@bouders, your data link shows that undergraduate enrollment has gone down since 2010. The data used in those prediction sites would not be much older than that, if it is even that old.
Having gone through LAC application process with my younger one, those percentages look much too high. I don’t an algorithm can predict that anyone has close to a 50% chance of acceptance at Haverford, or a 60% at Vassar, based on stats. Schools like those are about so much more than stats.
If those are the types of schools she might be interested in, consider Grinnell, Macalester, Kenyon (which has the strong theater program), Oberlin, as well as perhaps Bates, Connecticut College, Bryn Mawr, maybe Barnard. I am intensely risk averse, so with acceptance rates at all of those below 30%, and so much emphasis on fit, I would treat all of those as reaches. Schools where acceptance is more likely, but not guaranteed, would include Dickinson, Denison, and, for a student willing to look at the south, Centre and Rhodes. Closer to true safeties would include Kalamazoo, Earlham, Knox, Wooster, Beloit, Lawrence – all in the midwest. East coast true safeties might include Muhlenberg, Alleghany etc. though we didn’t look at them so I’m not as familiar.
I would second the recommendation of Beloit, Kalamazoo, and Lawrence from “my part of the country” (upper Midwest). I know some graduates from each one, and they all thrived at those institutions. Similarly, Denison. As a college professor, I’ve met graduates of these schools in my programs and on my own faculty.
Applying from the largest state in the country is not going to provide a bounce at competitive schools. They have no shortage of California applicants.
Did you run the calculator with a 3.9 9or 3.95 GPA and see how different the outcomes are?
Here are the numbers with an unweighted GPA of 3.95
U Chicago 1.12% (probably right!!)
Haverford 18.63%
Middlebury 23.19%
Vassar 30.97%
Pitzer 97.96% (odd, maybe because it’s test optional, so calculator doesn’t work at all?)
Reed 59.28%
Smith 68.58%
Whitman 87.03%
It’s not that you get a bump, but in my experience it’s a bit easier for a CA kid to get into top LACs on the East Coast than the few we have here in CA, where the majority of applicants are in state. This comes from our HS Naviance, plus the personal experience of kids I know who graduated in either 2015 or 2016. So mostly anecdotal (except if you accept the Naviance data - which from my D’s HS is carefully collected by college counselors, not filled in by students).
From the freshman profiles for some of the top LACs:
- Swarthmore California is the most highly represented home state of members in the newly admitted class. Following, in order, are New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, Virginia, Illinois, Texas, and Florida.
- Vassar California is the second most represented state after NY
Amherst:
California is the second most represented state after NY
- Williams California is third most represented state after MA and NY