Colleges "not knowing" a HS

classof2k16
Sun, 26 Jul 2015 23:34:56 +0000

I go to an East Coast public HS. It is a fairly competitive school which is known in the area for providing a good education, but it’s no famous magnet school or anything. This aside, a lot of top schools in the area seem to understand the rigor of our curriculum and let in a fairly high number of kids… on any given year we get at least one kid into Harvard, Upenn, MIT, Cornell, Brown, Princeton etc.

I have noticed, however, that the same top kids who get into these schools NEVER get into certain schools of the same caliber, like Stanford or Columbia. According to our naviance, in fact, no one on the graph has ever gotten into Stanford or Columbia. Do colleges actually not know or respect certain high schools? I really like Stanford especially and will probably apply anyways, but does this mean my chances are very low? What could possibly explain no students ever getting into certain schools?