<p>Has there been any research done at CC on how useful and accurate the assessment of stats profiles have been? </p>
<p>Would it be helpful to do a follow up survey of students who have gone the route of asking about chances and then having them let people know how accurate contributors were?</p>
<p>I think future readers would find it a great service and perhaps a great tool for getting more people to come to the site.</p>
<p>To see how accurate chance threads are, you would need to match bivariate data, e.g. “percent chance of getting admitted, from CCers” to “acceptance” (1 = acceptance, 0 = reject, 0.5 = waitlist or something like that). Then you could plot the data and measure correlation.</p>
<p>However, since we don’t really have quantitative data regarding a person’s chance of admittance (e.g. 75% chance of getting admitted) it’s a little hard to tell. Perhaps we match “maybe” to 50%, etc. It’d be an interesting experiment.</p>
<p>Well, the only known-to-be-accurate percentage chance for admission would be 100% for students who meet a stated guaranteed admission standard (e.g. top 8% for a Texas public university, or sufficient score on the Iowa Regents’ Admission Index for an Iowa public university, or open admission community college) or 0% for students who do not meet the stated minimum qualifications.</p>
<p>I think we can safely say that chance threads on CC are probably slightly better than a random number generator. But not much.</p>
<p>Thank you all for these responses. All quite different and this is that makes me want to see if there might be a way to quantify some of the big ticket items on CC.</p>
<p>I have some folks I know who are near genius level (not hyperbole) in designing and interpreting data. If the people who run the show here think it would be useful to open things up, it might be worth a try. Or at least I think so. </p>
<p>On the other hand, I am just a guy who asks questions about big ideas (see the Onion parody on TED talk to see how important ideas are to changing things).</p>
<p>In my posts on essays I have discovered that some people have thought essays I thought exceptional in a good way felt that the words were pretentious and not at all useful to an admission officer. On the other hand, most of those essays belonged to students who were accepted to Ivies. De gustibus etc.</p>
<p>If it is accurate to say that almost all the words on this site do not have virtually any predictive validity (two of you seem to think this), then I would raise what I call a metaquestion. </p>
<p>What is the practical or philosophical value of the site other than as a social network? </p>
<p>Would parents and students be better off reading books, studying, or visiting school websites etc?</p>
<p>It’d be an extremely interesting idea to go through every senior in high school on the boards right now who posted a chances thread, see whether they got in, and compare the margin of error of the average chance posted to whether they actually got in.</p>
<p>An easier experiment that should be done is compile the (quantifiable) stats of people applying to colleges, and then whether they got in, and make a CC “data set” on the average stats of accepted and rejected. I know schools have their averages and such, but just to pull a number for future years if someone says “Can I get in with x GPA, x SAT, x AP’s, etc.” and compare it to the people who applied to that school on here. Anyone up for data mining, haha?</p>
<p>I think the value of this board is the practical questions, like what to bring to college or students from colleges answering questions. I mostly ignore chances threads now, and just look at interesting posts, or practical advice.</p>
<p>Crimson - but don’t the applicants already have such a tool (Naviance), which really would be more accurate since a high school’s profile is taken into account by admissions?</p>
<p>Students seems to write in a question, wait for a few answers and then disappear forever. Why would they bother to come back to CC later and report where they got in or didn’t? This site isn’t used that way.
Students can know their odds by using the stats that are available via the Common Data Sets for the most part. Exceptions are the super selective schools, and NO ONE can predict anyone’s chance of getting into Harvard except to say “6%!”.</p>
<p>Harvest - I actually really have no idea what Naviance is, I’ve just heard people talk about it. I guess it would be if that’s what it is. Some people stay after they get in to help people with applications, SAT, information on their school, etc. and when CC’s older one day, hopefully there will be a large amount of people who are parents on CC answering questions and discussing, who you once used it as an application tool and such. </p>
<p>Common Data Set is good, but it’s hard to piece everything thing together. You have to look at all your stats separately and piece together your chances. Super Selective schools you can boost the 6% somewhat when they have the grades/SAT that are normally pre-reqs. If they say 3.0 and 2000 SAT for Harvard you can say .5%, but if they say 4.0, 15 APs, and 2400 you could, in all good judgement, bump it up to at least a 10% if not a 15% or so. Not saying that’s accurate, but it can change a little bit. I think chances here would be a lot more accurate if people’s answers to chances post were simply Safety, Match, or Reach (or Low-Reach/High Match, etc.). Then it might actually be helpful advice.</p>
<p>Crimson, Naviance is a resource which tracks the stats of every student from a particular high school that got accepted, rejected or waited listed at a particular college. It is my understanding that the majority of High Schools in the U.S. subscribe to Naviance.</p>
<p>So if you are a student attending Sunny Beach High School, you can log onto Naviance and see the stats of every student (not by name) who applied to the schools on your list from Sunny Beach High. They give you GPA and SAT score and then plot them on a graph. The plot points are color coded by green for acceptance, red for denial and black for wait listed. So you can then plot your GPA/SAT score and see where you fall on the graph. Works really well when trying to put together a realistic list of schools!</p>
<p>Ah, well I already know where I fall within my school haha. I’m pretty much top 5% (I’m technically 5.09% or something like that, and I’m probably in the top 10 SAT and ACT scores (2070 but I took it again, I’m pretty sure it’s at least 2150, and 33) and I’m probably one of 10 people applying anywhere selective. Sounds like a great tool though!</p>
<p>Naviance is a great tool but not available in lots of schools outside the US (yes, schools like Singapore American etc have it, but I am talking about national schools in particular countries.) I do think getting this data out would be useful. It would be especially useful for those who want to know how many people out there from certain schools in Asia apply to the top schools in the US and how few are accepted.</p>
<p>It might be useful to show that Raffles and Hwa Chong in Singapore, Korean Minjook Leadership Academy in Korea, and a host of key schools in China send lots of applicants with testing and performance in the classroom far higher than the profile stats, yet don’t get accepted. It might make the defense that some schools still use about it not being harder being Asian and international a little more difficult. </p>
<p>And it would be useful to people in the US to see how many students apply to Ivies from Thomas Jefferson and Stuyvesent and how few of them get accepted despite being perceived by many as the best schools in the US. </p>
<p>It would raise the issue domestically if Ivies should indeed make it more difficult for the best students to be accepted. The data in hand might make it a little harder to just say it is a holistic evaluation and assume this settles the question.</p>
<p>I think the chance threads are pretty useful. Too many students with 4.0s and good test scores think they are going to Harvard (or other selective school) just because their scores and grades fall into the top 25%. It’s good for them to see how many top students DON’T get in each year. Many get a lot more realistic about their chances. Likewise, it helps potential applicants understand the difference between good EC and recs vs. really stellar ECs and recs. The big fish in a small pond phenomena is very prevalent on CC - and that too leads to unrealistic expectations.</p>
<p>Thank you M’s Mom. What you write makes a great deal of sense, but I am not 100% sure I can make the logical leap I think should, so I will ask it as a question. </p>
<p>If you find the threads helpful would you then find a database even more useful which gathers scores and ric etc and demonstrates in much larger terms than naviance what happens to applicants who apply to selective schools?</p>
<p>The only thing the chances are useful for is taking the kids who think they are guaranteed acceptance at Harvard down a peg. Otherwise they are way off base. People get in on so-called “good EC and recs” every year. Very few people are founders of their own businesses, or leaders of National Clubs, or won international awards. I know a kid at a “lesser” ivy who basically only did music EC’s and the highest level the went to was state. I think people deter kids from applying to top schools with their “realistic” views of chances, when most of those people are blowing it out of proportion.</p>
<p>Is it really hard to get into Harvard? Obviously, but you don’t have to have found the cure for cancer to get in, and a lot of times the chances threads act like that’s about the only thing that could get you in.</p>
<p>Good question, in regards to this thread.</p>
<p>Crimsonstained7 has said some great things. But again I would then ask if having a database that cuts across individual high schools and shows the bell curve of offers, waitlists and denys and includes information not just about gpa and sat, but also about the number of recs and from whom, and an activities list would prove very useful. Or am I misinterpreting you?</p>