What colleges don't show your HS any love?

Pre-College Issues High School Life
21

<p>The Ivy League.</p>

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<p>My school is weird. It’s a 51 white/50 minority split and the test scores are below state average. However, 3 kids went to Macalester, 10+ to U of MN, 1 to Notre dame, 1 to U of Mich, 1 Georgetown(athelete.) At my school there are the AP and honors kids and then everybody else.</p>

23

<p>Any non-state school or non-community college hates us.</p>

24

<p>Do you guys really think universities take your high school into consideration? Can they really discriminate like that???</p>

<p>My school is like halcyonheather’s. A majority of our students go to the local community college or some SUNY school. The valedictorian last year got into Columbia. One kid went to Cornell (legacy). </p>

<p>I will apply to HYPSM. However, I don’t want this discrimination. Yes my school sucks and nobody has ever gone to HYPSM, but I hope they don’t toss my application because of that. There’s always a first.</p>

25

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<p>They do take your high school into consideration, but they do this in order to help kids who go to low-performing schools.
The main reason people from my school don’t get into selective colleges is that they choose not to apply. For various socioeconomic reasons, it’s not a common thing for people to care about around here. If your SAT/ACT scores are high, if you’ve taken the most rigorous courses possible and gotten high grades in them, if you’ve taken advantage of the extracurricular opportunities that were available to you…then you’ll be competitive at top schools.
In a way colleges actually seek out kids who had to go to suckish high schools, because those kids provide socioeconomic diversity. They want to find “diamonds in the rough,” and they will judge your accomplishments in context. They understand that some kids had fewer opportunities/connections than others.</p>

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<p>To add on to halcyonheather’s point, some colleges have “feeder” high schools, places where they are very familiar with the curriculum, history, competitiveness, etc. of the high school as well as the caliber of the graduates that they turn out. For example, schools like Stuyvesant and Exeter tend to be feeders for Ivies.</p>