As Mr. Brown states every morning on the announcements, Lakota West is a premier school in Ohio. West is known for its athletics as well as academics. We know that some West athletes go to various schools to continue their athletic careers, but where do most other students attend college? Ninth and Tenth-grade students tend to have a distorted view of the reality of college. Many of these young students believe they’re going to Harvard, Yale, or MIT because they got straight A’s their freshman year. What may come as a major surprise to these students, is that in the past 6 years, West has had 37 total applicants to Harvard College; not a single one got accepted. While home life and the internet strongly influence a student’s self-awareness or image of themselves, many students receive a slap in the face from the reality of their college acceptance results, even here at West.
At Lakota West, most students academically rank higher than other students, not only in the state but also nationally. Our students have both higher cumulative grade point averages (GPAs), and ACT/SAT scores than those of other high schools across the country. Therefore, our students are commonly successful when applying for colleges. However, our students tend to apply and then accept enrollment to only three universities. . Coming in first for most applicants in the past three years, 828 West students applied to the University of Cincinnati, followed by 603 applicants to Miami University (Ohio) and 513 applicants to Ohio State University. Out of the applicants to West’s top three applied schools, the 20
20 graduating class had a 50.2% acceptance rate. While these three schools aren’t the easiest to get into, they aren’t even close to the level of difficulty of any Ivy League school.
The Lakota West 2020 graduating class had 118 out of 261 accepted into UC, 105 out of 211 accepted into OSU, and 88 out of 147 accepted into Miami. While these numbers could very well be affected by COVID-19, this is just a prime example of how college applications aren’t as big of a cakewalk as most may think. With that being said, don’t let this crush your dreams or determination for being the first West student accepted into Harvard in the last 6 years.
