As a quick caution against getting caught up in portal astrology âŠ
Hereâs a quick background on a concept called A/B testing. I am NOT saying that UCLA or any other college is doing this, but itâs absolutely a thing that websites do, and hopefully my explaining what it is might help you not get anxious about what you are (or arenât) seeing on your various portals, compared with what other people are seeing on theirs.
For a trivial, non-college example, letâs say I work for a travel company. And letâs say that our website has a static image on our homepage of people relaxing on a beach. I might have a theory that â during the winter months â showing a picture of people skiing might boost sales: Maybe some folks come to our website knowing theyâd like to get out of town, but flying to the tropics is more than their budget or schedule will allow. But a weekend skiing might be more doable. So I set up my site so that 50% of my visitors see the original beach image 
, and 50% see people enjoying the slopes 
. I set my software up so that each website visitor gets a consistent experience when they visit, to help the test be more reliable. I then track my sales, and see which cohort leads to more revenue. If thereâs a clear winner, I can then show that option to all visitors, or further iterate on my theory.
That A/B testing concept can be applied in a number of areas of my site: If I require an email address to search for deals, does that increase (or reduce) signups? Is a discount code or free shipping more effective at boosting sales? If the signup form is one long page versus three short pages, does that have an impact? You get the point. Bottom line: websites do this a lot, and one personâs experience on the site might look different from another personâs experience as the website experiments on improving various metrics.
So bringing it back to colleges, some scenarios (again! not saying this is what theyâre doing!) could be: If our header image shows happy students on the quad vs. students cheering at a game, does that have an impact on yield? If we show a burst of confetti when they open an acceptance vs ⊠not showing that ⊠does that impact yield? Does highlighting their applied-for major (vs not) have an impact on yield?
The point is: as tempting as it might be to try to read the tea leaves and wonder if your portal looking like X or like Y (versus someone elseâs portal, or what your portal looked like in the past) means that you / your student got in or not, there are all sorts of things that are more likely to be going on. And part of me feels like the most likely thing of all is that youâre simply getting faulty or incomplete intel from other people about what theyâre seeing on their pages.
I recognize the likely futility of posting in a thread about portal astrology to say maybe donât do it, but I also know folks might end up here just because theyâre anxious and arenât sure what to do with themselves. If thatâs you, Iâd encourage you to do what you can to not get caught up in close reads of portals. Get off the computer for a few minutes (or days). Go do that EC or service project youâve been neglecting because of your spiking anxiety. Go tell your kid that youâre proud of who they are and who theyâre becoming.
Itâll be okay.
