<p>1) schools do not try to achieve diversity on “every” level, for example they do not try to get every body mass index of students. They don’t search for fat and thin students. Another factor they do not look at is what high school you come from. Colleges have said it time and time again that they do not disadvantage students who apply with others applying from the same school. Likewise it is of no advantage to go to a school where noone else is applying, some schools will go years without getting a single columbia acceptance.</p>
<p>2) there were more students accepted from Harvard Westlake (over 15) than from the whole of India for the class of 2013 (as an example). Harvard westlake is neither a public school nor anywhere close to columbia (it’s in Cali). But it just so happened that HWL sent Columbia some stellar applicants in 2009. </p>
<p>I have seen absolutely no evidence that colleges disadvantage students from schools where many apply, until you find actual data to the contrary please do not spew misinformation on this board.</p>
<p>Colleges say a lot of things that make them appear completely fair and objective. When I used the expression that colleges try to make their classes diverse on “every level” I certainly did not mean EVERY level. But they will overlook on student for another if it means gathering a more diverse class. And you show me other schools other than Harvard-Westlake in 2009 where an Ivy took over 10-12 students from one school. I doubt that happens too often.</p>
<p>show me an instance where a top college sells their diversity plainly as the number of high schools represented in their freshman class.</p>
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<p>there are so many schools which fit that category it’s not even funny. HWL was a random example. Scarsdale High School had 13 accepted to Columbia last year. In fact take a look at this list of matriculants, to get acceptees you should probably multiply by 1.5:</p>
<p>a few schools that get 10 plus accepted into a single Ivy every year:</p>
<p>Andover
Exeter
Milton
Horace Mann
St. Pauls
Deerfield
Stuyvesant
HWL</p>
<p>just to hammer it in, a friend of mine went to a school in hong kong with a graduating class of 130, and I remember him showing me this, they had 12 accepted into brown this year, look at university offer 2010:</p>
<p>this is not public, couldn’t be located further away, a small graduating class, no affiliation to brown. </p>
<p>After looking at the data, you probably want to go to a school where many apply and are accepted to top schools, because they seem to have a slight advantage if anything.</p>
<p>The schools that repeatedly send the most applicants to Columbia (especially international applicants) are that are the best in the world, and therefore have the best applicants. As conncoll and T26E4 have said, Columbia cares much more about accepting desirable applicants than accepting at least one applicant from every high school in the world. So there are no quotas, and Columbia’s more likely to take 3 Stuy kids and one kid from an undistinguished medwestern public high school than 1 kid from Stuy and 3 kids from different undistinguished midwestern public high schools. The school you go to certainly matters, but mostly as a way to contextualize your academic performance. </p>
<p>At the same time, Columbia is not going to fill their class with prep-school kids, even if they’re all academically qualified, because they do value cultural and experiential diversity in their freshman class. If 30 kids apply from Harvard-Westlake, it’s unlikely that all 30 will be admitted. In some cases, you may be better off being the valedictorian of a great public school in Oklahoma or even a crappy public school in the Bronx than being an undistinguished student at Andover. At any rate, though, you shouldn’t worry about concrete, arbitrary quotas and you shouldn’t compare yourself to your classmates. The application is your chance to “speak” to an admissions officer one-on-one.</p>