Does becoming a College Prep Scholar pretty much guarantee becoming a National College Match finalist the following year?
It does not guarantee a spot as a finalist, but it highly increases your chances of being a successful NCM applicant because 1) CPS is a notable award 2) you are given access to NCM materials before anyone else 3) you are coached, tutored, and advised by QB or QB-affiliate third parties for testing, applications, and essay writing 4) you may attend college prep seminars and conferences that assist in strengthening your application, and 5) the actual essay questions for NCM are very similar to the CPS prompts, if not the same. An essay that is successful for CPS, properly edited by following the advice of QB coaches, and extended to meet the word limit for NCM will probably be what QB is looking for.
Also, NCM saves all your personal info from CPS, so that saves a few hours of filling out forms for NCM which is one of many advantages of being a CPS scholar.
But if you want my personal anecdote, every local CPS scholar that I personally know has gone on to be an NCM finalist. However, most of the NCM finalists I know personally were not NCM finalists and many were rejected outright from CPS. So if someone reading this thread applied for CPS but did not become a scholar, please do not be dissuaded from applying to NCM!
Ok thanks for the info. I also heard some other information which I am curious about. Someone told me during regular decision all Questbridge applicants are put in a special pile and have a much higher chance of acceptance than normal Rd applicants, is that true?
Well, to begin with the distinction of being an NCM applicant is notable in itself and is a significant award that probably reflects well on applicants. Perhaps what you heard or misunderstood was that most Questbridge applicants that are accepted get in through regular decision instead of match, which is true. However, this doesn’t have anything to do with the overall admit rate or whether QB applicants have a higher chance than the overall admit rate. As far as I know, this sort of info is not readily available to the public.
To sort of answer your question, different schools handle Questbridge applicants differently. Some schools, but not all, even have dedicated Questbridge teams/departments to handle QB applicants’ inquiries. I can’t tell you if QB applicants have higher chances to be admitted to schools RD when they have QB departments than not, and to suggest anything of the sort would be pure speculation, which I like to avoid. I also can’t verify anything about “special piles”, but I can verify that schools with teams dedicated to QuestBridge applicants tend to be significantly easier to work with than those that don’t. They reply to questions, through email or phone, faster than other schools and tend to be a lot more accommodating with test scores and supplementary materials. Someone requested to submit entirely different essay responses than their Common App essays a month or so before decisions were slated to come out at one of the Questbridge LACs with a Questbridge department, and they let him do so. Some schools even allow Questbridge applicants’ counselors to submit scores “unofficially” instead of having to pay the SAT/ACT services an absurd amount of money to send them. This is a level of accommodation that is rare in the college application process, and can only work in your favor.
They are also really, really kind (shoutout to Washington and Lee).
So while there is most likely no “special pile” with higher admit rates, there might be a group of awesome and dedicated people who want to help you as much as possible because you are an NCM applicant.
I know I didn’t directly answer your question, but I hope I helped.
@Kunkka thanks for the info. It sounds like you applied this year, would you mind sharing where you got into?
@WouldYouAcceptMe Stanford match, Princeton, Caltech, and MIT RD.
Wow, @Kunkka mind posting your stats. Did you get into all those places this year?
According to Questbridge, most CPS become finalists in the NCM