My school is very small, around 300 students, with only two guidance counselors, 9 AP classes, and our test scores are very low. It is a low-income area with historically low academics in northern Maine. Will I be disadvantaged in admissions? I don’t know of anyone in my entire school’s history who has gone to an Ivy League school, and my guidance counselor, who has been there for a long time doesn’t know either.
Yes, unfortunately, you will be disadvantaged unless you are an exceptional student. Here is an analogy. Let's say you run track and are the fastest runner in your school district and can run the mile at 4:45 for a boy or 5:30 for a girl. You can't get recruited by the best college track teams in the country because there are like 100 boys that can run under 4:15 and 100 girls that can run under 5:00. But it's not your fault because those kids go to schools with excellent coaches and facilities. So you kind of have to run for fun in college because the competition is just too fierce.
There are a lot of naive experts who think that colleges are "fair and square" and are going to evaluate you only on your personal circumstances but that is not necessarily true because there are just not enough available seats at top schools to begin with. Most kids know roughly if they are Ivy material or not and in a way the applicant pool is self-selecting.
In the US there are 43,000 high schools (33K public, 10K private). So technically there are 43,000 #1 ranked students in the US or Valdictorians, and 43000 #2 ranked students or Salutorians. That's 86,000. But there are less than 15,000 Freshman seats at the 8 Ivy League schools. So 71,000 number #1 and #2 students are going to get rejected from Ivy League schools. So don't take it personally, there are just not enough seats at Top50 schools to accommodate the demand and that is why acceptance rates are abysmally low. Last year I think about 410 thousand applied to Ivys so roughly 10 people from every school in the US. But the acceptance varies from ZERO at most schools to like 60-70 at Top Private Schools/Boarding Schools so it depends on how good your school is in many cases.
If you have your heart set on getting into a Top Ivy, Elite, or Liberal Arts college like Colby, Bowdoin, or Bates, my best advice would be to switch high schools or apply to a boarding school that offers great academics. Some schools that come to mind are Gould, Berwick, Foxcroft, Kents Hill, Hebron, and Hyde. All of them have great financial aid so between 25% to 40% of students get a great deal if they qualify.
The bottom line is that there are 4300 colleges in the US and at least 100 or 200 are excellent. In life, what matters most is what you know not where you went to undergraduate college. So rest assured, you can get a fine education without going to an Ivy, Elite, or Top LAC. If you are an above-average or average student, there are still hundreds if not thousands of colleges that would be thrilled to have you.
Good luck
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Thank you! This is very helpful and I’ll look into the high schools mentioned. I know some of them because I’ve played tennis against them, and most seem to be really good schools. The good thing is that it’s the end of my freshman year, so even if I don’t have the opportunity to go to one of the good high schools, I can still take all the AP and dual-enrollment classes my school offers.