<p>I have heard that colleges with lower acceptance rates usually only take one person from each high school, especially if the high school is located a relatively far distance from the college. This means that a person that would be qualified to go to a college may not get in because someone from their high school already got in. To what extent is this unwritten rule true?</p>
<p>I think it's bull. Look at the the thread asking where people's valedictorians have gone.</p>
<p>Not true. Colleges usually take NOBODY from a given high school... here's the math:</p>
<p>There are about 27,000 high schools (everyone has a different number, but that's close enough).</p>
<p>If you take the Top 20 from USNWR Universities, and add the top 10 from LACs, the number of matriculating freshmen is about 20,000.</p>
<p>So, less than one person from every high school will enter one of these top 30 universities.</p>
<p>However, there are high schools, and there are high schools. Private prep schools place about 20% of their students into one of these 30 universities... assuming a 150 person graduating class, that's 30 people from one school.</p>
<p>I'll bet half the high schools in this country don't send a SINGLE student to one of these top 30 ranked schools.</p>
<p>So, that notion is simple way off.</p>
<p>This question is frequently posed: quotas from individual high schools. If you search, you'll find comparable answers to the ones already given you...</p>
<p>Well, maybe it's true for top-notch private high schools, but it's not true here on the other end of the spectrum. I go to a tiny, podunk public high school where's no one's gotten into/gone to an Ivy League or comparable school in 20 years. This year, both I and another girl (neither of us URM, recruited athlete, or legacy/development cases) got into MIT Early Action.</p>
<p>The eight Ivies alone have more than 13,000 freshman. The USNWR Top 25 has close to 50,000 freshman and that's not counting the Top LAC's. There are several top schools with between 2,000 and 6,000 freshman. Some colleges may only accept one student from your school but it might be because of other factors.</p>
<p>Completely untrue. My mom was partially responsible for admitting 4 kids from the same small Washington DC prep school a few years ago.... to Yale.</p>