A student aiming for HYPSM should be able to chance him/herself after half an hour on CC. I agree that most of these posts are just to show off their achievements. But they can be useful for the rest of us.
In reality, I tend to have more than one or two types of reaction to “Chance Me” threads, although two certainly predominate:
– No way. (This, of course, is about 2/3rds of the kids.)
– There’s a shot, but it will depend on everything happening right, plus luck. A few kids like this will get accepted.
– Standard good candidate. Who knows? Reach for everyone, etc. No reason not to apply. A decent number of kids like this will get accepted, why not this kid? (This is maybe 30% of the kids.)
– Oh, please! Go read about athletic likely letters, what they mean, and what it means if you can’t get one. Then talk to the coach.
– Oh, please! Your mother is chair of the Psychology Department? Dean of Admissions? Go ask her.
– This is a really strong candidate. 50-50. Should not apply to only one “dream school.” Should probably be more/less humble. Shouldn’t re-take that 35 ACT.
– This kid will be accepted. (I don’t have this reaction very often, but I’m batting 1.000 when I do.)
It’s pretty rare that I post what I think about an individual kid, though. Usually when I do, it’s either because I can give some specific, constructive advice, and/or because there’s something to say I think will be beneficial to other kids.
Do we generally agree that it is the job of the college/guidance counselor to lower expectations appropriately? The one in the article is concerned that students or parents think they are not using their magic wand for a kid if they try to talk a kid “down” from a reach, or reaches.
If it were up to me, the Chance Me forum would be locked and chance me threads would be banned. If you’re going to a school that admits mostly by stats, you should be able to figure out on your own whether you’re a competitive candidate. If you’re applying to a selective, holistic school, no one’s going to be able to predict without seeing the whole app, and even then(except for one or two posters), we don’t have access to the “trade secrets” of that holistic process. If you’re the child of a celebrity(Malia), it’s doubtful you’re posting on CC to begin with.
^ Doubt that will ever happen on an ad-supported forum - “What Are My Chances?” is very popular in terms of views and posts.
Honestly? She’s a miserable kid anyway. Never happy about herself. If she never applied, she would have been griping “But I know I could have gotten in!” and we would have had to listen to it FOREVER!
She had good stats, but just not that something extra. She definitely was in the group of 80% of applicants who could do the work at Stanford but there just wasn’t a reason to pick her over the other 10 applicants for that one spot. Most people who aren’t on CC don’t really get that. She’s a kid sitting near the top of her class at a big public high school where a few students have gotten in to Stanford most years. Her view was “if they can get in, why can’t I?”
I look at my own kids. One had higher stats, is good in math and science and has figured out how to deal with the social sciences she’s forced to take (and I swear part of her high scores on the writing part of SAT/ACT is that she has beautiful handwriting and writes in very direct, non-flowery language), but it is my average stat kid who is the more curious student, who wants to discuss literature and art and history. She’s the kid the LACs and higher ranked schools should be looking for. If she would have applied to a school above her weight class, and an AO really looked at her application (past the gpa and scores), I think they would have found a gem. It would have been worth it to ‘shoot for the stars’ for her. At ONE school.
She’s very happy where she is and we didn’t have the money to spend on lottery schools. Unlike my friend’s Stanford reject, my daughter is always happy. She’d have been happy at almost any school.
I don’t like chance me threads because I think the kids can figure out on their own if they have a shot or not. Plus I just don’t buy in to that incessant neediness that lasts for but a month or two at most with sone high school seniors after which no one really cares who goes where.
As per @DadTwoGirls - my feeling is any grown adults posting in “chance” threads should be doing something like:
- encouraging the student to confirm that their schools are financially viable for the family
- encouraging the student to deep dive into the school selection process and make sure they are making a choice based on their needs/desires and not some perceived “prestige”
- encouraging students to seriously research the schools they really are interested and using that information to put together the most competitive applications they can.
I know ad coms at top high schools who every year for 10+ years now see 100 or 200 students apply, get accepted and rejected from colleges all over the country, and even they don’t always have a great sense of how the application process will turn out for a given student.
Anyone who thinks they can accurately chance a student from their CC stats (except in the case of obvious safties) is fooling themselves and the student.
I do think most of the “no chance” or “you’re in” responses are other students. Anyone who has actually watched a kid or two go through this process know how capricious competitive school admissions is.
Not at all. In our public school GCs are overworked trying to keep up with their primary responsibility, which is to help our students navigate high school and get a diploma. We aren’t paying them to be college counselors or adcoms.
@austinmshauri - but the GC in the original article IS a college counselor. At a private school.
His job as he sees it is twofold:
@OHMomof2, I guess it would depend what was marketed to the parents before their kids enrolled then. I don’t think the counselors at my nephews’ private school actively discouraged reaches. My SIL said they encouraged their kids to add schools to “round out” their lists. Maybe it’s just in the way the advice is worded.
Rumor has it that the college counselors at my kids’ private school are discouraging. I do think part of their job includes helping the kids get a realistic perspective, though I think some kids might be overly sensitive to their cold water (and perhaps some not sensitive enough). I get to find out in person in a few weeks. They have already gone over the details of Naviance scattergrams with the juniors…
This thread seems to be focused on extreme reach universities, but just today I read “chance me” threads for universities most kids have a shot at. Those kids seem genuinely anxious about the process, and may not have the attention of GCs or knowledgable parents. In those cases, I think the advice is helpful. For reach schools, yeah, it’s an opportunity for kids to have their ego stroked.
I mostly lurk on these forums nowadays but one of my personal prides ( lol) was to tell “The Quads” in response to a “ chance us” type thread that they had a good shot at the Ivy’s given their multiple hooks: URMs’s with decent scores and a wonderful story. When their story played out in the press I felt like I “knew” them.
Being able to afford the applications isn’t the only consideration when suggesting those ‘reaching’ to too many schools cut their lists. I think it is pretty demoralizing to get a lot of rejections. I think every student should apply to one rolling admissions school to get an early acceptance so they know “I’m going to college” before any rejections come in.
Last application cycle there was a mom whose child really needed merit $$ bc their budget was tight and they couldn’t afford their familial contribution. Her child was a solidly good student, but the list was focused on competitive top schools that only offered a handful of large merit scholarships. My comments that her child should search out schools where she would be a stronger contender for merit were very much not appreciated. I was attempting to be helpful bc that need for merit is where my family dwells and I have navigated the process successfully with my kids.
Fwiw, I wasn’t being harsh or mean. I attempted communicate the reality of just how competitive competitive merit is and that being eligible for admission and being competitive for top merit are not synonymous. But it was interpreted as being crushing aspirations.
I personally think there is too much at stake to not be upfront with students. If they focus on the wrong schools, it may really hamper their realistic options. Creating a good, viable list that fits financially and academically will ultimately lead to the best outcome for the student. If they put their energies on schools that are too much of a long-shot and then simply throw applications at the other schools, the schools where they could have been strong contenders may find their applications falling flat.
Agree with Mom2. We’ve had parents on here with kids applying to engineering programs at their flagship (pretty straightforward admissions since the stats are widely published, and LOTS of kids from their HS apply to the flagship) but the kid opted not to take Calc or an AP science (and the HS offers them) since it conflicted with choir or band… they get advice which they don’t like- then the kid gets rejected from the flagship for engineering with an acceptance to Arts and Sciences instead. Parents go ballistic.
We aren’t being mean. But we’ve been around the block a few (a dozen) times. If your kid is at a HS which offers advanced level math and science, and your kid opts not to take those classes, your kid is not a competitive applicant for engineering at colleges which will also be accepting a dozen or 20 of his/her classmates. Sad but true. Yes- there are exceptions. Yes- a very strong robotics/programming/science EC’s/math competition can overcome other weaknesses in the application.
But newbies get mad at the “wisdom of the crowd”. When a college “recommends” taking an SAT 2 in a science, and your kid takes US History instead- that diminishes your kids chances. Doesn’t mean you don’t have a great kid.
It doesn’t hurt to shoot for the moon— as long as there are attractive and realistic options as well.
“It doesn’t hurt to shoot for the moon— as long as there are attractive and realistic options as well.”
This needs to be embroidered on a sampler.
I’ve never understood why someone would let a group of strangers “chance me” for colleges, and I certainly hope people don’t make application decisions based on the comments! But now that @Muad_dib mentioned it, I do have to wonder if it’s an ego stroke.
I just can’t help but think of DD’s senior class. The same handful of kids were the academic superstars, “student of the month” repeatedly and plastered all over the yearbook. Along with the (meaningless) school kudos, they were all ego-stroking each other, applied for the stars with state flagship as the fallback. One kid was so confident he’d get into MIT he only applied there and state flagship. He and the rest of them, including the kid with the 36 ACT are all at state flagship. Meanwhile, a recruited athlete with good (but not perfect) grades and scores is at Harvard. My kiddo and a friend didn’t receive a single academic award at the senior awards night, but both ended up getting accepted at Ivy League schools. These “chance me” threads fail to see whether someone can write a good essay, is actually interesting, or just another “average excellent” student checking the same boxes as everyone else.