<p>I'm not really sure I understand "chance" requests. I see them on many forums, including the schools I am affiliated with for one reason or another.</p>
<h1>1 I am not an admissions officer, so my opinion is really not worth much.</h1>
<h1>2 I am going to base my opinion on the stats and info published by the school. The asker of this "chance" is privy to the same info.</h1>
<h1>3 Many are probably going to answer so that it favors their school. I realize there is a dichotomy here.</h1>
<ul>
<li>One could say your stats are too low because they do not want anyone with such low figures getting in, hence lowering the "average" or making it seem as if "lower" folks can get in.
-One could say you have a chance, even if it is very small, to boost the #'s applying and therefore reduce the acceptance rate.</li>
</ul>
<p>So enlighten as to the benefit of chance requests and why any of you are answering.</p>
For the few I do answer I try to walk the OP through how to look at the data in guesstimating the chance. In some cases the OP had never even heard of the Common Data Set. Maybe it makes for fewer chance threads (though I doubt it).</p>
<p>It’s important to make clear when answering these threads that you are not an admissionsn officer, obviously, so people don’t take them too seriously. But if you spend enough time hanging around CC and/or you’ve been involved with admissions at the school, sometimes you have some basic knowledge of what they look for (also if you know the data set for the school you can sort of kind of evaluate. But really, no one can give a good answer to those threads unless the candidate is WAY underqualified or WAY overqualified. And most people that ask are in the middle.</p>
<p>I always wonder about the kids who say “chance me and I’ll chance you…” as if they can’t evaluate their own chances, but could for someone else? They are just desperate for someone to give them hope, it makes me a little sad, but I would never answer one.</p>