<p>CAPS</a> - Demonstrate Interest to the Colleges of Your Choice</p>
<p>it seems well done but I feel like it has scam written all over it</p>
<p>the website is very well-crafted... but it doesn't seem right...</p>
<p><em>shrug</em></p>
<p>I used it. Didn't look like it'd hurt.</p>
<p>I googled it. No websites have called it a scam, so...I guess it couldn't hurt.</p>
<p>i called the numbers under contact info and no one picked up but I did get a voicemail...</p>
<p>but the thing that gets me is the statistics of how much expressing interest helped (CAPS</a> - Impact of Demonstrating Interest)</p>
<p>if you look at columbia, how can expressing interest have increased chances of admission by 127%?</p>
<p>I don't see how it could help all that much</p>
<p>OK, now THAT crap is probably garbage.</p>
<p>I just scroll down to the bottom and laaaaaaaauuugggh at the people who had a negative effect on their admission rates...</p>
<p>Edit: ***? Those statistics are for ED vs RD... that has no bearing on whether this CAPS website is effective at all...</p>
<p>I really don't see how this place could help...</p>
<p>Note: The whole impact of expressing interest thing is just calculated by comparing the admission rates overall to early decision at a school.</p>
<p>Ex.) The difference for Columbia, 14% (25-11), is 127% of 11%.</p>
<p>Lmao that's so dumb.</p>
<p>I found much information on it through Google:
<a href="http://www.capstoapply.com/cpshandout.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.capstoapply.com/cpshandout.pdf</a></p>
<p>I was able to locate discussions of the WSJ, high schools, etc.
"capstoapply</a>" - Google Search</p>
<p>I doubt its a scam, but I don't know if it would necessarily help any. What would it mean if you only gave a college 1 token or whatever?</p>
<p>Any further thoughts? Has anyone used this and thought it worth it?</p>
<p>Seems to me like a crude attempt to implement the whole "preference ranking" idea which I believe is a good one, but I still have my doubts...</p>
<p>Yeah, it's definitely crude lol.</p>
<p>I used it. Takes about 5 minutes tops to complete the whole thing. So can't hurt trying I suppose.</p>
<p>Taken at face value, it appears to have about as much legitimacy as the "Someone Has a Crush on YOU!!! Find Out Who!!!" app on Facebook.</p>
<p>Well it doesn't do anything...bad or commercial. Like it doesn't send you spam or make you watch an advertisements.</p>
<p>The birdie is....haha the heck. why would you call it a birdie lol</p>
<p>What a waste of time/money.</p>
<p>I can't help but chuckle at how this service makes students use tokens to rank their interest in prospective schools- such a trivialization.</p>
<p>Oh, and by the way, wouldn't this only hurt you for everywhere but your top choice?</p>
<p>Edit: all the "testimonial" quotes from admissions directors are taken out of context, btw.</p>
<p>Oh, and I did some digging with some security software: none of of the security certificates on this site check out- all are invalid. I'd avoid this site.</p>
<p>Food for though: how does this site make money?</p>
<p>................</p>
<p>Lol.</p>
<p>Selling innocent children's contact info?</p>
<p>I was pretty skeptical with this new site as well, but spent some time digging through it last month and here is what I found out. Since there appears to be lots of misinformation, I'll give you everything I've got.</p>
<p>As a college counselor, I have spoken with a number of college reps about this. While the scenario is not exactly as presented by the CAPS website... CAPS</a> - Demonstrate Interest to the Colleges of Your Choice, many of the colleges said they will be taking it into consideration in the applicant review process.</p>
<p>This falls into the camp criterion of "demonstrated or expressed interest" which many colleges have long said they considered. If you look on US News or any of the data sets, many colleges will say that its either important or very important (less so with state schools, but it depends whether you are in or out of state). The reps tell me that when reading an app they struggle to determine who is really interested. Visits or contacts with reps help, but they don't know whether you visited everyone or just your top few. Or, could you be interested, but the trip was too far to take. In general (i.e.: not ALL colleges) the reps claim that CAPS would appear to provide a more solid view of preference than any other method they have used before and ultimately could tip the scales in some situations.</p>
<p>As for ranking, the national association for college counseling frowns on it. I suspect this is why CAPS lets you allocate tokens and doesn't force you to actually pick a #1, #2, #3, etc. However, colleges know that applicants are applying to many colleges these days -- many applicants have well over 10 applications in. So, knowing where they are in the top 3, even if its not the absolute top selection is very useful. They also know that many applicants' first choice is a reach college, so there is a good chance they won't get in. Finally, in today's economy, selection of a final college is subject to financial aid packages which come much later in the process. As for colleges that are not preferences, CAPS doesn't send anything to them, so the so-called bottom of your list isn't affected. However, I wonder if this will change over time and colleges will demand to know that like we're seeing with the new SAT score choice for this spring. In the meantime, I couldn't find a downside or potential for lowering your chances of admission.</p>
<p>I asked the company (CAPS) some pretty pointed questions regarding their intentions earlier this month and wanted to know how they were funded/got paid, etc. They said that the CPS is the first of a few products they will offer for college admissions and some will be fee for service based. The next is supposed to be a tool for managing and sending teacher recommendations, which is partnered with a major bank (I'm not sure exactly for what yet, but they said it was not financial aid or credit related). They claim that they don't sell the names or market beyond what will be their services. Apparently this is a free service to generate some interest and traffic for their other products. At this point, none of my students who have used this have been spammed or anything like that and I don't know of a case where the name was sold. I don't know how heavily they will cross market once they have other features, however.</p>
<p>With all the crazy college sites out there, this company has been pretty good in reaching out to counselors, answering questions and keeping them informed. I've recommended it to many of my students and know other counselors who have as well. As I mentioned before, I can't see any downside to this at the moment and can see why this is useful to certain colleges and students. If you have 3-5 top colleges, this is a good site to try. However, if you only have it narrowed down to about 10 colleges, I'm not sure what impact just one-token would provide and I've told my students to avoid that.</p>
<p>On the security, that's beyond my pay grade, but I have sent an e-mail to the company inquiring. Will post when I find something out.</p>