<p>Don't forget to consider another kind of reach, too: financial reach. It's not just about your kid getting accepted, it's about her getting accepted to places that you will actually be able to afford to send her.</p>
<p>Conversely, there are schools that are a "fit" financially and where the numbers say admission would be almost certain...but if your child wouldn't feel happy about going there, it's not a fit.</p>
<p>Our HS guidance counselor kept statitstics for the last two years - GPA/SAT/college applied to accepted/rejected for the previous two HS classes. We could see if any student with her stats was rejected by Virgina Tech in the last two years, for example.</p>
<p>there is a site called collegedata.com you can put in your child's data and it will give you an idea, you can then proceed from there to a section called admission tracker and see what kind of stats people had that were accepted or rejected by that school. It is self reported so who knows how valid, but will give you an idea. also links to different schools info.</p>
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Don't forget to consider another kind of reach, too: financial reach. It's not just about your kid getting accepted, it's about her getting accepted to places that you will actually be able to afford to send her.
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<p>I've been wondering what to call these schools. Thank you for "financial reach", it's perfect. For my son, these are schools that are matches but will he get the merit money nessicary to make it possible? </p>
<p>Luckily, he loves his saftey, which we can afford.</p>
<p>Dougbetsy wrote this in another thread and it really helped me:</p>
<p>We plot Son's (predicted) SAT and GPA against the schools' averages. If he is below 25%, it's a no. Below 50% = reach. Above 50% = match. Above 75% = safety.</p>
<p>^ Some might wonder why the middle of "match" isn't 50%; it's because of how yields work. Applicants at, e.g., the 25% level are much more likely to accept an offer of admission than those at the 75% level (because the latter get offers from more selective schools, and tend to accept such offers). Somebody crunched the numbers for a top LAC recently (was it Williams? not sure) and found that an applicant at about the 67% level had a 50-50 chance of acceptance. For almost all schools, matriculants have lower stats than those admitted.</p>