“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”

Some might say that the opening of Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities captures the emotions and contradictions of the college admissions process very well.  But with apologies to Dickens, I am borrowing his title to make a point about context.  

Take a look at the 5 year college matriculation results from two suburban Boston public high schools.  Both high schools are well regarded – and have been in and/or near the “Top 10” in Boston Magazine’s annual Top Public High Schools issue many times over the past 5 years.  These two suburbs are adjacent neighbors.  Yet the results are quite different.  

I’m often asked what I call “recipe” questions – how many APs, what GPA , how high a class rank,  what SAT score, which leadership roles to I need in order to have a realistic shot at getting in to Harvard/Stanford/Duke/Northwestern/Georgetown/etc. 

I always tell them “it depends”, then I discuss the factors that affect those answers and together we figure out realistic “target ranges” that fit their particular situation.  Only after getting into the weeds can we answer those questions effectively. 

As this chart clearly shows, for these two high schools that might from a distance appear very similar, the class rank needed to be competitive at highly selective colleges is actually quite different.