回複：我不敢講家長腦子進水，但是很多家長未必理解rank的重要性

I think there is a threshold on the quality of high school.  If the quality of your high school does not reach the threshold, rank does not mean anything.  If both high schools are reasonably good, you may get better rank and thus some advantages in a weaker high school.  But as I mentioned before, some colleges do favor their feeder schools and thus the students will have some advantage.  The trick to find out is looking at the high school admission history.  For example, Princeton does not like our public high school much.  P does take some students from some private high schools from our area.  From my obeservation, thoses students are not better than ours at all.  Another secret, the closeness between your high school counselor and college admission officers is very important.  If they worked together for many years and trust each other then it becomes much easier to take the students from your high school.  All in all, rank and quality are all relative.  It depends on all kinds of factors and rank is a very important factor but only one of the factors.  Just as you said, if your kid is super bright and can top in any high school then it's better to be in a super good high school.  My experience tells me that private high schools usually have some more advantages.  As I said above, college counselor is very important and private high schools have a significant advantage in this part because they have much higher counselor to student ratio.  For example, one of our friend's girl is in a private high school and she is not the best in her school.  The counselor tells the girl that she does not have to apply all Ivy schools but she better apply to P since the counselor has a long history working with P's admission officers.  P becomes their back up Ivy schools.  Also, P took 25 from Princeton High and 20 of them attended a couple of years back.  How many high schools have the luxury to send 25 kids to P?  P has the strangest admission office in ivy league.