Should I switch high schools

Applying to College
1

<p>I live in the NY area and I recently got accepted to the Catholic High School St. Francis Prep. Now I also got accepted to Queens High School for the Sciences but I didn't really like it so I'm going for Prep. The question is should i take the shsat next year and apply to bronx science or stuy again or just stay with prep? The thing is I want to aim really high and try getting into ivy league and particularly oxbridge. THe main reason why I want to go to specialized schools in the first place is because they offer AP courses not offered here at prep but considering that I didn't get into the ones I want to I'm sticking for prep until next year. So is it worth making the switch. I have two questions.</p>

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<li><p>Do colleges know which and how many classes a school offers? Will they understand that Prep only offers 16 ap classes while specialized schools offers over 20. I know that the more ap classes you take the better but do they take into consideration if the school offers them or not. So let's say that a student somehow takes all 16 ap classes at prep while a student at stuy takes about 20-25 (just making up numbers) of the 37 ap classes at stuy. Which would they most likely take in?</p></li>
<li><p>I heard that only a certain number of students from the same high school get chosen to go to the same college when their applying to because they want diversity. Does that mean that it could be harder to go into top colleges like ivy league and oxbridge because competition is way stronger there than it is here at prep or do they raise the cap for the number of students they take from a certain high school because they understand how much competition and how many people want to go there. </p></li>
<li><p>Should I stay with prep or go with stuy or bx science?</p></li>
<li><p>Do they consider reputation of school and "feeder" schools.</p></li>
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2

<ol>
<li>Yes. Your counselor will send a description of the number and type of courses at your school. Colleges will know that you only took x AP exams because only x were offered. </li>
<li>More or less. Colleges will take a larger number of students from well know, rigorous high schools but it may not be proportionally as high as the number of high performing students who attend the school It really depends. </li>
<li>Do you want to do AP classes? Some people would consider it a blessing that they have an excuse not to have to spend all their time working on AP courses. You could do something much more interesting to yourself and colleges instead.</li>
<li>Do you mean feeder schools for the high school? I don’t know but I would think they already have enough to keep track of to bother with feeders for high schools.</li>
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3

<p>Are you challenged at Prep? One good measure to understand how colleges view a high school is to look at the school’s avage SAT scores and college placement. Ask the schools for this info and it should be helpful in making your decision.</p>

4

<p>People don’t take 16 AP classes. It just doesn’t happen.
There are some people who do, but almost all of the people who get accepted to schools that you’re talking about take less than 16 APs. Some don’t take but a couple of them.
Just don’t stress so much.</p>