If my friend and are applying to the same school with the same major, am I competing more against him or the rest of the applicant pool primarily?
The applicant pool.
@NotVerySmart I know that your still competing against the entire pool but what if there were two spots left and 3 students- 2 from my school and 1 from a diff one- (all have exact same qualifications) would they take one from each school or what?
^^^^That is too hypothetical to answer. None of us sits in on the admissions discussions. And the answer could be different for different schools. At this point all you can do is put your best application forward, wish you friend luck and see what happens.
Also, schools don’t generally do direct comparisons of students, so that situation wouldn’t really happen.
@usualhopeful I believe colleges do limit how many students they accept from a given high school. I have no idea exactly how the do it and I’m sure there is variation, but to a certain extent, yes, you are competing directly with your classmates.
^^^^ I have never heard of colleges having a maximum quota from a particular HS.
Not exactly a quota and I’m sorry I don’t have a reference. I thought it was common knowledge. I think it might be mentioned in The Gatekeepers.
There are numerous reliable mentions on cc and elsewhere about patterns of acceptances by certain colleges from certain HSs. And I’m not just talking Ivy League but my guess it is less prevalent at colleges with higher acceptance rates.
Colleges want geographic and socioeconomic diversity and those characteristics are correlated with high school attended.
I don’t mean to imply a rule set in stone. I have also seen reliable posts about a single student at a school being the first to go to a certain college, loving it, and talking it up when home, leading to other students applying and more acceptances from that HS.
I can tell you from Naviance at my D’s HS, for some colleges there is a distinct boost in acceptance rate, while for others there is a detriment. For most colleges, the acceptance rate is similar to the overall rate.
^^^I guess we can agree to disagree. It was not the case at our HS nor was it the case in my HS way back when – from what I saw the number of students getting into certain top tier schools changed annually based on the quality of the applicants. I really do think (and what I’ve heard from admissions officers) is that the competition is more based on applicants withing a geographic area and not by a particular HS.
I do agree that if a student is the first to attend a college from a HS and has a positive experience and if that gets relayed back to the guidance counselor and/or younger friends that it could lead to an increase in applications to that college from the HS.
One year my college took 4 out of 6 applicants to my university in a year with a less than 14% acceptance rate overall, two years after that it took 0 out of at least 3.
Although this is anecdotal and may not apply to every college, I think it does show that it is not universal practice to pit students from the same high school against one another in admissions.