I’m using admission calculators as one way to identify (as well as rule out) colleges that my kid might want to apply to, but the three calculators that I’ve looked at give wildly different results. For example, for a state university, (given my kid’s GPA and SAT) PrepScholar says 94% chance of being admitted, while Niche and CampusReel say 10%.
I realize these are just producing rough estimates, but … does anyone have any calculator they’ve found to be approximately right?
Thanks.
I wouldn’t put too much stock in any of them. The ACT/SAT score and GPA ranges are several years out of date on most of the calculators. Niche’s ranges, for example, are three years out of date.
It takes more work, but you can look at the Common Data Sets on most schools (look for an “Institutional Research” link on the schools’s website) and get a pretty good Idea if your student is competitive.
None of them.
If your school uses Naviance, you can gauge where others from the HS with similar stats have gotten in.
Per your other thread, your daughter is interested in prenursing. Though not as difficult, admission-wise, as direct entry nursing, some schools have more difficult admission criteria for prenursing than for other majors. If this information is not on the websites of the schools your daughter is interested in, you may need to contact the nursing departments directly. Naviance will probably be of little value in assessing chances for prenursing. Sites such as Niche and PrepScholar will be even less accurate.
Prepscholar gave my kid a 13% chance of getting into her #1 (and it was using outdated numbers so that was optimistic)… she got in. Conversely, I’d be particularly cautious about very high % chances at holistic colleges because by nature these calculators only use stats. Agree with skieurope that naviance is a better tool, though again it’s stats only.
For the state university: do any of the calculators you used differentiate between instate and out of state? Something else beyond stats to bear in mind.
Every admissions calculator out there is utterly useless, because while it can provide you with a rough estimate of the stats of those getting in (if they’re even updated, as PrepScholar’s known to not do,) it can’t quantify the other parts of your application (such as your school’s curriculum, your essays etc.) They also don’t take into account those with “hooks” such as applying Early Decision (if the school outright states that it’s a benefit,) being a recruited athlete, legacy status etc.
Hope that helps! Good luck with admissions!
Collegevine factors in EC’s and almost every factor. I have found it very useful. If you are Asian I subtract 20% and if you are an underrepresented race I would add between 10-30%
Have you seen some evidence that its “Admission Chances” numbers are accurate? At least in the right ballpark? It gives me a ton of Safety schools w/ admission chances in the >90% range, but I’m skeptical…
@cc88288 As I stated in my earlier comment, I’m of the view that admissions calculators are useless precisely because they’re calculators: at schools, especially selective ones where real-life admissions officers are the ones reading through your application, they can’t begin to predict how your application might be viewed by a particular admissions officer–or why one admissions officer’s decision is completely different from another’s on similar applicants. The calculators (and of all of them, I’d probably trust Naviance the most if your school uses it as it’s actually based on real-life students from YOUR school, but mine didn’t and my guidance counselor was helpful,) will provide you with wide ranges of schools were your stats will “open the door,” but from there, it’s up to the rest of your application (essays, interview, letters of recommendation etc.) to “get you through that door.”
Hope that helps!
Aside from the many issues mentioned already, these methodologies cannot compare them with the applicant body of the next year, nor can they really compare them with the applicant bodies of the previous years. That data is not available in many or most cases.
Bottom line - as has been repeated ad nauseam here - there is not secret formula for getting accepted to any colleges with low acceptance, AKA colleges with holistic admissions. If any college search company had the actual ability to figure out what a student needs to ensure their admission to these colleges, they would be mobbed every year by the 200,000 or so non-hooked students who are “have always dreamed of attending Harvard/Yale/MIT/Princeton/etc…”.
The money that they make form generic advice and cliches would be nothing compared to the billions they would make from providing this information to all those parents looking to buy certainty of admissions to an “elite” college. I mean, do it for $50,000 a pop, which is a bargain, considering that Singer was charging $500,000 to get a kid into USC. There were 50 parents charged in the admissions scandal, and those were just the ones who were caught. There are hundreds of kids each year from the top 0.1%, and, according to the NYT article over 60% of them attend a college which is not in the “elite” category. How many of them would happily part with the cost of one or two year’s attendance to make sure that their kid attends an “elite” college?
CollegeVine or any other one of these companies would make a mint, and the only thing that they would do online is post advertising.
ECs differ in their “attractiveness”, and they differ between AOs, years, and colleges. So this is only slightly better. At some schools, Asians are not ORMs, and some colleges, like the UCs are prohibited from using race in calculations.
Moreover, is that 20% of the total chance or overall 20%, meaning, if an Asian student has a “chance” which is “calculated” at 20%, should they now consider it impossible to be accepted or have it dropped to 16%?
The only way to really tell would be to compare after the fact how it predicted you.
Btw : I have a feeling these systems can be “gamed” by ECs in a way that a human reading an application wouldn’t be.
I agree with @SJ2727 as a college practicing holistic admissions is going to care a LOT more about WHAT you did in your EC rather than just how much TIME you spent on it.
@SJ2727 not saying that their forecasting model is well calibrated, but your example doesn’t prove that it isn’t. 13 out of 100 students should get in if it is well calibrated. Someone has to be the 13.
Sure, but there’s not much difference between saying “there’s a 13% chance according to this calculator ” and “everyone knows it’s a reach with an admit rate in the teens” …right? Other than it “seems” more methodical because there’s a “calculator”. As I said, I’d be more concerned about the outcomes that give false confidence by showing very high probabilities for holistic colleges.
Or about deep involvement in fewer ECs rather than a laundry list of vague commitments, especially those that appear in junior year. Maybe I’m being too cynical and their calculator does take all these varying EC factors into account?
@SJ2727 I recently read the Gatekeepers by Jacques Steinberg, and in it, he states that Admissions Officers will sometimes look in the applicant pool for reflections of themselves. Even if this isn’t true for every applicant, the fact of the matter is that each Admissions Officer is different (sense of humor etc,) so the way one person might perceive your application (essays etc) can and WILL be VERY different from the next. A calculator can’t even begin to take into account human nature, due to its assumption that admissions processes for applicants are standardized, which they are not (even at the same school, given the number of admissions officers.)
And it will tell 100 kids who apply with specific stats that they have a 13% chance of being admitted. The 13 that get in and the 87 that don’t.
In reality, some will be very strong candidates and some won’t have a chance. Someone knowledgeable about admissions and a specific school could tell that by looking over the details and talking to the student for 5 minutes. A computer algorithm can’t differentiate.
The question is whether knowing the aggregate chance of the horde of kids just like you in a very limited number of ways is of any meaningful value.
It doesn’t really matter whether any of the calculators were correct in the past, everything is different this year: most schools are test optional, applicants have non-standard transcripts (pass/fail, etc.), financial considerations may be more important, etc.
All-- thanks for the discussion.
In my case, I’m hoping to use college admission calculators to gain an approximate sense of which ones are “safety’s”, “targets” and “reaches”, so that her portfolio of applications has a reasonable balance.
I think that’s a fair use of the calculators, no?
Do not use these calculators to categorize schools. As mentioned above, the data they use is often out of date, nor do they take into account the other components of applications that can be important (essays, ECs, LoRs, whether one applied for FA, etc.).
Does your kid’s school use Naviance? That would be a better source (still not perfect though). Also your GC may be helpful as well.
If you share your kid’s stats, schools, and major (where applicable), CC posters will likely be able to crowdsource a fairly accurate categorization as well. There are many experienced posters, some of whom work in admissions that can offer valuable guidance.