<p>Is the counselor-o-matic on the Princeton Review site any good? It put my dream school at a match, which I think might be a little bit unrealistic. If it is good, great! Anyone get in to college as predicted by this thing?</p>
<p>I wouldnt trust it. It put Bryn Mawr as a match for me. (I'm a guy)</p>
<p>It also puts Carnegie Mellon as a match while Cooper Union is a reach. wth?</p>
<p>umm i didnt trust it before but i got into every school it said I would and I got big scholarship offers at all the schools it labeled as my safeties except 1</p>
<p>sounds like conflicting experiences....bryn mawr for a guy....lol</p>
<p>All that program is supposed to do is to familiarize you with a breath of schools. It put cornell as a match for me and i was rejected haha.</p>
<p>It just exists to give you an idea of what schools are out there and where they may be on your list. In order to get a better representation, choose the option below what is true on your extra curricular and stuff.</p>
<p>Do not trust it. Not only that, if you provide your e-mail, it sends loads of junk emails from colleges you have never heard of.</p>
<p>My experience is that it does not put enough weight on SAT scores. It had my D "matched" at schools where her SAT was in the 25th to below percentile.</p>
<p>The counseloromatic is good only for expanding your options. As for safety/match/reach, it seems to alternate years as to how easy/hard it is to get into these colleges. I think it is in an "easy" cycle right now.</p>
<p>Counselor-O-Matic was horrible in my experience, but my situation was the opposite of the ones listed above. Their match schools for me were lower than many of my real safeties, and they called most of my real matches (or even high safeties) "reaches." For example, they said Clemson and Holy Cross were my matches and Northeastern was my safety. </p>
<p>As someone else suggested, maybe they don't put enough emphasis on SAT scores (maybe GPA also), and their options for EC's and work experience were somewhat vague.</p>
<p>Admissions is subjective. I would take the results you get from PR with a grain of salt</p>
<p>I think it matched me well on everything BUT SAT scores. I don't think I'll get my hopes up, since I too am in the lower 25th percentile for scores at the school I want, meaning it is most likely not a match.</p>
<p>I'm not exactly sure how I would trust PR...they seem to spit out the obvious, Ivies as reach schools...but they put Cornell down as a match for me, which makes me doubt the system. My SAT scores are not exactly stellar. (Actually, I only currently have PSAT scores).</p>
<p>Counselor-O-Matic is complete crap. Back when I first tried it out (when I was a high school junior in 2003), it told me that Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth etc. were matches for me, which I don't think I need to tell anyone is bogus right off the bat (for the record I got rejected from Harvard and Yale). Then after I graduated in 2004, I decided to try it again for kicks and apparently they had gone in and really toughened it up to insane standards because it told me that schools like Brandeis (which I had gotten in to) were reaches and that my matches and safeties were random schools I had never even heard of. Total random number generator.</p>
<p>Lehigh and Gettysburg keep coming up as my son's top matches. He is a minority, so I suspect that they want more minorities. I have had technical problems with the website, too. Sometimes it saves my inputs, other times it loses them.</p>
<p>Lehigh and Gettysburg keep coming up on top for me, too. I've never thought about them before. It seems like maybe they're used for everyone because I know a friend with them on top too.</p>
<p>Now that is really interesting. Maybe they are paying for that. I put in for mid-Atlantic states, medium sized, and math major, and they pop up on top.</p>
<p>Must be some kind of advertising deal or something.</p>
<p>It creates lists, it isn't an insurance company. How the lists get generated may be biases by input from colleges as well as students applying. I would use the list as a part of my starting my own personal list to explore...I would not use it to base who gets an application and who doesn't...there is a lot more research that should be done to get the right fit for any student.</p>
<p>I don't think it works at all....For the extracurricular, they ask you to pick from 1 of 4 options (very involved, involved, sort of, not at all....basically) and then they ask you about paid employment....NOT about internships, community service, etc.....</p>
<p>PrincetonReview has really fallen in usefullness in recent years. They've gotten rid of a lot of useful facts and have resorted to gimmicks like this counselor thingy and random "fun" ratings.</p>