You hear a lot about families moving homes so that their kids can attend a better school (oftentimes, high school). The reasoning is likely that parents feel that a better school will have better teachers and facilities, more students being accepted to “good” colleges from there, etc.
While this may be true, it may not necessarily mean that it will be easier for the student to get accepted to a good college from a “good” high school than from a “not-so-great” one.
Good colleges don’t accept based solely on stats.
One thing that most people acknowledge is that top colleges don’t accept students based solely on their academic stats. There’s a whole lot that goes into what they consider, including grades, extracurriculars, passion and drive, their backgrounds, etc.
The best high schools in the country do not send 100% of their graduates to the Ivy League. While they may send a student or two or even a few per year to a college like Harvard, what about the rest of the graduating high school class?
A hypothetical:
Let’s say a top-tier high school sent 2 students to Harvard out of a class of 500. What about the other 298 students? They may have gotten in somewhere else, but likely not all into an Ivy League (assuming the top students at the school probably applied to most if not all of the Ivies). What about a really good candidate for admission, but one that might have a slightly imperfect GPA (let’s call him/her student #10). They were rejected from Harvard, but let’s say they really wanted to go. The high school was really competitive and it was probably hard to “stand out” among his/her peers, especially since the “difference” between Student #1 and #10 was miniscule.
What if he/she had instead attended a school that rarely (if ever) sends a student to the Ivy League? Student #10 could have easily been Student #1 at that not-so-great school. Since the school wasn’t competitive, he/she was probably heads and shoulders above the rest of the student body in terms of academics, extracurriculars, passion and drive, etc.
So here’s the question:
So the question is: Would this hypothetical student have a better chance of getting into a good college like Harvard if she was by far the best at a not-so-great school, or a good-but-not-best student at a really good high school? There is no easy or definite answer to this, and it likely comes down to a case-by-case basis.
Of course, there are many things that go into determining how good a high school is
Maybe a student learns more material at a good high school. Maybe more APs/extracurriculars/etc. are offered at a better high school. Maybe the student body and/or friends a student makes at a better high school are “better.” Those types of things may or may not be true (and might depend on a case-by-case basis), but can factor into parents’ decisions about where to send their children (if they are fortunate enough to be able to move or send their children to a private school, if they so desire).
You don’t have to go to a great high school to go to a great college.
The bottom line is this: you do not have to be go to a great high school to go to a great college. Students from all over the world (many from lousy high schools) get accepted to the best universities in the world. Would they have had an easier time getting accepted had they gone to a great high school? Maybe…maybe not. But just because a student goes to a not-so-great high school does not eliminate their chances of going to one of the best colleges in the world.
