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College applicants often express concerns about a friend or classmate who is applying to the same major at a particular university (or even the entire college as a whole). Sometimes, students are worried that their peer is “more qualified” than they are, weakening their chances of admission. Other times, they fear they may “take a spot away” from a friend who wants to attend that school more than they do. Although high school students may become territorial about their college choices and desires, it’s patently unfair and unrealistic to call “dibs” on a college. Loving a school neither entitles a student to an offer of admission nor provides any given student with a stronger “claim” on a school than a peer. The college admissions process is an individual endeavor, and the colleges are the ones who ultimately determine who is offered admission. One student’s admission outcome does not directly hinge on another’s—each application will be evaluated on its merits and everyone considered in the context of the entire application pool. No students from a particular high school could be admitted or many could, which is why students shouldn’t foreclose opportunities based on what classmates are doing.
Whatever the motivation driving students’ concerns about their chances versus those of other applicants, these ideas typically stem from the flawed perception that students from the same high school are somehow pitted against one another in the admissions process. The notion of head-to-head competition isn’t completely unfounded. After all, selective institutions have a finite number of spots in their incoming first-year classes, and some applicants will be offered admission while others will not. As colleges strive to achieve geographic and socioeconomic diversity, they will obviously attempt to admit students from a wide range of high schools (public/private, urban/suburban/rural, different countries/geographic regions, etc.). Yet, this effort occurs on a macro level, rather than one as granular as specific high schools. If colleges had quotas for individual high schools, the University of Chicago likely wouldn’t have admitted 14 of the approximately 184 members of the Horace Mann School’s Class of 2024. Similarly, Duke, Vanderbilt, and Northwestern probably wouldn’t have each admitted five students from the 124-student Class of 2023 at the Latin School of Chicago. Clearly, colleges admit multiple students from the same high school, even in disproportionate numbers, and they often admit no students from any given high school.
The concept that an admissions committee is reviewing two applicants from the same high school side-by-side represents a myopic perspective that overlooks the wide scope of the applicant pool. It’s quite easy to succumb to this line of thinking—our frame of reference consists of the people in our immediate circles along with a handful of third-party anecdotes and self-selected contributors to online forums. We do not have ready access to the entire applicant pool, which consists of students who attend high schools (and home schools) across the globe.
When we zoom out from our immediate surroundings to consider the vast swath of the applicant pool as a whole, it is easier to understand the fallacy of the notion that admissions officers are lining up applicants from the same high school in order to assign a predetermined number of spots to students from that school. In light of this context, it is fruitless for applicants to theorize about their likelihood of admission compared to that of the handful of peers they believe are also applying to that college. Students will be much better served by focusing on where they want to apply and how to create the strongest possible application. Ultimately, the admit/deny decision is in the hands of the admissions professionals, and students who concentrate on what’s best for themselves will undoubtedly find schools that are a great fit.
