TL;DR (PAUSD vs Harker): Harker doubles your top-50 odds (though there is selection bias), UCs are the most common outcome for PAUSD, and Foothill is smarter than it sounds.
I wanted to get some clarity on what the actual data looks like - expecially comparing public school in Palo Alto with other private schools in the bay area. Fortunately, PAUSD publishes detailed matriculation data for both Gunn and Paly. I also found that Harker publishes similar data which gives us a good basis for comparison.
I’ve consolidated it in a quick little dashboard. A few things stood out –
A lot of PAUSD students go to Foothill College. Foothill is an excellent community college, with a very clear path to transfer to UCs. It allows students to have a smooth transition from high school to getting into an excellent university, without the pressure of getting into a top university right out of high school.
Private School (Harker) doubles your likelihood of getting into a top-50 school. About 33% of Harker graduates go to a top-50 school (compared to 17% of PAUSD). It’s also true for top-10 schools where Harker sends ~12.6% of its graduates compared to ~8.5% for Gunn and ~7.6% for Paly.
This does not account for selection bias (as Harker is a private school, it can select its students), so maybe it’s not that much of a difference in the end.
The UC system is still up there. Roughly 17–20% of PAUSD graduates go to a UC campus (across all 3 years).
You can explore the full data — by school, by university, or side-by-side — in the college tracker. Data is 2022–2024 combined and QS 2024 ranked.