<p>I’d love any feedback on College Preparatory School in Oakland. How rigorous is the curriculum? How competitive are the CPS students with students from other prep schools when applying to top colleges? Thanks</p>
<p>College Prep has a rigorous curriculum and competitive student body. By this I do not mean that students are cutthroat about competing with their classmates, but that they are very successful academically. The bulk of the students have very high standardized test scores (mean SAT Reasoning Test scores for the Class of 2012 were 704 critical reading, 709 math and 725 writing and 45% of the class received National Merit recognition), though the school does not focus on SAT preparation at all. In fact, with the exception of the Sciences, College Prep’s faculty refuses to allow the AP tests to dictate its curriculum. There are no AP courses offered in History or English, though students do take the tests and perform well on them every year. The UC System accepts all of College Prep’s junior/senior English classes as “honors” classes and assigns them extra points in calculating the UC GPA, though College Prep does not use weighting in calculating GPA for any other purpose. </p>
<p>College admissions offices do not seem to have any trouble understanding the import of College Prep’s unweighted GPAs. Highly selective colleges tend to admit students from College Prep at at least twice the rate at which they admit students from the overall pool of applicants. A Wall Street Journal story from a few years back ranked College Prep among the top schools in the country (and the best in the Bay Area) for selective college admissions, though the methodology for the study was, in my view, flawed. That said, I don’t know of any better studies; I just take a jaundiced view of this sort of attempt at ranking schools.</p>
<p>If you are simply looking for an edge in college admissions, it is important to remember that attending a top prep school is a double edged sword. Though your student may be better prepared than other applicants, and admissions offices may look favorably on the preparation of students from these schools, applicants from these schools have to compete against each other in the admissions process. Colleges do not want to admit too many students from any given high school, so attending a school at which the seniors’ college lists tend to be rather similar can be a disadvantage too.</p>
<p>The best reason to attend College Prep is the quality of the education it offers, rather than the edge it gives in college admissions. Students who love to learn tend to love College Prep. Students who are too caught up in the need to have perfect grades can find it frustrating; very few students at College Prep get a 4.0, though most were at the top of their class before coming to College Prep. The real College Prep advantage is found in its small class size and outstanding faculty (82% hold advanced degrees and many have taught at colleges and universities), which foster an environment in which students work unusually closely with their teachers. College Prep students head off to college comfortable with approaching their professors inside and outside of class. When they return on visits they remark upon how well prepared they were for college, often saying that college is easier than high school.</p>
<p>Thanks for the detailed feedback.</p>
<p>Regarding UC weighting of GPAs, you can see what courses are counted as honors at <a href=“http://doorways.ucop.edu%5B/url%5D”>http://doorways.ucop.edu</a> .</p>
<p>Not having their own GPA weighting system is unlikely to be of much importance, since colleges are unlikely to use high schools’ weighted GPAs, since they are not comparable to each other. Either recalculation (as UC and CSU do) or holistic look at the courses and grades is likely used to capture the rigor of course selection as well as grades.</p>
<p>The UC site can be a bit confusing in this case, as it lists courses differently than they are listed in the College Prep course catalog. For example, the UC site lists an English III and an English IV, both honors classes. In fact, College Prep does not offer English III or English IV. It offers English seminars for juniors and seniors. The seminars are themed and are open to both juniors and seniors. All receive the “honors” designation for UC. UC considers a junior taking the “Shakespeare’s Laughter” seminar to be taking “English III” and a senior taking the same class to be taking “English IV” for the purpose of calculating a GPA, but they are really in the same class. Here is a list of typical English seminars: <a href=“http://www.college-prep.org/academics/english/index.aspx[/url]”>http://www.college-prep.org/academics/english/index.aspx</a></p>
<p>FWIW, one student from this school is an Intel Science Talent Search 2013 Finalist.</p>
<p>MaribileDictu has given you fantastic info.</p>
<p>The only little info I can add is from a few years ago. We know a top college dean of admissions and asked him about students’ success in his university from prep schools in CA. He said that Harvard-Westlake and CPS had the most successful track record at his university out of all prep school in CA. That does not mean that other prep, catholic and public schools weren’t successful, just that the admissions had larger numbers of successful students from these schools. CPS was regarded highest in the bay area for strength of academics.</p>