would your high school's name value hurt your chance of getting in?

smileeLv · 10-27-2009, 05:51 PM

Hey,
I go to a Catholic School which extremely famous for its athletic program.
However, our academics is not that great.
I'm not an athlete, so our school's reputation for athletics doesn't really help me much.
But, one of my dad's friend told me that our school is famous for not having a very rigorous academic program, and that they do not really consider being in the top 5 of the 650 seniors as a big deal.

Would my school's reputation hurt my chance of getting into schools like yale?

wjb · 10-27-2009, 07:18 PM

Your dad's friend may not be the most reliable source of information about your prospects. Does your school use Naviance? Checking the Naviance scattergrams is the best way to see how kids from your high school have fared at a particular college.

entomom · 10-27-2009, 07:21 PM

Your school's academic reputation is unlikely to affect you if you have high standardized test scores to support your gpa/class rank.

smileeLv · 10-27-2009, 08:03 PM

what is Naviance?

wjb · 10-27-2009, 09:00 PM

Naviance is college admissions software. It has many tools, and high schools purchase those they want. One of those tools is the scattergrams feature. You can ask your GC or college counselor if your school has Naviance. (If you're a junior, though, I assume you'd know if your school had it.)

smileeLv · 10-27-2009, 09:11 PM

I'm a senior...and no, I don't think our school uses such tools. It's just that no one in my school got into an Ivy league without sports. And no one was ever accepted to Yale....Would that hurt my chances of getting into yale?

wjb · 10-27-2009, 09:20 PM

Your application's going to be judged in the context of the opportunities you've had at your school. If, as you say, your high school is mediocre, it will be important for you to have taken the most rigorous curriculum available and to have done very well. (If you're top 5 of 650, sounds like you've got that covered.) Excellent test scores will also offset the impact of a mediocre high school. And then there are those intangibles -- ECs, awards, essays, recs. They're important to schools like Yale.

I can't say whether Yale has in the past disfavored academic applicants from your school. But I can say with certainty that the fact that no one from a particular high school has ever gotten into Yale does not mean that no one ever will.

smileeLv · 10-27-2009, 10:04 PM

Thanks for your response

I don't have any awards (outside school awards) because none of the teachers at our school actually knows about them (they never even heard of AMC which I started at our school). I'm going to enter Intel STS, but I haven't done any competitions before. would that also be a big disadvantage for me? Also, I want to attach a resume, with explanations for each activities that I did. Are they going to be annoyed by this ? Or is this the right thing to do?

wjb · 10-27-2009, 11:04 PM

It's fine to attach a resume if there's not enough room for your ECs etc. in those little boxes on the Common App grid. You can put it in the Additional Information section of the Common App. It's best to keep it to one page; be succinct.

smileeLv · 10-28-2009, 07:01 PM

Also, would they compare me to other students from my school? If I get SAT score over 2300 and no one in my school ever had such a high score before, would the colleges know about this? Or would they just compare me to other applicants in the international pool? (I'm international; asian

)

km45 · 10-29-2009, 08:01 PM

I was fifth in my class of 300. Academics at our school were not very rigorous and it was not too competitive, but I got into Yale. I had no hooks or anything. IMO, they look to see if your grades and test scores are "good enough" and then weigh those (less heavily) against your ECs and (especially) your essay. Like #7 said, you need to show that you have taken full advantage of the opportunities that have been given to you.