<p>Hey,
I now attend a fairly highly competitive prep school where my GPA is in the 3.5-3.8 range, I am most likley in the top 10-20% of my grade, and I take basically the hardest classes my school has to offer. These grades (about A- average) are alright, I suppose, but not exactly Ivy League material (which I was aiming for). Now, I know almost for a fact that if I were attending a local public school my grades would be MUCH higher. I had a friend who attended my school getting a 1.5 GPA, now attends a local public school where he is 10th in his class and has about a 3.9 GPA. So my question is, do colleges at all consider the difficulty of your secondary school? I know that the most competitive colleges at least have an incling of my school's reputation due to previous applicants. So would my A- GPA hold up against say someone with a 3.9 or 4.2 from a bigger public school? Thanks for all your help.</p>
<p>ps- does applying early decision increase your chances of getting in, even if it may be a reach school?</p>
<p>Colleges take the type of high school into account. Each high school sends its "profile" along with your transcript and it shows the number of AP's offered, the gpa distribution and so forth. Sometimes a competitive hs works against its applicants because a given college will only take so many students from a given school but this is only a factor when a dozen or more apply to the same college. Rachel Toor in "Admissions Confidential" was at Duke and said that they would even look at how many people from such schools applied, were accepted and actually attended in previous years. Often, colleges have close relationships with the GC's of such schools. I don't know if you attend this type of hs. On the other hand, some high schools are feeders for certain colleges such as some New York high schools are for Columbia or Thomas Jefferson HS is for UVA. In general, you don't have to go to a "competitive" hs to get into an elite college.</p>
<p>According to published SAT scores, applying ED (not EA or SCEA) does increase your chances of acceptance. Of course, you have to be ready with your SAT scores and EC's earlier. It is not good to apply ED if you also plan to apply for finan aid since you give up your ability to compare FA packages and you may bind yourself to a very high cost.</p>
<p>Top colleges know all the competitive prep schools and what the grades mean at each. Your college counselor should easily be able to tell you GPA/rank of those that got into the schools you want from your high schools. Most high schools have college books with scattergrams so you can easily see what it takes for each college.</p>