<p>So, from what I have read in some of the posts on CC, it helps your child with admissions if they are attending a "high achieving" high school. Is this really true, and if so, is my daughter going to be thought of as less than ideal if her school is fairly new and the overall school stats aren't that great?</p>
<p>As long as your child is taking the toughest course load his/her high school offers and your high school profile enables colleges to view him/her in context, the fact that your school is new will not hurt. Ask to see the profile. It should describe the school community, curriculum, and grading and ranking procudures, and it should contain test score info and college attendance history. The College Board publishes a good piece on suggested elements of a high schol profile. Elements</a> of a High School Profile</p>
<p>I agree that it's good if the college can view your S or D in context. The problem IS the context. So the OP's question reduces to that old issue "Does the high school one attends really matter?" Past discussions have generally held "Yes, it does matter." So aashad, the challenge before you is to show that your S or D's achievement is not only high in the current HS, but would have been high if he or she had attended a "high achieving" HS also. I believe the usual formula is High Grades + High SAT scores + Maximum Number of APs + High AP Scores + Great Essay + Outstanding Teacher Recommendations.</p>
<p>The HS a student attends is very important for college admission.</p>
<p>NewHope is right that, in addition to taking the toughest courseload offered, your son/daughter must also get top grades to be seriously considered by top schools. Also, our experience is that standardized test scores take on increased importance when the high school is an unknown commodity in admissions offices. But we also know from experience that if your small, start-up high school only offers half dozen APs, your child will not be penalized because he/she didn't take the many, many AP courses offered by a high-ranking, better established school.</p>
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The HS a student attends is very important for college admission.
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<p>This is not unerringly true. It certainly can help to attend a top high school, but it is not essential.</p>
<p>I'm not sure, but I think colleges might look more closely at the SAT II scores of students from high schools that are not well-known. That way they can compare the students' grades to their standardized test scores and judge the strength of the school's curriculum.</p>
<p>Maybe I'm a little bit off the topic. How college compare two students with similar ec, gpa and sat, but one is from excellent public high and another is from private school?</p>
<p>Well, I wouldn't say necessarily that colleges look at two equivalent students, one from a better high school, and automatically admit that one.</p>
<p>HOWEVER, at the higher-achieving high schools, there is usually a strong guidance counselor department who make a HUGE difference in a lot of student's admission to schools. They often have personal relationships with the admissions departments of the schools and are able to get stellar students into ivies and less-than-stellar students into some great institutions. Even when a student is highly motivated himself, he doesn't have the rapport with college admissions officers to be able to exact as much pressure.</p>
<p>Good HS is an advantage, but not the be all end all. I got into Pomona from an average(at best HS) while barely being in the top 10%.</p>
<p>D1 attended our local mediocre public high school and managed to get into several of the HYPSM schools. D2 attends the same school now. No student in the living memory of the school has gotten into Yale, but the one or two kids each year will get into one or two of the other four colleges. But the trend appears to be that you have to graduate in the top five, preferably in the top two, to really have a chance. By contrast the high-end public high school in another part of the of the county regularly gets 8 or 10 kids into MIT every year.</p>
<p>So based on our experience I'd say it's certainly possible to get into a top college from a mediocre high school, but they will take a much deeper cut into a high-end high school.</p>
<p>HS B near our town, is one of the top 100 HS in US used to sent many students to Ivies, but this year, very strange, none to Harvard and Yale, only 1 to Princeton and U Penn. Top 10 students barely get into Ivies. But our HS (not as good as HS B, people always say that) sent more students to Ivies at 2008. We parents joke about this, it is a lottery or what?</p>
<p>My daughter and one of her friends have both been accepted to Ivies this year from a middle-sized, mediocre public high school. My daughter has only been able to take 4 APs. However, she took the hardest possible courseload, and she got 5s on the APs she took last year. She also had great scores on all her standardized tests and was ranked # 1 when she applied (I'm not sure yet if she will graduate as valedictorian...) She had an amazing extracurrricular resume as well. I think there can sometimes actually be an advantage to being a really outstanding student in a so-so school: It's easier to have a high rank, to snap up leadership positions, and to impress teachers, thereby getting glowing, best-student-I-ever-had recommendations. One of the downsides, as has been mentioned above, is that there will probably be less advice/support from guidance. (Our guidance dept. didn't even talk about the SAT IIs with the kids.) We got helpful ideas on timing for tests, etc.., right here on CC! I'm not saying that it might not have been better for my daughter to have attended a top high school; it just wasn't strictly necessary to get admitted to a top college.</p>
<p>A friend's daughter was admitted to Harvard 2 years ago from a tiny K-12 school (maybe 100 or 200 students total) in upstate NY, an impoverished area. She had no AP's because none were offered, but she took advantage of everything she could possibly do in her community. She's an outstanding person and was val in her class.</p>
<p>Attending a top HS only helps if you also get top grades there (good enough to put you in the top 10% of the graduating class).</p>
<p>One advantage that the students at the top schools have is a good counseling office - but if you read enough CC, you'll do fine without ;).</p>
<p>I don't think there is a single answer. Sometimes the kid who is amazingly bright, extremely motivated, etc. & attends a not so hot public school gets the edge over a similar candidate from a "great" school. It makes sense ... with similar achievements, the one who had fewer advantages would actually seem more desireable. The problem is, sometimes you have two students who COULD do equally well with the same advantages ... but the student from the not so hot school might not be able to do as well on standardized tests as the one from the great school ... or might not have a gc who knows how to write amazing recs ... or might not have a teacher who coaches students on essays. In the end, I think you might find fewer stellar students in the not so hot schools simply because they have not had the advantages that might put them on an even par.</p>
<p>In a nutshell, it is a combination of the student & the environment. I think maybe the ones who are not at a "not so great high school" might have to work harder to be viewed as desireable to top colleges.</p>
<p>There are always exceptions, and I know one personally. He went to a so so school, his gc was clueless (rec was basically just a list of his activities), he didn't have research/summer programs/ACT prep (or even a particularly good ACT score)/etc. He was accepted to a VERY top LAC. Obviously, they saw something they liked & wanted him to be a part of their student body. Top colleges strive to have a broad spectrum of student backgrounds. Yes, it <em>helps</em> to attend a top school, but it is not <em>necessary</em>.</p>
<p>Thank you to all who responded. We'll just tell D to keep the status quo and hope for the best in a couple of years. :)</p>
<p>Our school, a large public suburban only 7 years old, is pretty "so-so" The school website states that the avg. SAT m/v score for our sch. is less than 1000. Yet, the class of 2005 sent a girl to Columbia and from the class of 2007, the Val. and Sal. (twins) went to Yale and the U.S. Naval Academy and another student to West Point. So it can happen.</p>
<p>OOPS ... too late to edit ... I meant, "I think maybe the ones who ARE at a 'not so great high school' might have to work harder to be viewed as desireable to top colleges."</p>
<p>There is a flip side to this. If you go to a top high school, either public or private, the students around you are going to be applying to many of the same colleges. Personally, I think doing your very best in the high school you are at and supplementing what is offered with summer programs (JHU is one) can go far in admissions. But, you want to learn in your high school, too! Some high schools are so bad they expect almost nothing from you. You may have trouble from one of those. Test scores are more important if you come from a poor high school.</p>