<p>lol, excuse the title, that was just to get some views.
But im talking about MY high school not Stanford
My high school never sends kids to top institutions and has NEVER sent a kid to Stanford,
Is this an advantage or disadvantage??</p>
<p>btw, my town or whole radius within 60 mi of town hasnt sent anyone to stanford either. (atleast in the last ten years)
Does this help at all?</p>
<p>It helps because it’s easier for you to stand out. It’s YOU, not your high school, that’s applying. Admissions officers will read your application in context of your surroundings and your opportunities, so go above and beyond. Create the opportunities!</p>
<p>I have a different take about this. Your high school can be a mixed factor. The admissions office keeps a rating of the academic rigor in most high schools throughout the U.S. and a rating of all of the schools in California. Each admission officer is assigned a geographic region. If they are unfamiliar with your high school, they may look up its rating. Of course, if you supply AP test scores with all 5’s, that would trump a school with a low rating.</p>
<p>If other students at your high school have stronger applications than you, that would be a problem. While you are not competing directly against your fellow high school students, I have been told by an admissions officer that it is an indirect consideration. </p>
<p>The factor that supersedes all else is that Stanford and the Ivy League schools are becoming much more holistic in their approach. Holistic is code for “using whatever criteria appeals to the admissions officer at the time she reads your application”. All admissions departments would deny this, of course. But just look at the acceptance and rejection results on this forum. Do some of them make any sense to you?</p>
<p>I believe 90% of the chance threads here are by students that have already made up their mind to apply to Stanford and they are just fishing for positive remarks. They know as well as everyone else, there is no way for anyone to predict whether a particular student will be accepted or not.</p>
<p>Just a few notes re cardfan: </p>
<ol>
<li><p>Stanford et al. are NOT “becoming much more holistic”. They have ALWAYS been holistic. You just tend to notice the difference it makes more when they have to reject so many qualified students.</p></li>
<li><p>“Holistic” is not code for “whatever someone feels like at the moment”. It does mean that there is no single set of criteria that controls, or any metric (like test scores) that dominates all others. One thing it definitely IS code for, however, is “we read the essays and they matter”. Another thing is “we admit students to foster cultural and ethnic diversity”.</p></li>
<li><p>Most universities, including Stanford, have extensive procedures to ensure that admissions decisions are NOT made by one person on an idiosyncratic basis. Usually, each application is read by at least two people, and either of them can advance it to the next level (or sometimes solicit other readers who would get involved in that decision). Applications are generally scored internally on multiple criteria by the readers, and there is usually a process for identifying and resolving gross score disparities on any particular criterion. The difficult decisions (which may represent 10-25% of acceptances, depending on the college and class size) are made by a largish committee, usually by democratic vote, subject to review by the Dean of Admissions. So, while an outsider may not understand or like the decisions, they are very meaningfully the result of a collective process, not someone’s daily whim.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>My definition of holistic was made in a figurative sense to mean that an applicant does not know what portion of his/her application will appeal most to the admissions officer. I probably should not have made that statement so lightly. </p>
<p>I am firmly convinced in my discussions with Stanford alums and others that all essays are read very carefully and more than once by an admissions officer. Although, it was my understanding that not all 30,000 applicant’s essays were read in full by more than one person. In any event, all essays are given great importance and are thoroughly considered by at least one officer.</p>
<p>The important message I would like to give is that any serious applicant should take time and care in writing their essay. It factors greatly in your chances for admission. </p>
<p>Also, the only way to be certain you would not be accepted is to not apply. Based on talking to my son’s friends at Stanford, almost no student applying to Stanford thinks they will be accepted. If you like Stanford, no matter what your high school or background, I say give it your best shot and see what happens.</p>
<p>I thought that Stanford never rate any school?</p>
<p>cardfan and JHS, two informative posts by well informed posters.</p>
<p>InvisibleMan023, I think I know what you’re asking, maybe. You’re wondering is it a hook that your school hasn’t sent anyone to Stanford ever.</p>
<p>I don’t know exactly what the answer is but my opinion is that it helps for getting into colleges to come from a good school. Don’t read more into that than I mean. A good school can be a good private school or it can be a good public school but there are other public schools that aren’t as good.</p>
<p>I don’t think the schools want to penalize the students that come from the schools that aren’t as good, but it is very difficult for those students to rise to the level of the students coming from really good schools. It’s just because there are so many applicants, it becomes a question of standing out and your school won’t stand out except in the sense that it has never had a student accepted to Stanford before. It’s a hook in a way, but I don’t know.</p>
<p>But they want to give everyone a fair shake as much as possible so if you have the credentials, the grades, the test scores and the really high class ranking then you very well could get into Stanford. Good luck!</p>
<p>If you have a SAT score of 2300+ while your school’s average is only 1200, you would have a good chance to get in. Personally I helped a kid like that get into Harvard. He was the first ever National Merit Scholarship finalist in the school history, he was the number one kid in probably back to 10 years. But, compare him with a lot of kids I know, he was just an average one in terms of test scores and grades, possibly other measures.</p>
<p>About essay, my view is totally different from others. It is probably only worth less than 20% of overall weight. After getting into Yale SCEA last year, my S just put the stuff together, sent in to Stanford and got in. I was expecting a rejection though. There are certain things Stanford is looking for, we just don’t know what they are.</p>
<p>To have an idea of what happens to your application, read this. It’s not particular to UChicago.</p>
<p>[Newsweek.com:</a> Society: Inside The Admissions Game](<a href=“University of Chicago News”>University of Chicago News)</p>
<p>Some things about that link above are nice to read (I have read this before), and others make me cringe. In particular, I recall a line about how some guy presented ideas that most people at the school wouldn’t understand, and this guy’s application was deferred on that basis. Now I don’t know if this whole thing is realistic, but that’s one of the types of things that I’d hope not to be true. </p>
<p>As for your question OP, the reason I think standing out from your school will be a good thing is that it could send the message that you really have a special energy and passion, and perhaps this would make you more likely to come to a great school and actually use its resources. One of the things I would hope admissions officers look for is not for high achievement, but evidence that the given individual really will make his/her admission to the school “worth it” – i.e. that they will really make something of their years that draws something unique from the given high caliber school. </p>
<p>If this were graduate school, I would generally say coming from a good school is a huge advantage, because the criteria for admission are purely academic, and what you do at a good school typically means more.</p>