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<p>Actually, it may mean more in that the student who did well despite attending the drop-out factory (where teacher expectations are low and peer pressure may oppose doing well in school) may be the more motivated one to go against the flow, compared to the student at the elite prep school where doing well is going with the flow (and some level of SAT test preparation is included in the course work).</p>
<p>Planner our public is not so different than yours in terms of available curriculum and this year’s graduating class is just over 150. That said, it is a top ranked high school in the state and nationally and sends a huge percentage of kids off to college including HYP and it’s ilk and of course a high percentagem to UofM and other midwest powerhouse unis. It’s not the size, nor the curriculum that makes a good student…it’s the teachers, the other kids and what they do with what they have. For ECs it’ sports and sports or band, choir, NHS, Student Council, a business club and Quiz Bowl. Colleges measure kids against their peers at their school and with the curriculum available plus their standardized test scores. If you have a val, who took the strongest curriculum available and slam dunked their national testing you have nothing to fear.</p>
<p>It sounds just average. Ours has a combined SAT of 1250 (yeah, that’s all 3 sections). It would be worse but they don’t encourage everyone to take it anymore. They say they offer 8 AP classes but in any given year they run 2 or 3. It has not hurt my kids in college admissions. The bigger problem is that it can make the transition to college tougher. There is minimal writing at our high school, even in AP classes. They do learn to write DBQs, but that’s about it. Somewhere along the way power point presentations replaced writing papers. Easier for the teachers and the students who are barely literate.</p>
<p>Op,
The parents and the students on college confidential are self-selected to be uber hyper about all things college. It’s not the average or norm of the students who are applying to college.</p>
<p>As others have noted, college ad coms will evaluate your kid based on what curriculum was available to him/her based on the school profile sheet and based on your areas’ representative and what they know about your school. So if ur kid takes 0/6 APs or 4/6 APs matters more than the actual # of APs offered by your school. Additionally, you may have to resourceful to find ECs if they are not easily available at school. Although I may argue that an EC done outside of school may be more interesting to an adcom.</p>
<p>However, if you are looking at an uber selective college, and your HS has never sent a student to that college before, then the chances are lower that kid will get in. With similar stats as a kid from a “known” entity vs “unknown” school, an uber selective college might not want to take a risk in the unknown school.</p>
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<p>Tell me about it! I went to a super public high school back in the old days. After working in ours for 13 years I still can’t get over the difference… We’re on block scheduling, so kids who want to take more math have to add extra math classes, but can do it. What the problem is, we’re using a fuzzy math program, so few actually learn what they are doing even with 2 years to try to learn it. We don’t make state standards in math. However, as long as the kid passes with a D, they get pushed on.</p>
<p>Our school offers a traditional College Alg class and MANY of the kids tell me they feel they finally learn Algebra just from that class. Many raise their math SAT by 200 points or so after they’ve taken that class.</p>
<p>So, one would think we’d ditch the curriculum, right? No. Now we’re contemplating turning Geometry into a 2 year course for all students too. After all, our state is soon to add a Geometry test (they already have Alg 1 and our students do dismally on it).</p>
<p>For all those who are saying 2000 = 2000… I wish that were true, but we actually have lower acceptance rates than similar schools. Kids who do augment their academics and get high SAT and/or SAT 2 scores can do well, but those in the match range don’t tend to do as well. There is debate as to whether the lack of AP does hurt us, but it’s just talk. Personally, I think it may be that our students go places underprepared. We’ve had students get As in our Calc class (and credit from it since it’s a DE class) who test into remedial math classes. That neither helps them nor the school overall.</p>
<p>If you’re in an underperforming school, do what you can to be sure your kids get an education. Most parents around here have no clue what their school is really like compared to a good school. I wouldn’t know if I hadn’t gone to a great school myself.</p>
<p>My kids both attended an urban high school with a large minority and English as a second language population. They took advantage of the AP classes that were offered. They both did fine in college admissions, including many colleges offering 50% merit aid to them. My son is attending a very competitive college, and my daughter will be attending a selective program at another college. </p>
<p>They actually had a couple advantages compared to students from ultra-competitive suburban high schools - 1) they were able to easily get leadership positions in many school activities, without much competition, 2) they were easily able to make varsity sports teams because a relatively small percentage of the school tried out for most of the teams, 3) they were able to achieve higher grades in AP classes, compared to if they attended a highly competitive school, and 4) they were able to graduate towards the top of their class, vs. they would have ranked lower at a more competitive school.</p>
<p>Also, because the school was not cut-throat in academic competition, they were able to max out AP classes and still have time for many activities. In addition, the teachers appreciated the students who had the strongest academic interests. One art teacher said she would have retired, except she loved the selective AP art class so much.</p>
<p>“However, if you are looking at an uber selective college, and your HS has never sent a student to that college before, then the chances are lower that kid will get in. With similar stats as a kid from a “known” entity vs “unknown” school, an uber selective college might not want to take a risk in the unknown school.”</p>
<p>I dispute this. Colleges are constantly looking to expand their footprints. If they wanted yet another kid from New Trier, they’d fill the class up with them. Anyway, I despise the sense that kids who happen to attend the same high school are “predictive” of one another, or somehow reflect on one another, or provide guidance about what to expect. It’s insulting – it’s like insinuating some other mother who lives in the same neighborhood and has kids my age is somehow predictive of or reflective on me.</p>
<p>As usual I agree with this^^colleges are always looking for kids from different places and many will take chances for a great kid. I happen to think my friend’s kids at New Tier will have a “harder” time with college admissions than mine simply BECAUSE of that environment so OP just help your student take a solid college prep course through high school and don’t worry about “other kids.”</p>
<p>I actually think it was an advantage to my son that his HS didn’t offer a large amount of AP (6) or honors (1) classes. He took the honors course and 4 of the 6 AP courses. He got accepted to all of the 10 colleges to which he applied and was well prepared for the work. He did have good HS teachers though. The reason I say it might be an advantage to have fewer AP courses is that he wasn’t expected to take 4 years of college level courses in high school because they weren’t offered at his school. He could do ECs, read and get some sleep.</p>
<p>^Agree. Our public HS is a pressure cooker - most, if not all, APs are offered; about 10% of graduating class are NMFs; 10-15 vals a year (now, I don’t understand it, but it is what it is). After my kids going through, in perspective, I wish I could send them a to different HS, maybe in the neighboring district.</p>
<p>I attended a rural high school with a very high dropout rate (why graduate from HS when you could start making big bucks right now in the oil industry), “unsatisfactory” standardized test scores (there were concerns that the school might get taken over by the state) and no AP classes. Okay, there was one AP class - AP World History - but the teacher was so bad that really all we did all semester was watch CNN Student News, and I think we might have covered like one Chinese dynasty. On top of that, I didn’t have the opportunity to take calculus or precal. I took chemistry and physics, but the teacher was horrible and didn’t take the classes seriously and we didn’t have any assignments besides literally copying pages from the textbook, so I learned nothing. Our counselor did not know what SAT II’s were or why you might want to take one. Only a few people from our top 10 ended up going on to college. And I feel like the “curse of a bad high school” has followed me through college in an important way… it’s of course my fault, I should have taken those subjects when I got into college, but I’ve heard so often that intro chemistry/physics/cal/etc classes are weed-out classes that few succeed in without prior experience. </p>
<p>Moral of the story? I don’t know; sorry, I just kinda felt like venting, I’ll go away now…</p>
<p>“CC is full of people who have access to private schools and the money to pay for it. You can’t compare experiences.”</p>
<p>DW escaped her farming town decades ago. In her day K-12 was all in one building and there were no AP classes. That’s still true today. Once every decade or so an exceptional student heads off to the state flagship.</p>
<p>My S attended a very small, very rural HS. They offered 1 AP class - calculus - his sr. year there were 10 students in the class. There were no advanced/honors sections for science, English, or history/social studies. There were some dual credit courses offered for credit through a local jr college, but most were the same high school courses also taken by the other HS students, the only difference was whether you chose to pay tuition to the college to get the final grade on a transcript.</p>
<p>The math courses were adequate, but my son always felt like he was behind in science.</p>
<p>He applied to MIT and was eventually rejected, but only after his initial deferral. (There was a student from his school who was accepted by MIT several years ago.) He was also accepted into the engineering program at Purdue and was accepted by Rose-Hulman, generally ranked in the top of engineering programs without PhD programs in the country. He wound up going to Bama because of the extremely generous merit aid and during his first semester taking a college level science course, a 300 level foreign language course, the required freshman engineering coursework, and others, he managed a GPA > 4. 0 (Bama gives 4.33 for A+s). </p>
<p>A small school may lag behind a little academically, but high school is HIGH SCHOOL. Except for a very, very few top performers, most high school level courses are very high level overviews that provide basic introductions into subjects. The quality of teachers also varies and a very good teacher passionate about what they are teaching with a sincere desire to help his/her students succeed at a small, rural school can provide a better education than a lesser-motivated teacher at one of the ‘top’ schools in the country.</p>
<p>Graduating from a LARGE HS myself with many, many opportunities and a hyper-competitive academic environment, I can also say that small schools offer the ability for students to participate in an array of activities, be involved in leadership positions, and get personal attention from teachers, counselors, and administration.</p>
<p>If you are motivated, you can indeed go to a small HS with limited opportunities and still succeed.</p>
<p>It’s not the size of the school that matters. The one I attended had a graduating class 2/3rds (or a little less) of the size of the one I work at. It’s what they offer that matters. Do they offer a decent, rigorous education for kids who can handle it? Mine did. My first semester of college was essentially a repeat of things I had learned in high school. This one does not. We have kids who succeed when they go to college, but they have a sharp learning curve on “how to study” or even “need to study.” Kids return all the time telling me about their ventures, both good and bad. If our school prepared them well, not only would more be able to get into better schools (not even talking Ivy or Top 30 - very, very few make it into those), they’d also be better prepared.</p>
<p>My youngest has his > 4.0 GPA and seldom has homework. When he does he’s finished with it in 20 minutes or so. The tests have study guides provided that are practically the test in advance. He only missed two on the World Civ final BEFORE he took the class. (I thought it was so ridiculously easy I brought a copy home to see how he would do back when he was homeschooling 8th grade.)</p>
<p>I’m sure it’s tough for some to comprehend how some schools are. I’d have had trouble believing it if I weren’t there.</p>
<p>Oh, and out of 500 school districts in my state, we “rank” somewhere in the lower 200s. There are worse schools out there. I don’t know if those schools provide a decent education for top kids or not though. The school I went to had its fair share of the non-college bound, but had top classes and teachers in them for the academically talented kids who routinely went to top colleges year after year. That’s where ours fails IMO. We teach to the middle and lower levels and assume the “good kids will make it anyway.” (Actual quote I was told by a principal before we started homeschooling.) I talk with our top kids quite a bit at school. Even they will tell you they feel shortchanged. Those who are motivated will do a ton outside of school and will do well. This is what one needs to do if in an underperforming school. If they can do things on their own in high school, they will do the same in college and will do well.</p>
<p>If they get good scores, show they have initiative, have the extra curriculars, then a lower level school won’t be as much of a problem. It’s getting the good scores via having the foundation that is the problem.</p>
<p>Thanks for all of the responses and insight–it feels less lonely at the bottom! Despite taking advantage of everything that our school has to offer, it is hard not to wonder "what if?’’ What if we lived in a school district with unlimited opportunities to learn and grow and reach full potential?</p>
<p>They will catch up fast in college.</p>
<p>If you provide them with the resources and they have the initiative, they’ll do well anyway. ;)</p>
<p>" If you provide them with the resources and they have the initiative, they’ll do well anyway."</p>
<p>Yes, yes, yes!</p>
<p>My nephews attended one of those schools which offered 20+ APs and routinely sent students to top schools. Didn’t matter in their case. Both ended up having to take remedial math in college and struggling to develop study skills.</p>
<p>There is a lot to be said for how much effort student puts into their coursework… And how much advantage they take of the opportunities available to them.</p>
<p>Just remember it’s a combo of the two. We have students at our school with high GPA who do everything asked of them. They just don’t realized the bar is low with what is asked. They end up scoring low on the tests due to not having had the material (one top student told me she had to teach herself practically everything on the Bio and Math 2 SAT 2s). This would have been where my middle son would have been had I not been an insider at the school. I would have assumed his good grades and top student standing would have meant he was sitting well. Friends of his ended up at that point. Their capability is the same (or at least very similar). Their ACT difference was 6 points. It made the difference where they could get into school and how much merit aid they were offered.</p>
<p>Incidentally, both lads got a 4.0 this past semester in college (albeit different caliber schools). It’s the (public) school academic content that let the other lad down and it didn’t start in high school. In middle school kids read books on a 4th grade reading level. Why? Because some kids can’t handle grade level reading and we wouldn’t want them to feel bad. The “good” kids will do well anyway. They don’t need a challenge or they can choose to read other books themselves. (All kids are mainstreamed for English through 8th grade.)</p>
<p>The main reason my youngest is near the top of the heap for his grade is because we homeschooled middle school and he “missed” having to stay below grade level. IF he had the initiative to do more academics outside of school, he’d still be at the top (the “top” kids do more outside of school - many wake up with the PSAT).</p>
<p>You don’t need to homeschool if yours wants to stay in school. You need to provide extra (test prep, we bought higher level textbooks off half.com or amazon, more writing, etc). Then it’s up to them whether they have the initiative or not. I try to motivate youngest, but I can’t, so, I’m shifting our expectations to lower level colleges - similar caliber to where his peers end up year after year. If he refuses to be self-motivated, he’ll do better at lower level colleges anyway. Kids need to have that initiative to do well at top schools. It’s a big part of why top schools LOOK for kids with it.</p>
<p>A huge part of the academic success of children is due to the parents. The parents indicate early to children how much of a priority education is to them. Some parents check all the papers that come home every night beginning in kindergarten, others rarely bother looking. Some make sure their kids have time set aside to do homework and ensure that it’s done. Others leave that responsibility to their children to manage (and I guarantee homework is not a priority over TV or video games or playing outside or spending time with friends to ANY child). Some parents ensure that school is a priority over all other things, others are quick to let their children stay home because they’re too tired, because a vacation takes priority, because they just don’t want to go. (Studies show over and over that attendance is HIGHLY correlated with success in school).</p>
<p>There’s a belief amongst a lot of parents that education is the school’s responsibility. That teaching children is a teacher’s responsibility. And if kids fail to learn it is ‘someone else’s fault’. Even the best, most passionate, most concerned teacher in this country works with a child for less than 9 months (minus weekends, minus holidays, minus sick days…) But your child and their success is ultimately the responsibility of the parent. Yes, my son attended a less than rigorous, small, rural school. Not only did it lack in size, but it also lacked in opportunities and in presenting a challenging environment to top students. But the reason my son was still able to excel was because i never left it up to the school system to provide for the complete education on my son. I started teaching him to read when he was 3. By kindergarten he was reading at about a 2nd grade level, by the time he was in 2nd or 3rd grade he was reading at a 6th grade level. When he was in elementary school and had vacation or holidays we would ‘play with money’. First to teach addition and subtraction. Later to introduce decimals and fractions. (Kids LOVE to ‘play with money’). Everything can be a learning experience from teaching kids to identify the alphabet letters on billboards and teaching them to count the items put into the grocery cart to making sure that a trip to the zoo includes talking about the habitats and how animals from different parts of the world are similar or different to making sure that road trips include stops in historically significant locations. A teacher is very limited what they can teach a student in a limited amount of time with a limited amount of resources. I can ensure to expose my child to so much beyond that.</p>
<p>I am pretty sure that no matter the type of school a child attended or the economic background they are from, the OVERWHELMING majority of students who go on to pursue a higher education and achieve success had parents who placed a high priority on education, that used opportunities outside of school as learning experiences, that had high expectations of their students and provided the assistance to their students to achieve them. Sure by the time those children reach high school it is their own initiative, but initially they learn that somewhere…</p>