<p>In our school, we have 1 kid going to Yale, 2 (including me) going to Duke and 5 going to Berkeley...and our senior class consists of 465 people.</p>
<p>I hear people around the community saying our school is terrible...is that a valid statement?</p>
<p>Yup.
10char</p>
<p>@Greens: Would you mind elaborating more? I would appreciate it.
Thanks.</p>
<p>BTW: Besides the Yalie kid and the 2 Dukies and 5 Berks, no one else is going to any top college…almost everyone is going to CSUs and mid-low tier UCs and community colleges. Few who go to private schools go to Loyola Marymont, Dominican, etc.</p>
<p>Yes and no.</p>
<p>Yes: If I was paying for an expensive private high school, I would very much judge the options by (among other things) what colleges the seniors got into. I think one thing a person is paying for at an exclusive private are the GCs who have a personal relationships with the admissions officers at the top schools.</p>
<p>No: You can’t judge publics by that standard. My kids attend a very strong suburban high school. Most of the parents are in the same financial boat: too high an income to receive need based aid, but too low an income to pay $200,000 per child for an undergraduate degree. Consequently, cost is a huge factor in where the students apply.</p>
<p>I feel like no when it comes to publics, like missypie said. A lot of the people at my highschool go to the local state school completely free based on merit aid and such. I’m 100% sure they could get into good schools but based on their financial situations they cannot go. Our school, a public with a giant Aerospace Engineering program, churns out the best and brightest kids in the district. It’s not fair to say because they are forced to go to state schools for financial issues that the school is bad.</p>
<p>no.</p>
<p>My school is a fairly decent public school, but I feel as though that anything I achieve is despite the school rather than because of it. There are a few truly amazing teachers, but the number of incompetent teachers outnumbers them. Also the guidance department is truly terrible as is the administration. </p>
<p>But if you look at the seniors, we have: 1 Princeton, 1 Brown, 1 Cornell, 1 Amherst, 1 Duke (ME!), 2 WashU in St. Louis, 1 Northwestern, 1 Grinnell, 1 full ride to DePauw, 1 full ride to Valpo…lots of acceptances to WUStL, Vanderbilt, Northwestern, UChicago, etc. </p>
<p>But, all this is by the same top 10 kids who like I said acheive inspite of the school, not because of it.</p>
<p>Yes, one of the things to consider when choosing a high school is where the kids end up going to college. But…more often than not the major influence comes from the parents not the school. My kids attend a fabulous private high school in the Midwest and many, many parents see no reason for their child to go to an elite college or to travel out of state. Another factor is the cost of college. At our school most of the families are middle to upper middle class and while the kids stats could put them at a top college, the families simply cannot afford it unless there is merit aid involved.</p>
<p>Our state’s flagship university and other state schools are loaded with top students.</p>
<p>Depends. How many kids from other public schools in the area are going to colleges with top reputations? If your big rival public school with similar socioeconomics has a similarly sized senior class, but is a known feeder to Cal, sending 20 kids, or regularly sends a few dozen kids to a variety of out of state schools, then the criticism is fair.</p>
<p>I agree with missypie that economics is a huge driver, but there’s another issue. Your school, like many others in California, sounds like it suffers from a constricted vision of colleges. The counseling office, teaching staff and parents are most familiar with UC and Cal State. They also know about the nation’s tippy-top national universities, and a few local private schools. Show them the list of colleges on CC’s Colleges forum, or the list of “Colleges That Change Lives”, and they’ll never have heard of most (if any) of them.</p>
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<p>That’s not a bad school by any means. In my old school, there are 200 students in a class. 15 of them will go to our state flagship, 2-5 will go out of state (places like Shippensburg and High Point), and the rest will go to and not complete community college.</p>
<p>My first though is no. Especially over a period of one year, as the quality of students vary greatly from year to year. Also as some others have already said people often have to turn down the big names and ivies for a state school that offered them a lots of money. Which is another knock against this system of judging…</p>
<p>So overall I’d say no. (exceptions maybe in the case of big time New England prep schools)</p>
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<p>Well, our school is definitely a public school. But another public school which is about 7 miles away from ours sent 14 to MIT, 8 to Stanford, and 45 to UC Berkeley and 2 ISEF finalists. They have around 490 students.
I can think of five other schools in the county that sends around 30 people to Berkeley each year.</p>
<p>Although costs may be a huge factor, how different in cost is UC Davis from UC Berkeley? Our school this year is only sending 5 to Berkeley while we have 14 to UC Davis.</p>
<p>I think judging by the schools where kids most commonly go, with an understanding of how much merit money is received on average, is a good way to go about it. Kids here most commonly go to the local uni, the University of Cincinnati, or to the flagship, Ohio State, and usually go with considerable merit awards. Well over half the class goes to one of those two. Our most common acceptances OOS – not including Kentucky and Indiana since both are 20 minutes away, this being a tristate area (which made Law and Order confusing to me as a small child) – are to UMich, UChicago, and Boston U, I think, though Northwestern has had a suspicious increase in popularity since my sister, class of '08, went there.
Among tippy tops, Harvard, accepting someone nearly every year and often accepting two, likes us infinitely more than Yale, which accepts someone, like, every five years. I think all of the rest hate us/are evidence of our not being super awesome, though they do get fewer applicants, especially Stanford. However, it does seem to be the dream school of every junior I know, so perhaps that will change soon. Still in the top but not HYPSM, Swarthmore hates us, and has rejected all of the most qualified applicants for the last 20 years. Except me, but that’s just because I went to the super fun diversity weekend thing.</p>
<p>I’m kind of torn. You can’t base it off of where the student ATTENDS, but more off of where he/she GOT IN. At my school, roughly 40 students get accepted into UNC-Chapel Hill and 100 to NC State, but many of them choose NC State for whatever reason (cheaper, better engineering program, etc).
Also, there’s a case where one girl got accepted to UNC-Chapel Hill and a few other top-notch schools but is attending the local CC because her boyfriend is going there.
However, we have roughly 3-5 kids get accepted to Duke, a few Ivies, etc
For example, in our first graduating class, we had NOBODY go to an Ivy (we’re only 4 years old, but the year it opened there were no seniors) and a Deep Springs. BUT we had a Harvard and a Princeton
Our second year (last year), we had NOBODY attend an Ivy. BUT we had 2 Stanfords, 2 MITs, 1 CIT, 1 Harvard, and 1 Yale.
This year, we have 1 UPenn and 1 Yale and a Deep Springs. BUT we had 2 Harvards, 1 MIT, and 1 Brown</p>
<p>So yeah. Just base it off where kids get ACCEPTED, not where they actually attend.</p>
<p>I agree with golfer111 provided that we are judging a high school based on its success at getting kids into selective colleges. I could certainly think of other metrics…</p>
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<p>Do your school and this other school have similar student bodies? A school even just 7 miles away can be in a much wealthier area. Or, it could be a magnet/competitive entry school which has a higher achieving group of students. Another possibility is that the other school offers more AP and honor classes, which boosts UC GPA.</p>
<p>^No, our school offers equal APs. However you do bring a valid point. The school that is 7 miles away is in a much wealthy area. The average house price there is around 1.3 million.
In our district, the average is 600k. </p>
<p>Racially speaking, our school’s majority are Latinos and south east Asians (such as Vietnamese, Thai, Fillipino, etc). The school 7 miles away has majority Indians and Chinese. If you’re curious, the school is Lynbrook (look it up)</p>
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<p>Agreed. There’s also a cultural issue–whereas at top privates, less-than-stellar students may attend well respected LACs or universities (I’m speaking anecdotally, but I’m thinking Hamilton, Washington and Lee, UW-Madison, one of the Seven Sisters) because of great guidance and school/family connections, publics generally have a “state school or bust” mentality. At my big public, we generally have 5-ish to top schools, 30 to UNC, 75 to NC State, and others to non-flagship UNCs, technical school, or a CC. That isn’t to say that opportunities are here for those who search for them, but that the culture of higher education for the vast majority of kids in my school is much different than that at private preps.</p>
<p>I think a fairly accurate measure of a school’s quality is to look at students that resemble you. If you’re a top student, look at the top students (at my school, that would mean you’d have a decent shot at HYP,SM lower Ivies, Northwestern, Duke, merit scholarships). If you get a 3.6+ in hard classes, you’d compare yourself to the UNC-bound at my school. etc. But it’s inaccurate to say I go to a poor school because only x% attend a four-year university.</p>
<p>No…I go to a supposed top public high school. Yes, its an awesome school, the curriculum is very intense and competitive. We send a pretty good number of people to top schools. However, the number is really misleading. </p>
<p>For example, we have 10 people going to HYP - all but two are athletes and the other is URM. The same went with all the lower ivies. Maybe thats just how it works at all high schools, but when people like to talk about my HS being an “ivy powerhouse” I think its BS. </p>
<p>I think its actually harder for a top student to get into HYMetc from my “top” HS because they like to pick up their athletic recruits from here - its a wealthy neighborhood so they don’t have to worry so much about competition from other schools that provide athletic scholarships. And once they pick up all their athletes, they’ve filled their quota from our high school, so tough luck to all the valedictorians/other top students.</p>
<p>On the other hand, some schools are clear “feeders”. fwiw, Northwestern takes about 40 people from my HS every year. Part of it is interest: its instate and more people apply, but its also easier to get in because our guidance counselors know the people there</p>
<p>But by judging based on top school admissions, you’re possibly only looking at that HS’s athletic power</p>
<p>This is my school in Florida:</p>
<p>Countless acceptances to University of Florida. </p>
<p>About 4/5 of people who get into UF go there.</p>
<p>I got in and turned it down like it was a joke school. Seriously, people, UF is overrated. Everyone thinks UF is the best school there is. If that’s the mentality then I wonder how many of those people can name at least 7 of the colleges ranked in top 20. Oh, wait, of course they can’t. All they know is Harvard, Yale, and POSSIBLY MIT and Duke. Beyond that, uhh, hmm, “Northwestern? Never heard of it. Sorry you didn’t get into UF. Hope you have fun at Northwestern.” (LOL)</p>
<p>So my school is like:</p>
<p>1 to MIT
1 to Columbia
1 to Emory (ME NOOO!)</p>
<p>Five different acceptances into Ivy and other top 10 schools, only two decided to go.</p>
<p>Like 70-80 people out of 600+ seniors got into UF. Freakin’ ridiculous.</p>
<p>Alright, our school which is in California:
Valedictorian - Going to Wheaton College in MA
Salutatorian - UC Berkeley
3rd Rank - UC Davis
4th Rank - Duke (ME)
5th Rank - Yale
6th - UC Davis
7th - UC Irvine</p>
<p>That’s about it…almost the rest who follow are going to some UC and a couple going to Cal. The rank 19th person got into Cornell and going to Duke, but she’s an African American female who escaped war torn Africa and had a great background to tell.</p>