IT seems like every other chances thread I read mentions the fact that that kid goes to “the hardest private school in the country” 
I attend a public school that’s pretty good, but It’s not my fault I can’t pay for a private school education. Will this make me a less competative candidate when I apply to colleges?
thnx
<p>the face that I put on the previous thread isn't the one I was looking for..haha, I'm bad at typing :)</p>
<p>If you go to a decent school, you should have no problem going where you want. I go to a public school in the suburbs of St. Louis, nothing special, and we have our share of kids that go to Duke, and similar places. Just last year we ended up with a kid getting into Stanford. So going to a private school doesn't matter. Now if you go to like a Exeter, deerfield, or w/e, then I could see you getting a slight boost.</p>
<p>BTW we send a decent amount of around 10-12 people to WashU ever year. Then again I live close to WashU, and a lot of students are afraid to go out of state. So WashU is a school our top students always put into consideration.</p>
<p>i thought that people on the other end of the spectrum (i.e., people from really bad schools) would get more of a boost than kids from overrepresented schools. then again, I have no idea what I'm talking about. :p</p>
<p>Rikataka notes,"i thought that people on the other end of the spectrum (i.e., people from really bad schools) would get more of a boost than kids from overrepresented schools"</p>
<p>Response: I am sure that to some extent that is true. However, what was told to me by a trustee at Yale was that those that attend private high schools are considered to come from wealthier parents than those that attend public high schools. Thus, these private high schools kids won't need financial aid! This is why, if you check the admission rates to top schools from private schools, they have a higher percentage of those that get into the top most expensive schools than those found at public schools. Again, this is what was told to me from a Yale trustee,whether that be right or wrong.</p>
<p>I think a competitive school helps in an abstract way.</p>
<p>My school has a very good reputation for harsh grading policies and rigorous curriculum, even in what would be considered "easy" classes at public school. (not honors or AP). Our average SAT scores are significantly above average, we send about 5-10% to Ivy/S/MIT, and we send about 70% to top 50 schools.</p>
<p>The University of Michigan has a major love affair with my school; they get so many applications that they're extremely familiar and they know what a good student looks like. About 60-75% of our student body gets accepted to Michigan, and a huge portion of them go there. We have the highest matriculation rate to UM (percentage-wise) of any school in the country.</p>
<p>I think the major differences that come are knowing that a student with a 3.6 and average classes actually tried, whereas at some schools if you're taking a regular schedule almost anyone can get a GPA like that without putting in any effort at all. What seems to be a meager list of statistics at another school may be quite impressive at a competitive school. (example: we sent a kid to harvard with a 3.7 this year and one to brown 7year med program with a 3.5, neither one of them were top 20% and neither one were in all honors/AP.) And we're not a "feeder" school by any means, unless you count Michigan.</p>
<p>25% of kids at my school, St. Paul's, go to Harvard, Princeton, or Yale. I assume the numbers are pretty similar at Exeter, Andover, Hotchkiss, Taft, Lawrenceville, Deerfield and Choate. So, judging by the fact that 94 percent of kids at HYP are top 10% of their class, you can see that you get a pretty large advantage going to a highly competitive prep school, as it would be obviously be statistically impossible for 25% of the class to be in the top 10%.</p>
<p>Whats really weird is that according to our school counselors, Michigan has been hounding at them to send more people from our school to them. So prestige does matter... a bit i guess.</p>
<p>Top high schools, public or private, help a lot. I go to one of the top public high schools in the country, and I think these stats show that going to a top public helps a lot. We may not send 25% of our class to HYPS like some top private schools, but we send pretty much the top 50% of the class to great schools.</p>
<p>Here are where the most recent graduating class is headed: (I got this from the senior issue of our school paper)</p>
<p>Ivy League:</p>
<p>3 Harvard
2 Yale
3 Penn
6 Dartmouth
4 Brown
2 Cornell</p>
<p>Top Non-Ivy Schools:</p>
<p>3 Stanford
7 Duke
20 Northwestern
8 Washington-St. Louis
10 Chicago
4 Georgetown
7 Notre Dame
3 Vanderbilt
1 Emory
1 UC-Berkeley
1 UC-Santa Barbara
2 Wake Forest
2 Tufts</p>
<p>Big Ten Schools:</p>
<p>8 Michigan
16 Wisconsin
84 Illinois </p>
<p>LACs:</p>
<p>1 Williams
1 Amherst
2 Swarthmore
7 Wellesley
1 Pomona
3 Carleton
4 Bowdoin
2 Claremont McKenna</p>
<p>They def. can help. I go to Germantown Friends School, in Philadelphia PA, and about 25 of our seniors every year get accepted to Penn. Funny, I'm applying there too...</p>
<p>25 out of a class of about 90 or so kids.</p>