@makemesmart Everyone waives the right to view the letters. There is no ‘formal’ way for a student to look at the letter via Naviance or Common App, the wording just asks whether you waive your right to view or not. If you do not waive your right, colleges will assume the content of the letter is not as ‘genuine’ as if you had waived your right. Letter writers are able to give a more genuine assessment if they know the student won’t be seeing the contents of the LOR. It’s just FERPA nonsense, nothing to think about too much.
^^^^ Yes, although sometimes a letter-writer will offer to let the student read the LOR anyway. This can never be expected, but sometimes it happens. Happened twice actually with D18. (She had several letter-writers, as some scholarship apps wanted letters from employers, coaches, etc.)
@ShrimpBurrito True. One teacher gave D17 a copy of her letter. But, for purposes of the Common App, waive away!
Literally every calculus test I ever took in high school and college only had about four or five questions on it, with three being actual problems and at least one of them a proof.
Its OK to give only 4 problems (they may not have too much time in a single class/block to have more questions) - the issue or my rant was about this single test having 33% weightage. A test that is not a designated ‘final test’ having that much weightage seemed unreasonable.
Random question and I’m not sure where to ask: what is the measure of one’s high school, in determining whether it is considered competitive for college admissions purposes? I keep seeing posts on CC stating their (or their child’s) high school is competitive. What is the objective measure to make that claim?
There is no obvious criteria.
I know our school typically has over 100 admits to a top UC and about 15 students with MIT/Stanford/Ivy admits. I think that is competitive?
@curiousme2 A competitive high school would be one where the SAT or ACT average is very high, where 90% or more of the kids go to four year colleges, where there’s IB or 25+ APs offered. There’s always an advantage if the AO from the college knows your high school’s reputation.
@curiousme2 Yeah, I think you have to look at historical admissions results, as @VickiSoCal mentioned. Nothing too objective (unless you want to look at USNWR HS rankings in your state for some guidance, but, yuck) And, if your school publishes results of AP tests and average SAT/ACT you can see how it might compare. Many schools may have high average GPA, but low SAT/ACT scores, which indicates grade inflation. It’s all pretty subjective, but schools can gain a reputation within the admissions-world based on the outcomes of students they have admitted from your high school.
Actually USNWR just changed their ratings this year. I think basing things on SAT/ACT or how many kids go to 4 years colleges can be deceptive. I think ACT scores or GPA’s can be low since quite frankly in our district there could be a wide range. I’m not trying to biased but in our district there some ethnic groups that bring down the numbers drastically. Our school has 25+ AP courses. We go to the visit the classroom with other parents and there is a certain crowd you see there.
Thanks all, for the input.
Do your public schools publicize admissions results? Ours doesn’t, so I’m not clear how many go to Ivy/S/M.
What you would you consider a competitive average SAT/ACT?
Our average SAT score is low. Our 4 year college rate is low. Our kids on reduced/free lunch rate is 60 percent.
But the two magnet programs draw about 200 kids per class per year and those kids do extremely well with access to around 30 AP classes, top academic competitions and so on.
Our public school does not publicize admission results (actually they don’t reveal much even if you ask - maybe privacy concerns?). There is some info from Naviance - but even that is not populated well - its voluntary for students and many may not report.
Our public school has a very wide gap - average SAT/ACT and GPA are both low. But school has some very competitive top layer of ~50 kids (among 460 or so) with impressive scores/awards etc. These kids also do well with about 25+ AP’s available. Looking at the school average I can guess that the scores of bottom half students maybe really low. So not sure how the colleges interpret this - is it positive for high scoring kids in a low ranked school or it does not matter. Looking at the averages, our school is not competitive; but in the top 10%, I know its super-duper competitive.
I have always thought the “competitive public hs” are each state’s governor’s schools where all students have to be “tested” into. But I could be very wrong.
Our metro has many public schools where a certain center (STEM/Humanities/IB) is based, and the students also have to be tested into. But the ratio of students in the center vs out is very low (somewhere about 1 in 10 to 20), so the average SAT/ACT of the whole school will be pretty meaningless in those cases.
I have lived in California my whole.life and never heard of governor’s school. Just googled and we don’t seem to have one.
I haven’t heard of it either. I know in Chicago there is 9 selective enrollment public school which sounds similar to a states governor school. Out in suburbia there is IMSA which is a selective public school too
@makemesmart I have no idea what a “governor’s school” is.
As with all of this, you have to read between the lines a little. Obviously every school has a wide variety of students. I think we all know that if our kid has a 4.0 and a 24 ACT (and doesn’t suffer from test anxiety), that the rigor of the school is not high, or grade inflation is real.
At the end of the year our counselors are responsible for collecting acceptance info from their students. There is a high percentage of success in doing so. That is then all in Naviance, and shows the number of applications vs. the number of acceptances. It feeds our scattergrams.
Not everyone has Naviance.
Our school publishes the information. Each class has between 500-600 students. For the 2018 class (they haven’t updated the info yet for 2019), almost 90% went to college (which is pretty impressive considering we do have a street gang presence). About half the class were AP Scholars. We have 35 AP classes. The national and international awards the kids bring home is mind-boggling. It’s a traditional public school. About 30% of the student body is on the free/reduced lunch program. I’d say it’s competitive. We don’t have Naviance.
Re Governor’s schools: The only year-long one I’ve ever heard of is in South Carolina.