Strictly speaking, an average school district would have scores in the 20-21 range so 19 isn’t that far off. That’s why scores are looked at in context. A kid who scored 30 at the high school with a 27 average is not as successful, relative to offerings and environment, as a kid who scores 26 at the 16-average High school.
The biggest difficulty for would-be High achieving kids in rural districts is the lack of curriculum rigor and access to dual enrollment/pseo (due to community colleges being too far). When only a handful of kids get to precalculus senior year the odds of an advanced junior in that class being offered Calculus senior are close to zero - and there are only so many independent study periods one can take. Online virtual schools can be fantastic but not all states have one and not all are good quality.
I recommend a very good novel presenting many different points of view (both positive and negative on each side of the “divide”) Living Witness by Jane Haddam.
Was curious, so I tried to get a sense for how many applicants to Yale were coming from my state. Statewide application data wasn’t available, so I settled for examining our high school using Naviance. The counselors enforce and monitor Naviance so the data should be fairly reliable.
State: Kansas
Setting: Suburban, public school, wealthy county (145% of state median income)
For the three years 2016-2018:
- Total Graduates: 830
- Total Yale Applicants: 5
- Yale Applicant Rate: 0.6%
Applications to other Ivy League/Stanford/UChicago were similar, ranging from 1.3%-0.6%.