<p>So I have a list of colleges that I am interested in applying to, and if I can get into any of my top choices, I would be extremely happy. However, the kid in my grade who will probably be valedictorian is also interested in some of the same schools. Will his application hurt my chances of acceptance there, or would most schools just look at me in the general picture of my entire school and not compare me directly to other candidates for acceptance?</p>
<p>There is no quota/maximum per high school.</p>
<p>Thanks. Just once I heard a gc at my school say that if a lot of high caliber kids apply to one school from a class it might be harder to get into. Though quota doesn’t necessarily mean not more difficult.</p>
<p>Schools can be very odd - we had over 25 kids apply to Case Western this year, an unusually high number ,a lot of top kids, yet few were admitted. In contrast, the NESCAC my daughter is attending has never admitted more than one student from our HS out of the two to three that applied, yet this year admitted three, and all three plan on attending. And sometimes the strongest appearing kids don’t get admitted and lesser ones do because we don’t know what any one school happens to be looking for.</p>
<p>If your stats match up to a school, never assume that someone is going to beat you out. You might have what they’re looking for and your competition may not - or you both might have what it takes. Know that you will never be admitted to a school you never apply to - that is the only certainty.</p>
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<p>Some state university systems will admit applicants to campuses not applied for if the applicants were not admitted to the campuses that they applied for.</p>
<p>@ucbalumnus I assume you’re referring to the UC system guaranteeing the top 9% of California high school students admission to at least one UC -typically Merced- if they don’t get admitted to any of the UCs they applied to. Most kids I know who’ve been offered that deal go to CC in the hopes of TAGing or transferring to a UC after 2 years. </p>
<p>OP admissions officers don’t have the time or energy to directly compare you to your high school brethren. The have literally 15 minutes to read your file, make a justified decision, and prepare for committee meeting (Most of this is coming from A is for Admissions). As others -and I- have said repeatedly on this forum, there is no per-high-school quota for college admissions. </p>
<p>That is not the only example of being admitted to a campus not specifically applied for. UT CAP is another example.</p>
<p>While there may not be per high school quotas, the use of class rank by a college for admissions can make it more like you are competing against your high school classmates instead of the overall admissions pool.</p>
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<p>I’ve actually read the opposite - they read all of a high school’s applicants at the same time as a matter of efficiency. Do they sit down and compare them side-by-side? No - but when you read them all together, comparisons are inevitable. However, there is no per school quota on their recommendations, that is true. But for some especially strong prep schools and very small LACs, there may be a “quota” in that no school wants 5 or 10% of its incoming class to come from the same HS. That’s not a problem most HS ever have.</p>
<p>One school near me is Stuyvesant High School, and since almost everyone there is competitive (The school itself has like a 5-7% acceptance rate), I have heard from students who go there that it is a bit harder for them to get into the top schools (May be bias).</p>
<p>Stuyvesant is one of those rare places that may cannibalize each other, but if you can get in there, you take your chances. I think its acceptance rate is lower than any college. Amazing place, and not duplicated nearly anywhere. </p>
<p>@MrMom62 That’s what i meant by “directly compare”. Of course the admissions officer will read your app in conjunction with the others from your high school and thus will -consciously or subconsciously- compare you to the rest of your high school’s applicants. However no regional admissions officer will actively rank students from one high school. They just don’t have the time to do that. </p>
<p>@skieurope That’s not true completely. For most schools yes, but as mentioned above there are schools where this is the case, such as magnet schools. Stuyvesant is like that and so is my school, TJHSST. This year, UVA set a cap of 75 acceptances from TJHSST. But at your average school kids will not be directly compared to other kids at their high school.</p>
<p>@guineagirl96 re: TJHSST Total urban legend. UVA has no such cap.</p>
<p><a href=“Notes from Peabody: The UVA Application Process: Quotas. Again.”>http://uvaapplication.blogspot.com/2013/11/quotas-again.html</a></p>
<p>@skieurope I attend TJHSST. They may not admit to the cap, but it has always existed. They simply cannot take everyone who applies because it would flood their class. The blog you mentioned only spoke of fcps and other NoVA counties, not specifically tj, which is a magnet school that encompasses several counties. In previous years 300/450 graduating would apply, 200 would get in, 100 would go. This year they only accepted 75, and waitlisted or rejected the rest. It was heartbreaking for a lot of my fellow seniors, many of which who will be attending william and mary in the fall because of this (there are ~100 this year).</p>
<p>^^ That could set up an interesting scenario - a TJ kid who wants to go to an Ivy and has no intention of applying to UVa even as a safety. But since they’re near the top of the TJ class and could easily craft a good application, they could take payoffs NOT to apply to UVa, so those TJ kids on the bubble have a better chance to get in. Really questionable ethically, but some kids (and parents) have questionable ethics.</p>
<p>The problem with announcing a hard quota is that you immediately create a market for the available slots - which is probably one of the reasons they don’t do it.</p>
<p>Personally, as a tj student who had a 3.95 GPA weighted, I didn’t apply to UVA because it is very hard to get into UVA with even a 4.0 coming from tj. @MrMom62 thank you! they won’t ever admit the quota, but we have a computer system where we can view acceptances vs stats for the last like 10 years, so it is very clear sometimes that these kind of things go on.</p>
<p>But I will repeat, this does not happen at regular high schools, only at magnet schools and other “special” schools. Also tj, or fcps in general, does not provide class rank, so college have to use their own “formulas” to determine who’s at the top of the class. </p>