College I'm applying to has never had applicants from my school

Applying to College
1

The thing I’m worried about is that this school seems to evaluate its applicants very holistically, but I come from a non-stellar very large public school (~3,000 students) where the guidance counselors are spending a lot of efforts trying to push students into graduating from high school and maybe pursuing a community college degree. So I’m afraid my counselor recommendation will be lacking in that regard - I’ve made an effort to talk to her but all she does is push generic “A-G requirements” and making sure I’m taking the prereqs to enroll in the local cc upon graduation. Don’t get me wrong, comm coll is awesome and all, but the places I want to apply to are a bit harder than “graduate with a hs diploma and enroll for classes.”

This may seem contradictory to what I said earlier, but a small portion (consistently ~70 or 80ish of each graduating class, myself included) of our school are enrolled in IB classes and pursuing IB diplomas - no AP courses are offered. We generally shoot for 4-year universities right off the bat and the classes we take are actually quite demanding and rigorous compared to what the rest of the school takes. We consistently send some of these few IB students to top places year after year (of those recurring in the past 10 years: most notably quite a few to Stanford and Duke, but also others such as Cornell, CMU). My guess is that these schools recognize the rigor of our IB curriculum while evaluating their entire app, which may play into why they accept a lot of bright students from our school year after year (correct me if you think otherwise or have something to say about my assumption).

So here’s what I’m concerned about: school that I want to apply to has never had a single applicant from my school - IB or otherwise. They might not know how little and rigorous our IB program is, and instead notice the vast majority of the students here coming from uncertain directions and that most of them fail to even graduate from community college. I know my teachers well, but I’ve been unable to get a meaningful conversation with my guidance counselor despite my efforts. She has to deal with a lot of at-risk students and not a lot of focus goes on students with high aspirations, which is totally understandable - the vast majority of students fall under that spectrum. We have a separate IB counselor, but she’s very busy as an IB English / IB Psychology teacher and club advisor as well as simply having to worry about all the IB seniors’ graduation / postgraduation directions. The problem is since she’s busy not only being a counselor but as a teacher and club advisor, the few times I’ve been able to talk to her she’s mostly seen me as very stressed and maybe overly slaving about grades and tests.

I tried to include any relevant information above, and the main questions I have are this:

  1. How will the school view me in context to the school and area I’m coming from, and will it be bad for me? It’s a very small school and it definitely seems to put a lot of context on not just stats in GPA and tests, but on essays, counselors, the identity of the student and the school itself.

  2. How can I get a good recommendation from either my guidance counselor or IB counselor? One is very busy and I didn’t seem to leave a good impression of myself on my few meetings with her, and the other one simply has too many students to keep track of and has little knowledge of competitive college admissions.

EDITED for simple grammar mistakes.

2

This implies that you are in California. “A-G requirements” generally refers to the high school course requirements that UC and CSU (the state university systems in California) require for applicants out of high school. Since a very large percentage of college-bound high school students in California go to a UC or CSU campus or a community college, it is not surprising that counselors at a typical California high school are focused on such college destinations.

It does appear that they are already overworked, despite the fact that UC and CSU do not require recommendations for frosh applicants, so that they are unable to provide a high service level to students applying to other colleges. However, it does appear that some students at your school do get admitted to highly selective colleges that use recommendations, so it is entirely possible that at least some counselors and teachers write good ones.

3

Don’t obsess over the counselor recommendation. It’s not the most important thing.

You can have the teacher recommender explain that you are in the IB program, if you are concerned. Teachers who agree to write for you want to be helpful. Just tell them what you need in the letter (that’s not lying or anything unethical). “School X is really looking for ABC. If you could talk about me doing A and B, that will be very helpful.”

In your case: “School X is really looking for rigorous coursework, and Mrs. Counselor might only have time to do the minimum in the counselor letter, so if you could reiterate in your letter that by doing IB classes I’m in the most rigorous track available here, that will be really helpful.”

Teachers who have written recommendations that got kids into Stanford and Duke probably already know what to say, too.

4

Try not to worry.
In addition to the counselor recommendation and your transcript, your HS will be sending in a document that’s called a School Profile. In it, it will state the size of the school, how many students go on to 4-year colleges, 2-year colleges or no college. For California schools they may include how many to UC’s vs. CSU’s. It will state the non-completion rate (drop out rate) as well as how many students participate in the federal ‘school lunch program’ which is code for socio-economic status.
It will also state how many AP’s and/or IB’s are available to the students. It will also state the range of courses so that the admission folks can gauge rigor.
In addition, the rec’s for the Common App specifically ask the teachers and counselor to comment on course rigor, which is one of the primary criteria that they’re looking at.