“It was the first school of its kind — a public, residential high school welcoming students from across the state to study a specialized curriculum emphasizing science and mathematics but also offering humanities courses, athletics, and extracurricular opportunities.”
This paragraph along with your initial post was misleading, you said public (North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics is a public in North Carolina), and then corrected yourself to selective public, when you were called on it. This paragraph about welcoming students from across the state should also be viewed with some cynicism, you’re welcome as long as you’re a future National Merit Finalist!
“Back when I applied to colleges,”
I applied in the early 80s also from a public high school in upstate NY, and there was a correlation if not causation between class rank and where you got in. There were exceptions but the higher the rank the better school you got in. Some exceptions would be those who went to six or seven year med programs, ones where the SAT scores didn’t align with class rank (also back then, rank and SATs were highly correlated). Things have changed of course, as Dylan wrote a few years back.