<p>just out of curiosity, what makes your high school competitive?</p>
<p>I wonder because any time someone posts their stats they they make sure to say they are at a "competitive/highly competitive high school," but what exactly qualifies a high school as competitive? My senior class has 31 students with an average SAT of at least 1326 (M+V)...the top third (top ten basically) have scores that average over 2100. We have 2 National Merit Finalists (plus 2 that missed by one point and 2 more that missed by 3 pts) and over 25% of the class received at least 'commended' status. Additionally, I have about 3-4 hours of homework a night after a 7.5 hour school day. The highest gpa's are as follows: 4.2, 4.2, 4.0, 3.8, 3.75ish, 3.7, 3.65, 3....and these are the same kids whose standardized scores I just mentioned. AP scores follow the same pattern as SATs by the way.</p>
<p>This is what I would consider reasonably competitive, so...whenever people say their suburban public school is "highly competitive" is this the kind of student school they're coming from?</p>
<p>It's just a hunch, but I think people are a little too quick to slap that "competitive" label on their schools to make themselves look more qualified than they necessarily are.</p>
<p>By the way, this is just a general observation; I am not trying to attack anyone's credentials...just looking for opinions.</p>
<p>There's no cutoff. Essentially, a competitive high school has a large number of very academically skilled students. Ergo, the competition for class rank or what have you is tough.</p>
<p>One of the most famous competitive high schools is a magnet school named "Thomas Jefferson" in Northern Virginia. A couple of years ago or so, the median SAT score there (CR+M) was 1485. They claimed it was the highest score for a high school in the country, and I believe them.</p>
<p>There are also different flavors. A high school of 4,000 kids that's divided between high-income and low-income kids may still be very competitive. In that case, maybe 2,000 kids or so may have average SAT scores in the 1300+ range. And that's pretty stiff competition.</p>
<p>My HS has 600 (155 Seniors) students. Had to have all A's/B's just to get into 9th gr. 580 students made first and second honors (mostly first honors 3.6 and above). Don't know avg SAT/ACT scores but do know that the top 25% of this years Senior class all have GPA's over 4.0. The school does NOT have grade inflation. We work an average of 3-4 hrs per night on hw and have more AP/Honors courses than any other private hs in the area. Don't know if that would qualify but it feels like it!</p>
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but do know that the top 25% of this years Senior class all have GPA's over 4.0. The school does NOT have grade inflation.
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For me, every school where more than 15% of the students in a course receive As is grade inflated. Imo grades are meant to show a student's academic strength relative to his/her peers, and that meaning is lost when many students receive As (even if all them them work very hard for their grades).</p>
<p>Many colleges consider the competitiveness of high schools in admissions decisions. However, what colleges consider to be competitive varies except that admissions officals, when they do speak, uniformily say that there are far fewer "competitive" high schools than high school students believe they are.</p>
<p>i consider my public high school very competitive. while the SAT avg (~1150) isn't very high because of the size of the class, we have around 20 national merit semifinalists a year plus another 50 commended. our school is around 50% minority, and students kill each other over not just grades and scores, but also leadership positions, etc. we send about 20 kids to ivies every year.</p>
<p>Hmm...well 40 students in my year...Noone has perfect GPA, not everyone does SATs. We do british GCSES and A-levels and we had 75% A's at gcse and 80% at alevel. A-levels are roughly AP standard. and A = 5
I'm not sure how that compares to a us college but USC for example is considred a standard backup for the average student by careers.</p>
<p>I think this whole subject at the end doesn't mean much, especially as we learned going OOS, even though the school profile goes along in most of these schools you are lucky to have your essays and recommendations read much less the profile. As a number of you mentioned there a multitude of factors that can enter in to this and least of all weighted GPA is the worst of it. A inner city for school may have a population that simply has to provide income to the family and therefore might not be able to take a strong AP schedule because they don't have the study time. Our guidance counselor felt that attending a strong HS in the northeast with very good performance numbers would carry some weight in the process, at least officially we never found that to be true, although we do know that these kids here are much better prepared than in other geographic areas.</p>
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For me, every school where more than 15% of the students in a course receive As is grade inflated. Imo grades are meant to show a student's academic strength relative to his/her peers, and that meaning is lost when many students receive As (even if all them them work very hard for their grades).
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<p>This is one way to look at it. Another way is that an "A" is a standard. By your reasoning, you could take the 10 fastest sprinters in the world and every single one of them could beat the world record in a single race, but because they're runing in a group of the world's fastest runners, only one could get an A and, I suppose, the last place finisher would have to get an F.</p>
<p>What about a class wherein no-one gets an A?</p>
<p>This happened with a recent physics course at my school -- highest was 69/100, lowest was -- wait for it -- 11. Ah, the joys of international school systems. (32 students in my class, and there's a pretty rigourous entrance exam even to get in. Not everyone takes the SAT, but everyone who does gets >1400 at least -- the lowest in the class is a 1430, and the highest is 1570.)</p>
<p>I was also in a physics class in high school where no one earned an A, or ever had. Typically, the highest grades are curved up in that case. And, of course, that's a textbook example of having people compete for grades instead of having standards.</p>
<p>You can also have a competitive program within a less competitive (but still very academic) school. I was in my high school's IB program with 45 other students in my graduating class of 650, and it was very competitive. My math class usually had an average of mid-50's on our in-class exams, but on the IB exams the class average was 6.5/7, which is pretty damn good by any standards. There was also a high drop rate in the program. At the start of high school in grade 10, we had 8 pre-IB science classes of 30-35 kids, and at the end there were maybe 60 who wrote IB chem HL (the furthest you can go with science at my school). There were also only 9 grads in my class (myself included) who got the bilingual IB diploma (french immersion - ie. math and history in french as well as A2 level french language). </p>
<p>You can find competitive streaks anywhere if you look hard enough.</p>
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By your reasoning, you could take the 10 fastest sprinters in the world and every single one of them could beat the world record in a single race, but because they're runing in a group of the world's fastest runners, only one could get an A and, I suppose, the last place finisher would have to get an F.
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Yep, that's the way it does happen at world championships. Even if all of them are theoretically equal in their abilities, only one can take home the $1 mio cash prize.
If you look at it from your perspective, EVERY kid at Thomas Jeffersons should have only As and all kids at certain other schools (e.g. in Germany we have schools for mentally handicapped) should have only Fs. But apparently that's not the way it goes.
Grades compare you to your classmates, standardized tests to everyone else.</p>
<p>A highly competitive HS has an average SAT close to 1400 (old), have very few people who ever get a perfect GPA over 4 years and have a third to one-half be NMS commended and above and sends 30% plus to ivies or the like.</p>