Do colleges limit the amount of students they accept from a certain high school?Answered
I'm a senior going through the admissions process who attends a very rigorous school. I feel like my application will be very competitive however, if I am compared with my classmates, it might blend in. I'm not too sure which universities they're all considering, but I assume we are applying to some of the same schools. Most students in Class of 2021 will have earned an AP Capstone and IB Diploma. Additionally, we do a lot of volunteering and take difficult courses.
I was wondering if universities might see a group of applicants that have competitive applications, but learn they all went to the same high school and reject a few of them. I'm asking because I've heard remarks about how an Ivy League accepted 3 students from the same school and how unusual that is, so I just wanted to see if it was true.
Earn karma by helping others:
1 answer
I have 2 suggestions.
-If your school district uses Naviance, you can see how many students from your school applied to a particular college and how many were accepted. I'm not sure if you can tell how many are accepted per year or if you have to do the math yourself by counting the Green Check Marks on the scatterplot. I know for instance my HS gets more students into Yale like 2-3 per year and we get 1 Harvard like every 10 years.
-If you have a relationship with your counselor, I would simply ask them the question in a subtle way like, "Ms. A., I'm concerned that if apply to these schools that I will not be productive because they might only take 2 or 3 max. from our school, is that the case?"
I have first-hand knowledge that Top boarding schools do limit how many seniors can apply to certain schools like Harvard, Yale, Stanford. They don't know beforehand if Harvard will take 5 students or not but they have a good idea if Harvard took 4 last year, 6 the year before, and 5 the year before that. So what they do is look at the say the 15 strongest seniors and let them apply to Harvard but tell the other 30 that want to apply to Harvard that they can apply to Brown, Dartmouth, and Cornell but not Harvard. Something like that.
Your chance of acceptance
Your chancing factors
Community Guidelines
To keep this community safe and supportive:
- Be kind and respectful!
- Keep posts relevant to college admissions and high school.
- Don’t ask “chance-me” questions. Use CollegeVine’s chancing instead!