<p>I am curious about your experience with the Princeton Review counselor-o-matic feature, especially parents of children who are now freshman.
Were the matches, safeties and reaches accurate? (It seems to me that its
little conservative--some of the reaches were schools that I thought would be matches for my daughter and most of the safeties are schools that even the weaker students at my d's school don't attend.)<br>
Thanks so much and happy holidays!</p>
<p>Not valid at all. They used to be over-optimistic, and now they're downright depressing.</p>
<p>The problem with counselor-matic is that it bases its suggestions mainly on SAT and GPA. It ignores curriculum taken, recommendations from teachers, and uses only very limited information about extra curriculars. Therefore, it's best used to identify schools you may not have heard of rather than get a solid idea of which schools might be matches, reaches, etc.</p>
<p>It keeps changing. The first time we used it, the list it came up with was quite similar to the one D's guidance counselor came up with. When we tried it a few months later, with the same scores, it had changed: Everything was a match! There were no reaches at all. HYP etc.--all were matches! Needless to say, we didn't take this seriously.</p>
<p>Is this the "service" that sells better placement to colleges for a fee? If you wonder why XYZ college pops up at the top of your list of "matches" they likely paid for it. :(</p>
<p>it used to be good, matched the list my GC gave me for safeties and matches and reaches with my interests, and when they overhauled their site (this summer?) everything changed. suddenly everything was a reach for me (and my scores had improved) and MIT kept coming up as an 89% match, even though my math scores are low and i want to major in poli sci. its a shame.. i used to use it every time i changed my mind about my major.</p>
<p>I've used it just for the questions it raises. If you just ask a student what kind of college they're looking for all you will get is a blank stare but if you go through the pr program (btw, NJres, this is a free service on Princeton Review website) it asks so many specific questions that you can really narrow the search down. I just take the results with a grain of salt. It's not like I would encourage my child to apply to a certain college as a result of what it says.</p>
<p>How could it ever be "valid"? It's a game, which uses a certain very simple formula. Have some fun with it but don't use it as a guide for anything. Also, the less mainstream the school, or the less typical your background or interests, the less relevant this o-matic becomes.</p>
<p>This is what I am talking about, although it is not at all clear to me what they are saying... they say "we lead with our partner schools" which I take it means, if the school pays, the students get steered to that school. And they also say, "we keep faith with the student by making our relationships clear." That line gets a big WTF!!?! I don't think they make those relationships clear at all! direct from the PR website: </p>
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Enhanced Search
Students tell us more about themselves in a variety of ways. They use our search engine or they find overlap schools and we work backwards to determine their interests. As we know a student's demographic and academic information, and his or her interests, we suggest schools to him or her. Like Google, we lead with our partner schools. Also like Google, we keep faith with the student by making our relationships clear. Once we decide that a school might be a good fit, we will suggest that school until he or she vists the profile page.</p>
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[/quote]
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<p>"This is what I am talking about, although it is not at all clear to me what they are saying... they say "we lead with our partner schools" which I take it means, if the school pays, the students get steered to that school."</p>
<p>What that means is that their partner schools are clearly marked as such and are listed first. It's not hard to see what's happening.</p>
<p>We tried Counselor O Matic for DS. It narrowed his field of schools down to 900. The odd thing was that those 900 schools did NOT include a few that he had already decided to apply to. It's a very odd database, and I don't think it's all that accurate. Right now we're trying to change it so we can use it with DD....but to do that I guess I have to get another email address!!</p>
<p>Not valid at all. They have no way of evaluating ECs, etc. They "under-predicted" for my son. It's useless.</p>
<p>It is another place for a nervous parent to spend some time while their child makes a decision. Being realistic, even if an ex admission person said you have a good chance or that you are a match, doesn't mean your envelope will be fat with acceptance. It is like going to a college fair, whose there is there, it doesn't include everyone and there is a profit motive someplace.</p>