<p>Admissions officers each go through a few dozen applications per day in “reading season”. The applications are segregated IS and OOS for public schools that see a significant number of OOS applications and must limit their OOS admissions. They don’t segregate by HS. They are very busy reading from January to March. They know before they start the approximate numbers (portion) of IS and OOS admission offers they must produce to reach their targets after yield. The applications are reviewed in random order. Two admissions officers read each file separately, and they each get a vote; if they vote the same, that’s the decision. If they vote differently, the application goes to committee, or gets kicked up to Dean of Admissions, for tiebreaker.</p>
<p>With the possible exception of a few nationally famous High Schools, they neither know nor care how many applications came from, and how many admission offers went to, students from a particular HS in the present or a previous application cycle. They get the school’s information when they do the reading, to put your application and transcript in context, but your HS really doesn’t matter beyond that. They could black out your HS’s name and do their jobs exactly the same.</p>
<p>Note that, in generally, colleges want to admit the strongest possible well-rounded <em>class</em> they can get. They are not as interested in well-rounded <em>students</em>. If you were first percussionist in your HS ensemble, but their orchestra is full and the gaps they really need to fill are that the English department needs a writing student, and the Chemistry department needs a Physical Chemistry major, and the Engineering department needs an experienced firefighter to study Fire Protection Engineering, and they have too many prep school kids and not enough low income URM students to bring that perspective, well… your percussion experience is nice, but it doesn’t fill any gaps in their incoming class.</p>