<p>I get straight A<code>s at a public school right now. I want to go to a prep school but the earliest I can apply for now is Junior year. I</code>m pretty sure I<code>d be able to make it into the schools, but I</code>m nervous about how these schools will affect my class rank and my grades since the people are smarter and the work is harder.
I want to go to Harvard and most of the students there are in the top 10 of their class. Do you think a worse rank in a better school would help or hurt my chances?
Also, how much do you think my grades would fall (if at all)? In the public school I<code>m in now, an A is a 93% or above, which I hear is harder than other schools, but its still not a top prep school.
Getting into Harvard is really important to me so I don</code>t want to do anything to hurt my chances. Would I be better off staying in public school and being either first, second, or third in the class or in a prestigious prep school where I may not even be in the top ten and risk not having as good a GPA?</p>
<p>How good is your public school? Look at their matriculation data, which probably should be on their website. See if they have a history of sending anyone to an Ivy, or in your case, Harvard.</p>
<p>If you want to get into Harvard, I recommend you remain at your present public school, especially if you are at the top of your class. Catapulting into the hardest year, Junior year, in an unknown school isn’t going to increase your appeal to Harvard. A prestigious prep school will have a much higher percentage of students applying to Harvard than your local public school. Many of those applicants will have significant hooks, which will increase their chances of admission. Thus, the competition to stand out in the pool will be much more difficult at a prestigious prep school. </p>
<p>Also, many courses will have prerequisites, which you may not have in hand. This will decrease your chances of taking the most challenging academic courses available, which the Ivies are reported to value.</p>
<p>Think of it this way. Many prep schools offer an early taste of college life. Colleges offer college life. You will not lose the experience of living away from home, if you do not attend boarding school. At most, you will only postpone it.</p>
<p>I also want to get into Harvard,
but I chose the boarding school for one main reason:
My school is horrible. Nobody has EVER gone to an Ivy from my public high school, so even though i was at the top of my class,
I figured my chances of admission would be greater coming from a school that has actually had students go to Harvard.</p>
<p>It really depends on the school; at our local public it is extremely rare for anyone to go to an Ivy, even the valedictorian. At my son’s bs (which is considered to be not elite or even tier 1) kids go to Ivies without being in the top10 (and without a perfect 4.0).</p>
<p>I don’t wish for my children to attend Harvard, and I doubt that that’s a worthwhile goal for a 14 year old. Having said that, you must remember that Harvard’s applicant pool is a self-selected, very competitive group of students.</p>
<p>When you try to judge the matriculation data for schools which primarily educate the children of the rich, the successful, the connected and the prominent, you must take into account the applicants’ families. If you Google “Daniel Golden,” you should find a list of Pulitzer Prize-winning articles he wrote for the Wall Street Journal about college admissions. Of particular interest is, “For Groton Grads, Aren’t Only Keys to Ivy Schools.” I recommend that anyone interested in this issue read it, and his other articles on admissions: [WSJ.com</a> - For Groton Grads, Academics Aren’t Only Keys to Ivy Schools](<a href=“http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/golden1.htm]WSJ.com”>WSJ.com - For Groton Grads, Academics Aren't Only Keys to Ivy Schools). His book on college admissions, The Price of Admission, is also worth reading.</p>
<p>Do local public schools send few, if any, students to the Ivies? Most likely. However, most students at local public schools don’t apply to the Ivies. Their guidance departments may not have the necessary sophistication to realize which students have a chance at admission. Avanged7fold, if you’re entering your sophomore year of high school, and are already researching the college admissions process, you may very well be more sophisticated about college admissions than some public school guidance counselors, who have enough on their plates. </p>
<p>Also, just as with investment houses, past results are no guarantee of future performance. The New York Post has reported that the Dalton School has experienced a “Harvard Drought” this year: [Private</a> School Rejects | Page Six Magazine | The New York Post](<a href=“http://www.nypost.com/pagesixmag/issues/20080629/Private+School+Rejects]Private”>http://www.nypost.com/pagesixmag/issues/20080629/Private+School+Rejects) If you plan to attend a prestigious private school, pay particular attention in that article to the reputed practice of “lowballing.”</p>
<p>Periwinkle - you make a good point. Guidance counselors at public schools often brush off the idea of a student from their modest school bothering to applying to an Ivy League school. I go to a pretty unimpressive public high school in southern Maine and our guidance counselors have ridiculously low standards. We have some great students with impressive resumes in my class, myself included, and the counselors have few suggestions on ways to help us with admissions. When my PSAT scores were returned with a 210 (far from perfect, but the highest in my school), my guidance counselor didn’t know how to react and was completely uninformed when I asked her about National Merit Scholarships. Also, recently my friend (#8/244, HOBY participant, soccer and softball captain, decent amounts of volunteering and leadership) asked her guidance counselor which colleges she should send her SAT scores to, and the counselor absently suggested UMaine as a good fit. She is basically programmed to do that because somehow students from every ranking percentile end up at our state school.</p>
<p>avanged7fold - I’d suggest staying at your public school for the sake of making it to the top and looking better than your classmates because it’s so much harder to stand out in competitive private schools. However…make sure you look out for yourself as you approach the college admissions process. To get into Harvard you will need to be responsible for yourself, because your high school counselor most likely won’t have the experience with someone of your ambitious. At a private school, the college counselors would be much more aware of suggestions for improving your academic standings and resumes.</p>
<p>Bumping old threads no one knows about FTL. </p>
<p>Bumping USEFUL old threads is good though.</p>
<p>Nice bump, :)</p>