What should I do when I don't want to transfer schools?

Answered

If you care deeply about your friends, and current HS school family and feel that it's perfectly okay to "go with the flow" and do well in comparison to your peers and perhaps get passed over from some better colleges because you "stayed in your lane" the whole time and excelled there only because your are "big fish in a small pond", then you should explain to your parents that where you go to college really doesn't matter much because you really want to be with your friends and graduate with them. The chips will fall and so on and so forth and you are perfectly good with that.

If however you actually want to get into the best college possible, then it's a huge mistake to stay at your current school because a.) you will not challenging yourself to your potential b.) there will be an opportunity loss for not being part of the application pool coming out of a better high school c.) fear of failure.

So my point is that it doesn't matter what your rank and file is if you go to best HS you can possibly get into because college admission officers don't want to take risks and gambles on students from zip codes that have no track record. Where you go to HS and who you know matters greatly if you are trying to get into a top college. Taking more APs doesn't necessarily translate into having a better academic narrative if you do not get all A's in them or if you opt out of taking the AP exams nor not scoring 4s and 5s on them.

Look at your current school profile matriculation list and your future school profile matriculation list. That will inform you where to go. And if your school doesn't have a school profile with a matriculation list that is a huge red flag okay. That means college admissions officers have no idea what your school track record is and what kind of students historically get into what kind of schools.

Ultimately it depends on what is important to you. I shared my personal observation and information because in general CV members are on here because they are all trying to get into better colleges, not the opposite.

Good luck.

Hi! This seems like a tricky situation to be caught in, but I have one suggestion. To supplement the AP classes you would miss at the 'bad school' you could look at dual enrolling at a local state or community college instead. That way you could still earn college credits and stay at the school you are at. I'm not sure if this is an option for you, but I hope it helps!!

So I can see from where you could benefit in this situation by switching schools, but ultimately I don't think you should. When colleges look at your school or profile they also look at the amount of AP classes you took compared to the amount that's given so having one that has 30 AP classes couldn't necessarily hurt you but it wont benefit you either. Plus you have a great extracurricular going for you as captain so it'd be better to continue and also just get to the top of your class ranking.