Does going to an ultra-competitive high school help my college admissions chances?
We work with students from so many locations including New York, New Jersey, Long Island, Massachusetts, Florida, China, and Korea. They come from both public and private high schools and have unique goals. Some want to attend Ivy Leagues while others aim for public universities, and some want to apply only to engineering programs while others are looking for immersion in the arts. They are athletes, writers, activists, language enthusiasts, scientists, and mathematicians. We work with all types of students, whether they feel like they would have liked to raise their GPA more earlier in high school or are valedictorians.
A large number, not all, of students who come to us for help have attended very competitive high schools. In the Metropolitan New York area, these are smaller private schools such as Collegiate, Trinity, and Spence and larger public schools such as Stuyvesant, Hunter College High School, and Bergen County Academies.
Many of these students have extremely high test scores and GPA due to the rigor of their coursework, but not all. Some have come to us with ACT scores in the lower 30s, SAT scores in the 1300s, and GPAs below 2.5 on a 4.0 scale. They and their parents understand that test scores and grades are important and that at their competitive high schools, their numbers fall toward the lower end of the range. We will answer some common questions about this situation below.
Do colleges know about their schools?
College admissions officers probably know about your high school if it is very prominent. In fact, if you are applying to a selective college, they’ve most likely reviewed applications from your competitive high school for several years.
In the event that they do not know about your high school, or even if they do, something called a “school profile” comes in handy for them. You can see an example of some of these here (the Horace Mann School in NYC) and here (Jericho HS on Long Island).
Every year, your school’s college counselors send a school profile to colleges. Using these profiles, colleges get a deeper understanding of the rigor of your high school, what resources are available there, how other students perform on their report cards, APs, ACTs, and SATs, how many A’s were given out, et cetera. That way, they can make a more informed decision about your admission by considering the following: Did you take advantage of rigorous classes and extracurricular resources if offered? Where do you stand in your class if GPA rankings were to exist? How hard or easy is it to get an A or B at your school? It would be very difficult to get into an Ivy League college with a 3.8 from a regular high school, but it would be a little less unlikely if you had a 3.8 or 3.7 at a private high school where the average ACT score is 35. The rigor of these high schools is well-known by colleges.
Does it help if they went to a very prestigious or competitive high school?
It can, depending on your school. At the large, prestigious schools with 200-500 students per grade, it does not help much. The sheer number of students at these schools that actually have 4.0 GPAs (or close) and SAT scores above 1550 is too high. If you have a 3.1 GPA and a perfect SAT score at a school like this, of course, the SAT score will help you a bit, but not when applying to big reaches where other applicants from your school have 3.9+. Colleges have only so many seats in one year, so they have to make some tough choices. They are likely to admit the student with the 3.9 over the student with the 3.1 GPA.
If you do go to a large, prestigious school, you should try your best to stand out amongst the sea of perfect scores and grades at your high school by building an intriguing extracurricular profile and writing a showstopper essay. But at these large schools, Ivy Leagues and other colleges where the acceptance rate is below 10% will be almost impossible if you have a lower GPA.
As mentioned in a previous answer, it can help a bit if you went to a very rigorous and prestigious private high school. For example, we’ve had students get into Ivy League colleges with a 3.7 from one of these “feeder” prep schools. These are students who have eye-catching extracurricular profiles and essays. However, if your GPA is on the lower side of 3.0, it is almost impossible to get into Ivy Leagues and other colleges where the acceptance rate is below 10%.
If you have a lower GPA at one of these well-known high schools but would still like to apply to some very high reaches, it makes most sense for you to first create a college list that fits with your grades and test scores, then add on what we call “reach plus” colleges on top of that. You might end up applying to a higher number of colleges, but this is the most realistic and safe strategy in your situation. You can read more about “reach plus” colleges here.
Of course, there are more nuances to these basic guidelines when we consider the student more holistically, but this is a good starting point to understand the role a high school’s reputation and rigor play in college admissions.