of roughly 200 each year, the school may see 10 or so students apply Ivy. That leaves 190 applying everywhere else.