Totally silly question, but until this year, I had NEVER heard about portal astrology. Courtesy of CC, I am now intrigued.
Some laugh at the concept, and others seem to focus on it. I know it varies school by school and year by year, but is there really such a thing as admissions “portal astrology”?
When I envision a college letting applicants know about admissions decisions, particularly those schools that inform on decisions on the same day, I see in my mind’s eye some folks in the admissions office loading a spreadsheet with the decision to accept, defer, wait list, or reject. I’m not a CS person, but it’s not rocket science. They then just initiate the “email campaign” on D-Day, and that should be it. No hints at all until the info is released to the recipient. Right?
Does “portal astrology” exist? If so, couldn’t the schools do a better job of making it less obvious from a tech standpoint about their decision?
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Bingo
With very rare exceptions, no. In almost all cases, there is nothing a 17 year old has thought of that the more experienced AO or IT guy hasn’t thought of first. It’s simply a fun parlor game to entertain the kids.
At the end of the day, correlation does not imply causation.
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The only reliable sign I’ve seen is when a day or two before decisions are out (meaning, the results have been loaded), on some portals like UChicago’s some applicants will see a withdraw button and others will not. Those that do have “withdraw” have been deferred or wait listed; and those that do not have a terminal decision - accepted or denied.
It’s likely that UChicago and others may fix this in the future.
Occasionally other telltale signs show up inadvertently on related websites. Example, last year GaTech’s bursar website showed a “Pay Now” button for admitted students a couple of days ahead of the decision date. But this hole seems to have been plugged this year.
In short - the vast majority of portal astrology is nonsense, but every now and then a valid indicator pops up.
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Portal astrology exists. Does it give accurate predictions? About the same quality as astrology. Hence the name.
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what’s the deal with the Cal waitlist button? There were 3 responses that I think were accurate for accepted, wl, denied.
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Judging from some of the decision threads on CC, it mostly serves as an outlet for the nervous energy some anxious applicants carry as decision dates approach.
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Why does it matter? You have a 50% shot at getting into any college as in either you get in or you do not 
. Cheers!
Does it matter? Yes, I think it does. It goes to the heart of data security.
I don’t disagree with your fundamental point, though.
I just think it’s remarkable that these things can happen in 2022 if at all they occur. I was fascinated during prep/BS applications about the FedEx/UPS/USPS notifications or whatever it was, where you could see you were getting a package from a school, which was essentially a dead giveaway that you/your student was getting a yes on admissions. However, failure to get the delivery notification was not necessarily tantamount to a denial or WL.
Today, I was just reading the UCB portal astrology page. Apparently, folks are convinced there were signs of admission etc, but it appears that whatever that sign was is now patched up. That seems to give folks even greater confidence that data leaks happened.
Again, I agree with you: you/your student will find out soon enough. But, at least on CC, I’m reading several instances at several schools this year where members seem to strongly believe in the stars, so to speak, in relation to portals. And some of these are the finest technology schools in the world.
Active imagination or data leakage is the question!
I wouldn’t call these data leaks - because no actual data is being leaked. We’re just talking about possible telltale signs.
But as I said above the vast majority of such “signs” that people speculate about on CC are meaningless. There are extremely few valid indicators, and they’re usually patched up quickly once word gets out.
With regards to this happening at top technology schools: these portal softwares are provided by third party companies and licensed by the admissions office. The school’s CS department has no role in creating or maintaining these portal websites.
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Fair point.
I would still be livid about these third-party software companies if I were an AO and this happened. It shouldn’t be happening at all, fully appreciating it might be a very limited issue.
It’s funny that these top colleges have all these hackathons and stuff, and amazing programmers as faculty and students, yet this portal stuff is outsourced to 3rd party vendors. How fitting it would be to have a freshman hackathon to astrology-proof the next year’s decision rollout…
On another note, I get the anxiety that causes portal astrology in the 48-72 hours before a known release date and time…but it’s a totally different game over at the Umich thread, where people are just mining for signs that there might be a release that week (starting way back in January, and continuing until now…) My kid has no real interest in knowing a day ahead of time what the results are, but knowing there will BE results…that’s a different story.
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I totally agree with all the points you’re making.
Our D will be going through this next year, and I hope she doesn’t go for this portal astrology stuff. There’s too much else going on in life to worry about things such as who has a dot over their names and who doesn’t and what it portends for the admission decision. But it seems to be most definitely a conversation piece among applicants from what I can see here on CC and their references to the same on Reddit.
I still can’t understand how in 2022 basic stuff like this is not considered by the software providers and the schools licensing the software. I’m not a CS person, but I’ve done programming for fun since the early 1980s. It truly is not rocket science to prevent any kind of leakage (or whatever it might be more properly called).
Even if they plugged all the holes portal astrology would still thrive, because the overwhelming majority of speculation is based on perceived signs (not actual tells). 
“Do you see a dot next to the check marks on the checklist? If you see one you’ve been rejected”
“I see a faint grey background when I look at the portal in Chrome on my PC but I don’t see it when viewing on my iPhone. Does that mean I’ve been waitlisted?”
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Pitt has a tell. The first thing that appears for most people are accept and decline buttons. Sometimes it takes a couple days to get the email. This existed in 2016 when my oldest applied and people still talk about getting their buttons on the Pitt threads. I guess the people doing the adjustments to the online accounts are faster than the people who send out the emails.
I wish that one on the several long-term members who tend to do super long posts with analysis paralysis would do a post-cycle hindsight paper to compare actual decisions with portal astrology. 
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Present company excluded, of course? 
You are confusing possibility with probability
I’m going to make an confession: As a recovering portal astrologist, I have a really nerdy but mostly fact based (you know, ’statistics’
) way to work off nervous energy, feed nervous energy and ruminate over possibilities.
I tinker with a spreadsheet full of numbers from the Common Data Set from each school my kid applied to. Also, ratings from Fiske and Princeton Review. This tab is called ‘Institutional Data’. The other tab is called ‘Qualitative Rankings’.
Then, I sort columns A to Z or Z to A. Multiply or divide certain numbers and create new columns. Re-sort. Color code. Add Bold. And then I ponder the numbers and wonder if they’ll get in, waitlisted or accepted. At least I feel like I’m in control of the numbers and not subject to the whims of AO’s, Tech Outsourcing Mistakes, Website leaks.
I don’t think it’s any better than any other way of coping. I’m just saying…I get it. Waiting makes me nuts.
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That ain’t portal astrology…that’s being a good and concerned parent!
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Yeah but it is obsessive and pointless…and I do it multiple times a day…!