The fact is, the quality of your high school plays a very big role in determining whether you’ll get into Harvard or Stanford.
Actually there are several reasons for this.
The first reason is because the top high schools in the United States and across the world are known as feeder high schools which send a large number of students year after year to the same Ivy League schools like Princeton and Yale.
Examples of feeder high schools include Stuyvesant high school in New York, Montgomery Blair high school, many top California public schools including Saratoga and Monta Vista.
The schools have very strong relationships with the top universities - their guidance counselors and admissions officers typically know the admissions committees at universities like Harvard.
Year after year they send 10, 20, up to 30 students to Ivy League schools and the Ivy League schools know exactly what to expect from those high schools.
In other words, they are a known quantity and admissions officers know how hard the classes are, how good the sports teams are, and the quality of their extracurricular programs.
The second reason is because the feeder high schools typically attract the top students.
Often families will relocate to school districts just to be able to attend these feeder high schools and as a result the students are much smarter, much harder working, much better prepared, and much more focused on getting into Ivy League schools.
Finally top high schools like Stuyvesant often have many more resources, extracurricular programs, and opportunities for students to excel at a national or international level - which is critical if you really want to distinguish yourself in college admissions!
But not all is lost if you go to a regular public school.
After all, that is exactly the path that I took. My school was both relatively new and relatively unknown, and until I was successful, it had sent less than a handful of students to top schools like MIT or Yale. Read more on my story here.
So how do you accomplish this?
There are four things that you must do well if you go to an average or below average public high school.
Click here to learn more about how to get into Stanford!
Number one you must have a very strong GPA.
Generally admissions committees believe that unknown high schools and high schools that don’t send many students to Ivy League schools are much less academically competitive.
In that environment, you must excel academically - the very minimum that you must do is take the hardest AP and honors classes available from as early as possible.
In addition you should try to get top grades in any way shape or form that you can.
Get afterschool help - get tutors, get your parents to coach you, form study groups - do whatever is necessary in order to be in the top five of your class.
If you can’t achieve this and I didn’t achieve this myself - at the very least you’ll have a strong transcript because you’ll have taken the toughest classes available from a relatively early age.
Number two you must find an opportunity to excel at the national or international level and in extracurricular or organized competition.
Because you go to an unknown high school, it’s very hard for the Stanford admissions committee to know exactly how successful you are compared to other applicants.
But if you succeed in a national competition such as academic quiz bowl or international science and engineering fair then people will know exactly how well you did compared to some of the top high school students across the world!
If your school doesn’t provide such an opportunity, you need to go out and create it yourself.
Do some research on your passions. For instance if you really love politics see what types of political organizations are out there that are national or international in scope - Boys State and Boys Nation is a great example.
There are many other examples - try to start a local chapter of your high school and then see how you can enter and compete in national contests.
In particular with business there plenty of opportunities here from Future Business Leaders of America to national business plan competitions sponsored by Fortune 500 companies. Startup internships in high school are also a great way to achieve that unique spike.
Number three you must be well-rounded. While I always talk about how you should develop spikes and be very focused deeply on a particular topic or passion..if you go to a mediocre or subpar high school it’s important that you show you have a breadth of skills.
What do I mean by this?
You should join at least three or four clubs and have an officer position in each - preferably president and vice president or something of that caliber. You should try to at least play one sport where you can be on the varsity team.
What’s the reason behind this?
Well, if you do go to a small public school, admissions committees like the one at Harvard will want to know that you don’t have any glaring weaknesses.
Because competition is low and the student body is small there always chances that you may not be very good at something..by being well-rounded you demonstrate that not only do you have direct and specific areas but you have a wide platform of skills and experiences which will allow you to adjust well to a highly competitive academic atmosphere and collegial environment.
Ivy League schools want to know that you can fit in and contribute to the broader undergraduate population.
By showing that you have a well-rounded experience and skill set, you will put their mind at ease
Finally you must find a way to attract the attention of admissions committees.
If you go to a podunk high school in Naperville, Illinois, it’s really hard for your application to stand out from the thousands of other applications.
To do so you need to really have a distinct essay. Talk about very esoteric topics, have a very eye-catching opener and really infuse your personal writing voice into your college admissions essays.
In addition you need to have knockout recommendations - the assumption here is that in a smaller high school you will stand out more and build stronger teacher relationships.
You need to let that demonstrate itself in your application. Make sure that you are very close with a couple of teachers and coaches and managers and make sure that they write recommendations that are out of the park!
Best wishes to you on your Ivy League pursuit, as usual!
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