<p>SteveMa - I think the piece you are missing is that those top tier schools are gauging students’ potential, not what they have learned in high school. My kid’s private school’s curriculum was harder than most schools in our state. If top tier colleges only care about what students have mastered in high school then they would be taking more than 50% of kids from my kid’s high school, and those colleges should just not admit any students who didn’t graduate from handful of top ranking high schools.</p>