<p>“All these threads make me wonder, is my school really out of the norm? I got to a public school of 400~ kids in a class and this year we had 10 MIT admits, 12 Cal Techs, 6 Yales, 3 Harvard, 5 Stanford, and 2 Princeton, albiet with overlaps. Everyone on CC emphasizes how difficult admission to Berkeley is yet we had ~40 admits this year. Before I came on CC I had the impression these schools everyone freaks out over are challenging but not that impossible to get into.”</p>
<p>Yes. Think about this for just one minute. Just to pick on Harvard, your school got 3 Harvard admits.</p>
<p>There are 30,000 high schools in the country. And I’ll leave aside home schoolers and international students for right now.</p>
<p>Do you really, seriously, honestly think the "average’ high school has 3 kids in Harvard? That Harvard admits 90,000 students a year?</p>
<p>Of course your hs is an exception. The vast majority of hs in this country never even have any kid who applies to schools of this caliber, much less have multiple acceptances. </p>