<p>CRDad, I am intrigued by your system. How are you ascertaining your kid’s specific chances, that 10% probability at a reach that perhaps only takes 7% of all applicants? Is there a multiplier? Are you counting dots on the Naviance scatterplots? Just curious …</p>
<p>My D only applied to schools that I considered to be safeties or matches. She had no interest in any that were reaches. Her safeties were schools that accepted strictly on stats and had stated stats for either automatic admission or guaranteed scholarships that my D met or exceeded. (Finances weren’t an issue so that didn’t factor into our definitions). Her matches were schools where Naviance showed that the vast majority of students from her high school with her stats had been accepted. Pay attention to how many years back your school’s Naviance goes, though, as admissions data can change in just a few years. All of my D’s safeties had rolling admissions, and her matches all made decisions (accept, reject or defer) before Christmas. That made for a nice senior year!</p>
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The terms safety and match relates to the chance of your acceptance, not the admit rate of the school. The two can be quite different. A school might have an admit rate of 90%, but it obviously is not a safety for the 10% who get rejected. And some applicants can have an extremely high chance of acceptance at schools with a very low admit rate, particularly at ones that are less holistic. I’m not aware of a strict definition of the threshold for a safety or match. Some use the term “safety” to mean all but certain, and some use it to mean very likely. Far more important than the threshold terminology for match/safety/reach is that the chance of various outcomes fits with your goals and risk aversion. </p>
<p>Estimating chance of acceptance can be difficult. Stat-based acceptance histories, such as Naviance, are helpful for less holistic colleges that focus on stats and admit across the full school instead of admitting by major/sub division/…, but are not as helpful for colleges that focus on other non-stat criteria, which can include things like level of applicant’s interest. For example, a kid with great stats who phones in his safeties by not doing optional essays and not bothering to change the name of the college when cut and pasting the essays he does submit might have very different results than predicted by Naviance. If you have a large enough sample size, you can identify colleges that have a history of acceptance decisions not following stats well with Naviance, as well as online sources that include much larger samples over many HSs. If not sure about chance of acceptance, then you may want to estimate on the low side.</p>
<p>Applying early can make the process far more simple. For example, when I applied to colleges, I was admitted early (non-binding EA) to a selective college that was my 5th choice, so in the RD round I did not need to concern myself about chance of acceptance or safeties, and instead only applied to the 4 colleges that I’d choose over the EA acceptance, all of which were very selective.</p>
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<p>Yes counting dot’s on a Naviance scatterplot.</p>
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<p>Huh? Are you a tiger parent who thinks a kid with those stats is a slacker? </p>
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So they go somewhere else. </p>
<p>Based on the Naviance data, which conditions only on GPA and SAT, the a priori probability is what it is.
If 50% of the dots in your neighborhood get in you have very different chances than if 5% of the dots get in. </p>
<p>Thanks for answering. So if 30% of the kids in the same neighborhood of your kid got into a school with a 20% acceptance rate, what are you saying the probability is of your kid’s acceptance?</p>
<p>Yes, ED, ED2, and EA are worth strategizing over.</p>
<p>Some schools have far higher admit rates for ED than RD. Some are higher for EA as well.</p>
<p>Also, essays and references do make a difference in many cases (and not at all at some state schools). If your excitement for and research in a school shows through, that can definitely make a difference. Adcoms want to admit kids they like and who want to be at their school.</p>
<p>@Youdon’tsay, I’d say your kid has a closer to 30% chance of being accepted if that’s what Naviance shows. But since they still have a 70% chance of being rejected it’s still a reach. </p>
<p>At our school my son’s stats for Harvard put him in a region of 50% dots. He was also a legacy - so I thought he might have a better than 50% chance of getting in, but obviously he couldn’t count on it. I was thought the holistic parts of his application were good enough, but it was hard to be sure. So I never considered Harvard anything but a theoretical match, and just assumed it was a reach. I did figure he had a better chance of getting in there than MIT (which looked like 25% by Naviance) or Stanford (which only had two people ever accepted, both athletes with much lower scores.) As it happens he was indeed accepted by Harvard and rejectected by MIT and Stanford.</p>
<p>The bigger admit rate for EA almost certainly helped my younger son get into Chicago - as did his essays, which they commented on. </p>
<p>But I don’t think anyone has to apply to matches. Unless they want to take a gap year I think everyone should plan to have at least two choices in April - so I recommend two safeties, but the rest of the list should be tailored to what you are looking for. I don’t find any great need to define what is a reach or not. My younger son in particular kept rejecting any suggestion that looked like a match. He liked one of his safeties better - so why apply to GW (no campus) or Syracuse (too big) or Brandeis (campus looks like an office park.)</p>
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<p>Actually, I am just being honest. :))
All they did after school was park in front of their laptops or video game consoles till 10pm and then scrambled like heck to finish their homework. My kids have friends who have incredible amount of other commitments such as sports, volunteering, or work who still manage to pull in the same kind of stat. Don’t get me wrong, I love my kids dearly but they really are somewhat of slackers (like their dad) - nothing wrong with that - but gnothi seauton! :o)</p>
<p>I will point out that another issue with Naviance is that it is only backwards looking. That would be fine if nothing changed from year to year, but of course it does. Schools get more applications these days, they change strategies sometimes (usually subtly but sometimes more significantly), the courts make decisions about admissions policies, etc. Stanford is much harder to get into now than even a few years ago, and it was plenty hard then. U Chicago has seen a huge increase in applications the last 5 years since signing onto the Common App. So on and so forth. I am not saying Naviance isn’t a good guide, it absolutely can be. It just isn’t a substitute for digging a little deeper and making some other inquiries, like here on CC. In other words, don’t throw out the common sense and broader view just because of some stats. The stats are a piece, but not the whole picture. The exception would be those schools with guaranteed admissions based on stats, as @ucbalumnus pointed out. And you don’t need Naviance for that.</p>
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It’s more complicated than that. Harvard was mentioned earlier, so I’ll use Harvard as an example. This year Harvard SCEA applicants had a ~21% admit rate, the highest admit rate of the SCEA schools and a significant increase over the SCEA admit rate last year. And Harvard had a ~3% RD acceptance rate, the lowest acceptance rate of the SCEA schools and a significant decrease over last year. Naviance might show 50% acceptance rate for kids with your stats, but if those 50% applied SCEA and you applied RD, then your chance of acceptance estimate may be tremendously off. Naviance for the HS I attended includes information about applying early (not sure if most others do), but doesn’t contain other key factors at more holistic colleges. For example, what if all of the kids who were accepted in your stat range all had some type of special hook/tip such as URM, legacy, state+ level EC/award, etc. If you don’t have that special hook/tip, then you may drastically overestimate your chances of acceptance. What if you just don’t have as strong course rigor, LORs ,essays, or ECs as most in your stat range? Again your estimates may be far off at holistic colleges . The overestimation of chances would be expected to occur at many other colleges that value this non-stat criteria, so it’s not just a matter of random chance with your actual odds being higher than expected at some and lower than expected at others, which may lead to a bad result.</p>
<p>You also have a sample size issue at many HSs. For example, the public HS I attended in upstate NY has a good sample size for colleges within a 200 mile radius, but sample size is quite small for those who apply to colleges outside of upstate NY. There are an average of ~3 Stanford applications per year, ~1 application UCLA application per year, and less than 2 per decade at Harvey Mudd. In all of these cases sample size is too small to have any degree of accuracy in estimates.</p>
<p>I agree, Data. That’s why I was curious. I used, primarily, the admit rate, then the middle 50%, then hooks, then intuition. I just wondered if people had a more “scientific” method. Doesn’t sound like that’s the case. It’s about numbers and then a best guess. ;)</p>
<p>I’m like youdon’tsay and pizzagirl – very conservative when it comes to college acceptance, with a low tolerance for risk. Schools with up to a 30% acceptance rate are reaches, even for valedictorians with 2400 SATs (unless you are an athletic recruit or have some other factor in play that significantly raises your chances). A safety school generally would have an acceptance rate above 75% with your stats being in the top 25%. Anything in the middle is a match.</p>
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Chance of your acceptance only has a loose correlation with overall admit rate, so simple rules like above don’t work very well for most colleges. For example, consider CUNY - Hunter College. It has an acceptance of under 30%, so according to the rule above that makes it a reach for the valedictorian with a 2400 you mentioned. However, according to Hunter’s CDS, they only consider GPA, test scores, and course rigor in admissions decisions. They do not consider essays, LORs, ECs, or other holistic criteria that could lead to unexpected decisions. Their applicant pool is also weak by CC standards, so it doesn’t take much to have stats above the admission threshold. Acceptance rate is ~100% for applicants with a 1900+ SAT, and acceptance should be 100% for the valedictorian with a 2400, assuming he met the basic application requirements and filled out the application correctly. I’d expect this to be a safety for the perfect stat applicant (or even just a high stat applicant), yet your rules call it a reach. </p>
<p>Other examples where overall acceptance rate is misleading:</p>
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<li><p>University of Texas at Austin: overall acceptance rate about 40%, but those in the top 7% of their Texas high school class have a 100% acceptance rate (though not necessarily to their major), while the acceptance rate is lower than 40% for all others.</p></li>
<li><p>San Jose State University (and many others): selectivity varies greatly by major: <a href=“http://info.sjsu.edu/static/admission/impaction.html”>http://info.sjsu.edu/static/admission/impaction.html</a> . For example, for frosh fall 2014 applicants, the art - animation/illustration major was much more selective than all of the other art majors. Computer science was more selective than software engineering, computer engineering, or electrical engineering.</p></li>
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<p>I would use 30%. That would seem to be what the data indicates. It’s not a panacea, but GPA and SAT are usually the most significant factors. </p>
<p>My point was that if you look at Naviance scatterplots, you see a lot of red dots for kids who had no chance. Looking at a school’s admissions rate can often underestimate a student’s chances. Looking in your Naviance neighborhood provides information that the schools admissions rate doesn’t tell you. </p>
<p>What was interesting was for my D2’s school, the admissions rate for ED was 100%, small sample. The admissions rate for RD was something like 1/15 and that person had better stats. Clearly this data was very valuable to know. The school’s admissions stats would make it seem like it had a much higher admissions rate than it was, but the Naviance data told the story. She applied ED after doing thorough due diligence. </p>
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<p>That’s only useful if your high school is “thick” with kids who were also applying to the same schools. Great if you’re in an affluent district in the northeast (or maybe New Trier). Less meaningful if you’re in an area where the state schools are very good and most kids apply there. Gee, there goes the entire Midwest! </p>
<p>I believe my D was the only person from her high school to ever apply to Wellesley. It just isn’t on radar screens out here (well, I guess it was for a young lady from Park Ridge, lol). How would Naviance have helped? </p>
<p>My S applied to Brandeis (among other places). We don’t live in a very Jewish area. My guess is that he was probably the only kid from our hs to ever apply there. Or maybe there were others, but a true handful.</p>
<p>The assumption that we all have high schools with tons of applicants to these schools is a huge assumption to make. Btw, my kids’ hs does send kids to elite schools, but given the price / value of U of I, there aren’t going to be enough data points to draw any conclusions. </p>
<p>And of course with elite schools with sub 20% acceptance rates! anyone would be a fool to think that the college “owes” their hs the same admittance pattern as years past. </p>
<p>“Nobody from our Massachusetts public school has gotten into Stanford in years. There is some regional bias”</p>
<p>See, now, this is the “get over yourself” thing. Your one little public school is not so all-fired important in the scheme of things that Stanford adcoms are sitting there saying, “well, let’s exclude them, we don’t like them, we hate Massachusetts and this school in particular.” There are simply many more qualified students than they can seat. That’s all. It’s not evidence of “regional bias.” </p>
<p>Cornell was very high on D2’s list. When we looked at Naviance we saw no one was admitted from her school to Cornell in last 5 years, while many were admitted to other top 20s. In looking at the school Naviance a bit closer, we saw there were 3-5 students (don’t remember) admitted 6 years prior and no one matriculated. We then decided D2 needed to apply ED to have a chance being admitted. D2 was the first student admitted over 6 years, since then Cornell has admitted few students each year. </p>
<p>I do think there is region/school bias for whatever reason. D1’s GC (at a different school than D2’s) told us that Stanford liked CA students, while Princeton wanted more students from other regions. </p>
<p>D1’s stats were 50% and better for many top 10 schools, but was not admitted to any of them. The reason was, after you took out athletes, legacies and URMs, her chance was very low. Her school had a lot of legacies and many national level athletes.</p>
<p>One note about Naviance: it’s only as good as the data input by the high school. I looked at the data for my kids’ school quite closely, and it was clearly messed up for several years.</p>
<p>Some Naviance plots may be very “fuzzy” in terms of not having a clear boundary between admits and rejects, even for schools that have little or no consideration of subjective criteria. Colleges with varying levels of selectivity by major may exhibit that characteristic (e.g. SJSU). The “Naviance neighborhood” may not be a reliable indicator if you do not know what majors the others applied to of what majors are the popular ones that are more selective.</p>