<p>Because I moved here relatively late so I ended up taking classes at a not-so-good neighborhood high school. My rank currently is top 1%. Yet I have the opportunity to transfer to a top high school of my city. But I'm afraid my rank will drop. Should I choose to stay, or should I transfer since I know if I stay, I will never get into a school like Harvard (The rarest is to Rice, only 1 or 2 so far), most to UT or U of Houston?</p>
<p>It won’t hurt you to go to a small high school, it helped me alot. As long as you take the hardest classes available you’ll be fine.</p>
<p>Get the best education you can. The rest will fall into place.</p>
<p>Even though your rank may drop, in the long run you will get a better education, have more AP classes, higher scores on APs, SAT IIs, and SAT/ACTs. Especially if your school has a history of not sending anyone to top schools, it doesn’t make sense to stay there and hope for a miracle. Good luck.</p>
<p>but if it drops, I won’t be able to attend the colleges I love?</p>
<p>Rank is 1 factor in admissions to college.</p>
<p>Your education is more than the sum of these factors. Going to a better high school will challenge you more. This in turn will make you more “educated” and you will probably do better in the long term, including on standardized tests like the SAT.</p>
<p>If you want to go to Harvard, taking the easy way out probably won’t help you. H along with many elite schools reject plenty of valedictorians after all. Good luck!</p>
<p>Where you go to school is not going to make or break your application. If you want to take more challenging and thought-provoking classes with highly motivated students, then perhaps you should transfer. On the other hand, if you want to learn more outside the classroom (both in the “life experiences” sense and the “self-directed study” sense), then you might benefit from going to a more “gritty” and less demanding school.</p>
<p>Ultimately, if you are truly motivated and independent, your high school shouldn’t have much bearing on what you can achieve. I’d just go to the school at which you’d feel most comfortable.</p>
<p>The so called “top” high schools do NOT in any way say anything about course rigor, educational quality, teacher motivation, and available resources. Be careful in distinguishing that. It just says something about the students who go there (or something about their parents at least). </p>
<p>Chances are, unless they offer some kind of magnet program, it is just another suburban blob school over hyped by parents with no discernible educational advantage over any regular school. </p>
<p>Don’t worry about your rank. Choose a school you would feel comfortable in. Factors such as friends, should weigh more heavily in your decision. Also never look at a school’s admit record to say “you’ll never get into so and so…”. It’s you that gets into college and not the high school. I myself chose to stay in a “not so good school” over a top school and it had worked out fine.</p>
<p>That top school literaily ranks number 1 in our city, appearing as one of the top 100 high school of America. It’s located in a black neighborhood, but surprisingly, nearly half of the students are white</p>
<p>^ Every part of that statement was misguided and just plain stupid. You really need to get your priorities straight and look at your situation from a smarter perspective.</p>
<p>Point me how stupid it is as well as that “smarter perspective” that you say?</p>
<p>Comon man, get the best education you can. This shouldn’t even be a debate.</p>
<p>Mustafah had wise advice.</p>
<p>In a less demanding school, you may have more free time to learn things on your own, or follow your passions, if you love theater or music, for instance. Also, in the admissions game, coming from a school that has never sent anyone to Harvard may even be an advantage. Top schools are actively recruiting from groups that have never before had access.</p>
<p>On the other hand, if you are very academically motivated, and very much enjoy learning in classes, rather than on your own, and if you very much enjoy having motivated peers in class with you, then you should change.</p>
<p>Don’t base your choices on getting in to Harvard, either. The same principle applies to college. Sometimes you can even learn more at a state school, depending on your motivation.
If going to an Ivy League college is important to you, then the best thing to do is to do what helps your learning and development in the present, and then things will follow from there.</p>
<p>Here’s a little bit of actual information. Data I have seen indicates that Philadelphia public high schools (of which there are 50-60 total, including charters) send 80-90 students per year to Ivy League colleges. (Not that Ivy League colleges are the only desirable colleges out there, but that’s the information that got tracked.) Of those Ivy students, in recent years all but a handful – 2 or 3 per year, several of whom turn out to be recruited athletes – come from one of three academic magnet programs universally seen as the most rigorous and competitive in the system, and as among those three programs the one seen as most rigorous and competitive is the one with the most college admissions success.</p>
<p>Now, there are at least three reasons for this. The first, and probably by far the most important, is that the kind of student that hyper-selective colleges are looking for is the kind of student that, in high school, looks for the best-quality, most challenging program available. Implicitly or explicitly, applicants from other schools have to answer the question “If your are so great, why didn’t you go where you would have been challenged more?” Second, those schools, which have a culture of achievement and hard work, produce students who are more impressive than the other schools – more knowledge, better work product, better standardized test scores. Third, the colleges are familiar with those schools and their graduates. The admissions staff know what the faculty recs, GPAs, and class rank mean. A student who is the best student in the past 10 years at a neighborhood school or charter school may still not be capable of high-level work. A student who is #10 in his class at one of the recognized schools is guaranteed to be on the same level as many successful applicants. If the admissions committee thinks it’s taking a chance, which of those students looks like the smarter bet?</p>
<p>That doesn’t mean that it works out for everyone. Sure, someone might be #20 at one of the magnet schools, and really frozen out of consideration for a place like Harvard, and if he had gone to a neighborhood school he would have been #1 with parades held in his honor monthly. But even then he probably wouldn’t get a real shot at Harvard. And, substantively, without the daily competition and support the magnet school offers, he would probably be less impressive, too. Furthermore, don’t underestimate the difficulty of really shining in a bleak environment. It’s hard to get a great education at a bad school.</p>
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<p>That is true of the typical student who requires extraneous motivation and institutional supports to succeed. I’m not sure how typical the OP is, though. If is anything like me, he will appreciate the freedom that comes with having a not-so-rigorous high school curriculum (I’d say mine was rigorous enough, but not ten-APs rigorous). </p>
<p>To counterbalance the not-so-rigorous curriculum, you have to make the most of your free time: read advanced works in subjects that interest you, refine your musicianship by joining a community orchestra, give to your community in a substantial way, work part-time, etc. Harvard likes applicants who demonstrate that they are are mature, self-motivated, and independent; and there is no better way to do that than to “[shine] in a bleak environment.”</p>
<p>Basically, applicants who don’t go to the greatest schools are expected to distinguish themselves more outside the classroom, or to exhibit exceptional personal qualities learned from their surroundings or life experiences. Either of these things requires a particular temperament, and you have to decide which educational setting is best suited to yours.</p>
<p>Mine is too a public magnet school. But nearly every school in my city is some kind of magnet, and the school I’m applying to does not have any magnet at all but rigorous.
Here in my current school, I may not dream of anything above the state level because we’re inexperienced and many of the team members are not that motivated, they are easily contented with what they have. And as somebody said, it is very improtant to have some kind of state or national award. So I think I must pick the best HS because later if I get into, say, an Ivy League. I may not be used to the rigorous work in those schools… Might as well drop out lol</p>
<p>Tricky situation, but I switched from a large, easy private school to a harder, smaller, and more expensive private school in a different city; I cannot thank my parents enough. </p>
<p>I came in WAY behind academically, and sure I have less free time, but it’s better in my opinion. You want the best preparation that you can because once you get to any college, specifically the Ivies, you want to be able to hold your own once you get there (assuming you are one of the lucky ones who actually gets in). </p>
<p>You will have more options to do things within a larger high school, and you may work harder, but don’t you picture yourself working harder at Harvard than a school like ASU? (catch my drift here…) Your rank will drop, but your essays + recs, dedication to ECs, and excelling at your passion are very important.</p>
<p>I would advise you to go to the school that you feel most comfortable in, and I wish you the best of luck! :)</p>