Applying to colleges without a track record of applicants from a HS

My son goes to a fairly small private HS (~100 kids in the class) and they tend to prefer private R1s and SLACs. I’m thinking we might want to apply to some OOS publics with which his school doesn’t have much of a track record. What are the issues/pros/cons? Is there a reason to prefer colleges with more applicants from his school?

This is all early days as he’s only a sophomore, but so far at least, he’s doing well and his school profile does break down GPA into groupings and he’s in the top section, so maybe that transparency will help to provide context? I’m just a little concerned that when I look at the matriculation lists provided, not many kids seem to go to these schools.

I’m guessing there are a few forces at play here.

  1. Did anyone apply? When students apply to public schools, they generally stick to in-state schools since the tuition tends to be lower.
  2. Did they get accepted? Schools are, indeed, more likely to accept students from schools that have a track record of sending students there, but this doesn’t mean students that are not from these schools will have no chance at all.

My advice: talk to the school counselor. They tend to have the best intel on previous admissions records of the school.

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Out of state publics have relatively transparent admissions so I don’t think this is a worry. With the exceptions of U Michigan, Berkely, UCLA, UVA and Georgia Tech (correct me if I’m missing any) it’s not going to be complicated to figure out if an applicant is competitive or not. And maybe U Washington for CS.

Need money? Then it’s hard. But if it’s just admissions, I’d put this out of my head as a worry.

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My kid attended a public high school. She applied to two colleges that no one from her school had previously applied to. In fact both were private universities and her school counselor thought they were publics and also told her she would not be accepted.

Apply if your student wants to when the time comes.

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Agree with your point - I would just add UT-Austin and UNC-Chapel Hill as super-competitive publics for OOS, and also UIUC for CS majors.

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I don’t see an issue at all.

Your kid will be evaluated in the context of the school. I’m sure every year colleges get apps from HSs they don’t know.

Apply where you want without concern - but of course, make sure the list is balanced.

I don’t think anyone from my kids school in a number of recent years has attended his college of choice (syra cuse) and he attended in essence a top 10 public high school within our state. Although our school is decently ranked, the parents are not rich and financials are important thus most college bound kids go to instate or state adjacent publics.

You should check with your school’s college counselor. Just because you are unaware of students attending those schools doesn’t mean no one applied. The college counselor will have that info. If your school uses Naviance or similar, you can find information there.
It is also very early to be choosing schools. As your student matures and fine tunes his interests, best fit schools for him will be easier to select.

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