Can any of the bay area High school students or alumni recommend which high school should I go to where my chances of getting to UC Berkeley and UC Davis are high. I am a decent student with a GPA of 4.0/4.0 and if you see just the core courses about 5.5/6.0 at the end of 9th grade. Will be moving into 10th grade.
Where in the Bay Area? Public or private? Catholic or otherwise?
PUBLIC and San Jose area (including Cuppertino Fremont, and east bay)
You might want to think about whether you want to be the big fish in a small pond or one of many fish in a large pond. That is to say, Mission San Jose HS in Fremont had >100 National Merit Semifinalists last year. Are you wanting that kind of competition? There are several high-achieving, high-stress high schools on the peninsula and probably also in the Cupertino area. A high GPA freshman year doesn’t necessarily mean you want a high-stress school. What math did you take in 9th grade?
You may want to make a thread in the High School Life forum (http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/high-school-life/) where high schoolers from that area are more likely to see your question and may give you more input.
The distance from Cupertino to Fremont/East Bay is pretty significant when taking traffic into consideration. Do you have that much control over where your parents choose to live? Housing prices in the SF Bay Area are lots higher than in any part of Texas. So, you may realistically be limited as to where your parents can afford to live. California high schools, especially the really strong ones, are unlikely to let you attend as a transfer student living outside the district or even from one high school to another in the same district.
I’d imagine the API scores are pretty good indicators
http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/ac/ap/apireports.asp
you can also use this tool to see how many UC direct admits from any CA high school systemwide - or by campus.
http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/infocenter/admissions-source-school
Like @ynotgo said Isn’t getting into most of these high schools based on where you live? The housing prices are very high in some of these areas.
How much your parents can afford will also play a big role as some of the houses in good school districts are insanely expensive.
I was in the same situation (sorta) as my family was looking at schools before buying a home, but then discovered that some of the houses there in Northern California went into the millions so my family and I opted not to live there.
Note that there have been no API scores since 2013 because of the changeover from the old state test to the SBAC tests, and the state is moving to some loosely-determined multiple measures dashboard thingy which might be available in 2016. But, the old API scores should tell you something. What that something is, could be debated however. Basically, the overall API scores give you a pretty good clue about the racial and socioeconomic makeup of the school. So, you can decide whether that is important to you.
The UC tool by high school campus is pretty handy.
As a student at one of these very high-stress high schools, I’d say only to go if you think you can handle it. You will be going to school with people who are literal geniuses and are often pushed very hard by their parents (one kid at my school got every single question right on the AP Physics C: Mechanics test as a freshman). Sure, my school sends ~40 kids to Berkeley a year, but stress levels are incredibly high.
I also second all of @Ynotgo’s comments. I also agree with the comments on price–house prices in these areas are very, very high. Many reach past the million dollar price point.
What, exactly, are you looking for in a school besides them sending kids to good colleges?
(PM me if you want names of specific schools and stuff for more specific examples.)
@chessmaster123 I live in the Bay Area, I can tell you about the schools in my district. If you want, feel free to PM me.
As I recall, @chessmaster123 has to post a few more times somewhere before being allowed to PM people.
@Ynotgo He pmed with me.