How does the high school you attend impact admission?

AlwaysMoving
Tue, 24 May 2022 15:13:12 +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 definitely not every college town, but I do think college towns often have strong high schools, access to excellent ECs, and a more “worldly” student body, and that helps an unhooked student stand out.

I agree about schools appearing to be feeders are often full of students with strong hooks. We toured a small boarding school that had a long history of being a top feeder to Yale, and often sent 20-25% of their graduates to Yale. The college guidance counselor was quick to tell us those admits were almost all the children of Yale professors.