<p>How about this as a way to get a very rough ballpark sense for the sliding relationship between admissions rates and an applicant's standing in the applicant pool, for colleges outside the über-selectives: take your percentile standing in the admissions pool on standardized tests and add the school's admissions rate. If it's > 100, then the school is a safe match. Around 90 is a match. Much below that and you'll start to need some hook points for being a legacy, athlete, full-pay student, etc. (I just took at stab at the numbers; a statistician could probably come up with a neat formula.)</p>
<p>
[quote]
many of the people who are admitted who are below the median may well be getting in with special hooks
[/quote]
</p>
<p>This is certainly true, but there's a nuance that I think helps students from being quite so nervous about their standing: schools will usually yield relatively few of their top admits, but will yield more students toward the bottom of their admitted class. In other words, adcoms are delighted to enroll a student at the 50% percentile of the admitted class, because she'll be well above the 50% mark in the class that they ultimately enroll.</p>
<p>I disagree that schools that only accept 20% of applicants are reaches for everyone. If you are a top student with the test scores, GPA, geographic location, ECs, essays and any other benefits (legacy, etc.) then quite a few of those schools can become matches (although certainly not safeties).</p>
<p>The thing is, just because a school is a match doesn't mean you'll get in, which is why I feel that people misdefine these words. I'm helping the juniors in my HS apply, and I can tell instantly whether they will get in a top 20 college. The question is whether it is the specific college they want or not. It is for this reason that people apply to so many colleges now a days: someone knows they should get in a top 20 school, but it is a chance at which of them they will get accepted at. They are matches at the top 20, but that doesn't mean they will get in.</p>
<p>This is what I've told my daughter to use as guidline to decide the match and safeties.</p>
<p>GPA (UW) | SATI ( each section ) | SATII (3) | No of AP (9 – 11) with score of 4/5 | ECs | Reach/Match/Safeties
3.95 - 4.0 | > 750 | > 750 | > 10 | US Science/Math Olympiad; Intel or Siemens Research Award| HYPMSC (Match); All Other safeties.
3.95 - 4.0 | > 750 | > 750 | > 10 | Strong ECs (US Olympiad Camp), RSI, Sharp, NASA, Intel or Siemens Semi Finalists | HYPS (Match/Slight Reach); MIT, CalTech (Match); All Other safeties.
3.95 – 4.0 | > 750 | > 750 | > 10 | Strong ECs, Good Recs, Good Essay | HYPMSC (Reach);Other top 20(Match); All Other safeties.
3.9 – 4.0 | > 700 | > 700 | > 5 | Strong ECs, Good Recs, Good Essay | Top 20 (Reach); Top 20- 40 (Match);
All Other safeties.
3.8 – 3.9 | > 700 | > 700 | > 5 | Strong ECs, Good Recs, Good Essay | Top 30 (Reach);
Top 30- 50 (Match); All Other safeties.</p>
<p>That princeton machine is so sad...it says I have no matches </p>
<p>D:</p>
<p>Does that mean i'm screwed?</p>
<p>I think the most reasonable (and logical) way of determining the reach/match/safety spectrum is to think of things as a distribution (bell curve.) Compare yourself to the median admit, and ask yourself if you are the median admit. If that's the case, then you are a match. If you are far better than the median admit, you're a safety. If you're on the tail end of the admits (the 25th percentile or lower) then you're a reach.</p>
<p>You can be the median admit at many schools and not have a high percentage chance of getting in. It's silly to worry about percentage chances. Just look at who gets in and compare your stats.</p>
<p>Look at the CDS data, usually hidden deep on a college website, for each college...that information is posted with the federal government and they dont usually tell fibs on it.....its the hard core facts of stats of who got in and who didnt.</p>
<p>BUT......even the CDS data does not break it down for the "special cases", like legacy, athletes, minorities, and others with big bucks who got in well below the usual scores.</p>
<p>How about with my qualifications:</p>
<p>3.9 gpa (UW)
great EC's
great essays
great rec's
summer programs at johns hopkins, MIT
some leadership
but my CR score on sat is bad (600) but sat math (760) better...</p>
<p>I'm looking to be an engineering major... can someone help determine my R/M/S?</p>
<p>planning on takin the SAT again to raise the CR score...</p>
<p>If you're confident you can get it, it's a safety.
If you're the perfect match for the school (SATs, GPA, etc.) it's a match.
If you are quite unlikely to get in, it's a reach.</p>
<p>That's all there is to it! Use your own judgment.</p>
<p>And stop worrying! As long as you have a few schools you are sure you can get into, you're fine. Stop worrying about stuff like, OMG! I can't decide if this school is a reach or a safety! What are my chances at Hoolala University?! I thought they were 33%, and now I think they're 34%! </p>
<p>The CC people are not experts on chances of getting in. Narrow your list down based on what suits you, apply to some schools that you're sure you can get in, and apply to the rest! That's all! No need to have like 4 or 5 pages over this!</p>
<p>To get a general idea for my list I had a meeting with my college counselor. I go to a public school with 550+ kids in my grade so all I did was show her my list of like 20 schools (bunch of reaches, matches and safeties) with my GPA, SAT, and main ECs/awards. She told me I was basically guaranteed to get into all of my matches and safeties based on GPA and SAT of previous admits (all big state schools). After hearing that I cut down my matches and safeties to UMich and UMD(instate), expecting to get into Mich and get at least half tuition paid at UMD. I basically threw off like 5 other safeties/matches because I would much rather have gone to Mich or UMD over them. Then she told me about my reaches. After I heard that Brown was an instant crapshoot from my school I removed it from the list. I also took off a few other slight reaches like UVA (can't remember the others). I took a list of like 20 schools down to fewer than 10 after an hour conversation. </p>
<p>If scholarships and stuff aren't <em>that</em> big of a deal then you only really need one rolling safety and one rolling match (maybe EA safeties and matches too) so you can hear back from them by november or early december and not have to worry about wasting money applying to safety schools. That way you can focus on your reach applications and if you don't get into your match school in december, you can send a few more apps to safeties and reaches over winter vacation. **Keep in mind, if you do that be 100% sure that you're willing to attend your safety school because the big risk is that you'll only get into one or two colleges and be basically forced to attend a school.<a href="i%20took%20that%20risk,%20but%20it%20worked%20out%20in%20the%20end">/b</a>.</p>
<p>Why would you remove Brown just because it was a crapshoot?
Most top 10/20 schools are crapshoots for nearly every applicant...</p>
<p>crapshoot as in we have more kids admitted to Harvard than Brown, Princeton than Brown, Caltech than Brown, etc. It wasn't very high on my list of reaches so I figured why apply to such a selective school if it's not in my top 5 choices.</p>
<p>But yea, the best thing to do is to talk to your college counselor or GC and try to see how past applicants around your SAT and GPA did from your school. It's better than doing a chances thread on CC IMO. From what I remember at my school's Naviance website, it would show the median SAT and GPA for people accepted to each school. For big state schools, almost everyone with both numbers over the medians were accepted (save Berkeley, UCLA, and a few others). My school wasn't so helpful though for smaller LACs because most kids end up applying to the same top 20 schools, Big 10, ACC, or SEC schools.</p>
<p>^ Good reasoning then.</p>
<p>So you are going to Penn, then Venkat89?</p>
<p>I'm always scared of my safeties rejecting me because they know that I wouldnt go there unless I get smited by terrible luck o_O</p>
<p>Speaking of princeton review's website, I hate that you can no longer just type a school into a search box... instead you have to choose "Look up a school" and go through their list. I wonder if they were just trying to increase the number of hits to their page or something like that.</p>
<p>I also agree with Mythmom. Apply to one or two schools that you know you qualify for automatic admission (would likely be a state school with published criteria) and that you think you can afford. Then the rest of the schools should be the ones you think you'd be happiest at. If you feel like the school is a good fit for you, most likely your application will reflect that and hopefully at least some of them will agree and offer admission.</p>
<p>Yes I'm going to Penn.</p>
<p>Keep in mind, big state schools are not <em>that</em> big on perceived interest. If they really want you to come they work to convince you by throwing you scholarships and stuff. You need a good application, but they rarely reject a student for being too good (which is why they have honors programs, full ride scholarships, and other things not meant for average students). It's smaller private schools that worry more about yield. Schools like WashU, Penn, and others are pretty big for perceived interest and are known for admitting slightly less qualified applicants because they show a lot more interest in attending the school. Ways to show interest are by visiting (if a school is within 50 miles and you've never been it can look bad), applying early for rolling schools, attending info sessions when the schools come to your area, and even signing up for their mailing list.</p>
<p>You can use college board to see how you compare to kids who got in, too. They have new charts & graphs. I tried Brown, here's the link -- but you'd have to add your own info to compare: <a href="http://collegesearch.collegeboard.com/academictracker/servlet/ACTServlet?pg=2&collegeId=3746%5B/url%5D">http://collegesearch.collegeboard.com/academictracker/servlet/ACTServlet?pg=2&collegeId=3746</a></p>