How does the high school you attend impact admission?

Twoin18
Tue, 24 May 2022 15:27:46 +0000

Data10:

Do you mean like Gunn (in Palo Alto) or Palo Alto High for Stanford? At such high schools, you need to also consider that an abnormally large portion of students apply to selective colleges, particularly to the one(s) nearby. For the nearby college(s), they also have a noteworthy number of parents are connected to the college such as legacies or children of faculty/staff. College towns with best “feeders” usually also have a high concentration of wealthy families. When you control for additional factors like these, the high schools may no longer appear to be the best “feeders.”

It’s certainly very competitive to be at the top of the class in those high schools. But in some cases (not particularly Stanford but more the Ivies) they definitely seem to gain an admissions advantage over less well known nearby high schools.

There’s a limited number of spots at most top east coast schools for ORMs from CA. And my take is that those private schools prefer to fill their spots from schools they know so then the less well known schools get squeezed out.