<p>A question from a student on another thread got me thinking. Does the "rep" of your childs high school help them get into the top colleges (and I don't mean the expensive prep schools)? If your HS has a track record of kids getting into HYPS does it help a student? </p>
<p>S1 had AP physics his senior year (public school 2000 kids 9-12). In that single class there were kids going to Stanford, Yale, MIT, Caltech and Duke. At graduation this year I saw (from looking thru the program) kids going to Harvard, Stanford, UChicago, Johns Hopkins, Cornell, Wake Forest, Bucknell, Carleton, ..... and many other great schools, seems to be no end of the great colleges kids from our school are getting into. </p>
<p>I feel a good HS gives a good student the tools needed to get into a top school and the kid does the rest. </p>
<p>I don’t know if it helps but is not necessary. My son is attending a top Ivy and he is the first student from his school at any Ivy. His school is just a “run of the mill” public with no history of sending students to any top schools. With that being said, one of his classmates was accepted into Stanford so it was a great year for his class. ;)</p>
<p>I think it helps, but it is not necessary. I know for example the Harvard rep always made it clear that she knew kids from our high school were well prepared for college. But maybe she says that to every high school she visits! In any event, nearly every year a handful of students get into Harvard and lots to the other top schools. I think this is particularly true for colleges that use regional reps, so that they don’t have to get to know every school in the country.</p>
<p>It would be asking a LOT to expect every admissions officer from every elite college to know the academic situation at every one of the 26,000 public HS’s and 10,000 private HS’s in America. “Hey Bill, we’ve got an applicant from Sesser. Is the high school good there?”</p>
<p>Are certain HS names well-known? Sure. But Sesser HS? Um, probably not so much.</p>
<p>I believe that every high school falls into a broad category that adcoms can access. Sometimes going to a rural public school can help…it allows the student to stand out more.</p>
<p>Adcoms know that for the vast majority of students, their hs had nothing to do with their own personal choice - it was simply where their parents happened to choose to live. So they aren’t going to “reward” a kid for the good fortune of going o a better public hs. It’s all in context. A college made up solely of students from New Canaan, Scarsdale and New Trier isn’t interesting.</p>
<p>Readers are interpreting “rep” differently - I am reading it as “reputation” of the school.</p>
<p>There are definitely feeder schools to the top colleges. There are two public high schools in my city and each one is known to feed into different top colleges. My kids’ guidance counselor told me so, and I have studied the information published by the high schools for many years, as well as knowing the families.</p>
<p>I have also observed that the main local private school feeds into one LAC, and coincidentally several of the teachers at the school are affiliated in some way with this LAC, which isn’t a very top (ASW) school, but probably a top 10 LAC. And, this top private school has fewer students accepted to the top unies. </p>
<p>So, two students being equal - the one at the feeder school will be admitted instead of the student at the non-feeder school, imo.</p>
<p>I think that, at the most selective schools, the admissions officers responsible for a particular part of the country do familiarize themselves with the schools in their docket. That way they can tell the difference between having a particular GPA or rank at High School A (zillions of high-achieving kids who take scads of APs and are all going to very selective schools, lots of competition, very high expectations from the teachers, an A in an AP class really means the kid is doing college-level work) and the same GPA and rank at High School B (few college-bound students, not much competition, kids getting A’s for work that would get a C at High School A).</p>
<p>And they also can take note of a kid who really accomplishes something despite coming out of High School B, where there probably isn’t a coach preparing a bunch of kids for the various national academic competitions or a cohort of high-achieving classmates who spur achievement, or a guidance counselor to tip kids off that preparing for the standardized tests would be a good idea.</p>
<p>I was shocked when the regional rep we encountered by chance during a visitation day at a small New England LAC asked D where we she was from, and then followed that up by asking if she went to high school A or high school B – the two high schools in our town, 1500 miles away.</p>
<p>My quibble with the above is that I do think it’s possible for there to be a High School A which offers the requisite rigorous curriculum and students all bound for highly selective schools, yada yada, and High School B which could offer comparably rigorous academics but the students aren’t as bound for highly selective schools because the culture of the parents / area is to keep the kids close by, in-state, parents aren’t as sophisticated and as expansive as the parents in High School A, etc.</p>
<p>Our ad comm friends say that your high school very much plays a factor in getting in vs not getting in, especially at more competitive colleges and especially if students from your high school have done well at that school. I can look at the courses offered at our school and look at the courses offered at the school in the next town over and tell you that a top 10% student from our high school will have to work a heck of a lot harder to get into that top 10% than a kid from the next high school over. To make top 10% in our school a student is taking a full load of AP or harder classes where a student in the neighboring school is taking AN AP class each year. School sizes are roughly the same, socio-economics are roughly the same and actually probably a bit “wealthier” in the neighboring town, but academics are more the forefront at our school and sports are more important at the other school. If it comes down to a student from our high school vs a student from the other high school getting in, our student would win, all else being equal.</p>
<p>I used to work in admissions, and while not as important as classes, GPA, and ACT/SAT the high school can be important. Most colleges have “feeder” high schools and there is a reason for that. Admissions reps need to know if the prospective students can handle the work and graduate. Also, if you are from a wealthier/better school than the admissions representatives know that the student will probably not drop out due to money. Plus, a lot of incoming freshman like to know kids at the institution before they enroll, so there’s another reason why “feeder” high schools exist.</p>
<p>Pizza-it’s simple, academics are not stressed, the kids are not pushed the same, not as much is expected of them so an A in a class there isn’t the same as an A in a class at our school. It’s pretty simple to understand really.</p>
<p>OP here, Clarification; a few perhaps didn’t read my original post closely, I don’t mean the college representative to your HS, I meant the reputation your high school has with any given college. I personally think if a HS gains a great reputation and proves its kids are very well prepared it can help more kids get into those selective schools. Thanks for your opinions everyone.</p>
<p>“it’s simple, academics are not stressed, the kids are not pushed the same, not as much is expected of them so an A in a class there isn’t the same as an A in a class at our school. It’s pretty simple to understand really.”</p>
<p>Though I expect that 5 on the AP test earned by students there is the same as a 5 on the AP test earned by students at your school.</p>
<p>Marlene-that’s the point, they aren’t earning 5’s on AP tests, their AP “passing” rate is really low and a 3 is a “good” score. Colleges don’t use AP test scores for admissions but they do use GPA’s and class rank and that is where the issue lies and that is were the reputation of your high school helps. </p>
<p>Put the question this way, should a student at an easy high school get the same consideration as a student at a difficult high school? Colleges want kids that will succeed in college and if they haven’t been pushed in high school, doing well in college is all that much more difficult. Not that it can’t be done but odds are not in their favor.</p>
<p>Our son was talking to a prof in his intended major at one school. The prof didn’t know much about our high school so he was asking what the curriculum was to gauge preparedness for this major. He had been talking about how hard is and how he sees kids from some schools really struggle and fail because they just haven’t had the prep work in high school to keep up with the kids that did. Once DS told him about the classes he took and was taking he changed his tune and started talking about all the positives about the program, etc. because he knew DS would be well prepared to handle the work. It makes a huge difference what kids are exposed to in high school.</p>