Do you have to go to a rigorous, prestigous high school to be accepted to a really great university like Yale?

Yes, taking AP or IB classes are always a good idea. And colleges care about rigor of secondary schedule as well as grades. Getting straight A's in regular classes is less impressive than getting a mixture of A's and B's in honors and AP/IB classes.

Hope my answer helped you.

You obviously need APs. Last kid I know that got rejected from yale had 2 APs, the one who got accepted had 13 perfect scores on APs.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.