Then there truly is no such thing as safety unless you have automatic admission schools in your state. Which may well be the case.
1 Like
Or a rolling admission school that will give an answer very early in the process.
2 Likes
Just to clarify. I didn’t sat that they stop considering gpa and rigor. Perhaps I wasn’t clear when I listed “stats” among the factors they were considering in understanding a student’s narrative. By “stats”, I meant gpa and test scores.
As for 3.8 vs 4.0, we don’t know where they establish their threshold line at any given school. It probably changes each year.
My caveat is that I was told this by the AO at one Ivy. It doesn’t mean that the other Ivies and Ivy+ schools use this same model although I suspect that they all do something similar. But that’s just my guess.
One other point worth noting is that Cornell has the largest undergrad enrollment of any Ivy - by a lot. As a result, their practices are most likely to vary from the others.
Even when people use the same terminology (reaches/matches/safeties) not everyone has the same meaning. @Dadto2NY mentioned that this site’s College Lab does:
• Reach: Less than 30%
• Match: 30-70%
• Likely: More than 70%
Taken in the abstract, I agree with this kind of categorization, but the percentages are so big that it feels unhelpful in real life. For instance, if I thought my kid had a 35% chance of getting into some schools and a 65% chance of getting into others, then I would put them in totally different categories, as the 35% means probably not and the 65% means probably will happen. But this categorization system doesn’t account for that. And if one schools had a 28% acceptance rate while another has a 10% rate, to me a 1 in 4 chance is significantly different than a 1 in 10 chance.
But then someone might well go, AustenNut, your categorization system tends to group all schools where you think a student has less than 20% odds together; a 1 in 5 chance (20%) is significantly different than a 1 in 20 chance (5%). And those people would be absolutely right. But when I’ve tinkered with trying to make greater distinctions in the categories with less chances of acceptance, I feel as though the post comes off feeling as though the admissions process is a science, rather than an art (or at least not something fully predictable). Saying, I think your odds are less than 5% here, but between 5-15% there and between 15-25% here makes it seem as though I have a better idea of an individual’s odds than I do.
But if I were to overlay the more common terms over my own grouping system (which still gets tweaked) it would probably look like this:
• Extremely Likely (80-99+%)…Safeties
• Likely (60-79%)…Likelies
• Toss-Up (40-59%)…Matches
• Lower Probability (20-39%)…Low Reaches
• Low Probability (less than 20%)…Reaches
When a kid comes on CC and asks to be chanced, I think most posters do a pretty good job explaining about the highly rejective schools. If it’s the equivalent of your 4.0/1600 kid, I will usually say something that I think their shot is as good as anyone else’s, meaning they’re as strong of an applicant as can be. So, sure, maybe they have a 10% shot vs a 3% shot. Still doesn’t mean that they should only fill their college list with schools of that selectivity, even if their chances are 3x greater than most other top applicants’. And it still places it in the less likely/low probability category. If a 3.5/1300 kid came on and was mentioning the super selective schools, I think that most people would strongly caution the student and urge them to think of more likely options. Usually that happens by saying that 90+% of people with higher stats than those are rejected, so they should change their expectations.
3 Likes
• Extremely Likely (80-99+%)…Safeties
• Likely (60-79%)…Likelies
• Toss-Up (40-59%)…Matches
• Lower Probability (20-39%)…Low Reaches
• Low Probability (less than 20%)…Reaches
I can get on board with something along these lines. It gives a realistic honest appraisal.
The next question though, and the harder question, is actually calculating those probabilities. General Acceptance rates are a starting point. But a school with a 30% acceptance rate isn’t a “low reach” for every applicant. For an applicant who is 3.2/1150/no rigor, it may be a high reach, well under 10% chance of admission. While it may be a match (over 40%) for 4.0/1500/tons of rigor.
It is important to help people appreciate that 4.0/1500 doesn’t mean you can expect a pile of Ivy League admissions. But on balance, also don’t need to crush optimism. It’s also scary— when I was accepted into Cornell 30+ years ago, the acceptance rate was around 30%. Imagine… Ivies with 30% acceptance rates.
And as an aside, why does it feel like every student and every parent on this board is 3.99/1500/10 APs, top 2% of their class, Nobel prize winner in their spare time.
3 Likes
Yes, looking at the school’s admission rate is just the start. Then I will look at how the student’s standardized test scores compare with the 25/75 range. Then I look at the GPA and see how it compares with a school’s GPA distribution. For instance, some schools don’t have any acceptances below 3.5, or 3.0, etc. Other schools have a wide distribution from 2.0 or 2.5 up to 4.0. Now granted, not all schools submit the same GPA info, some use weighted and some unweighted, or core subjects only, or, or, or. But if there’s a kid with a 2.8/1600, you know that a school might overlook the GPA if they have students in the 2.5-3.0 band, but if nobody has less than a 3.5, then it’s probably a wash. Then one can look at the ECs and see if they’re state or national level or if it’s local or school only, and what kind of depth, leadership, etc.
So, no, admit rate alone doesn’t figure out an individual’s chances, but the human brain is a wonderful computer. 
Yes! 
That’s why I frequently prefer the threads of those who seem a bit more like what I’ve found in real life.
2 Likes
The bar for public education keeps getting lowered at an exponential rate. I know this because my daughter hasn’t spoken a word of French, but has an A in the class. Hence, we have above average students becoming masters at gaming a poor educational system. Now schools are becoming test optional, because objective standardized measurement is somehow racist. Right now we have cheating high schools literally giving unprepared students a false sense of security. Hence the influx of applicants.
A simple solution for this problem is accreditation. Every private school does it. If schools can’t maintain accreditation standards, they lose their credibility and close, and students get rerouted to an accredited school. But alas, we’re so busy teaching kids “other” things, we lost sight of the whole point for which they exist…to educate the mind.
4 Likes
Public schools also get accredited. And I believe that there’s lots of grade inflation and students not learning all that one might expect at private schools, as well.
1 Like
Well my kid has had a B+/A- in Latin and has been a national gold medal recipient throughout high school. Has found it impossible to get an A ( unlike other classes). Everyone in the very small class is a national award winner. Two are planning to study classics ( one at HYPS) The class is hard by design. The school is hard, no grade inflation. My’22 gives orations in Latin ( fun to watch the practice). Younger kid takes a non-dead language, they speak the language in class. Speaking is 1/4 grade. Kid has won silver award ( national) gets A’s but it’s an easier language.
This is the reason we sent our kids to this school. But they compete against kids with perfect 4.0’s who get 3’s on APs and think they have perfect stats because grade inflation tells them so. They’ve taken away subject tests, SAT’s/ACTs and so much more that is a way to measure anything nationally.
Yep that’s life. My kids aren’t worried about college, they are very well prepared. But grade inflation is not going to help those kids getting all A’s who meet the kids who are VERY well prepared.
Grade inflation doesn’t explain all the claims of being ranked in the top 1% of the class.
I wonder if there are so many high achiever posters on these boards, that it discourages other applicants from posting.
5 Likes
Hmm, I wonder if instead of having the separate forums for College Search & Selection and Chance Me/Reverse Chance me there could be an “Elite College Search & Selection” and “The 95% College Search & Selection” forums. That way all the top 1% with 20k accolades and accomplishments can remain in one area while people with more regular, typical accomplishments can ignore them and get help in a forum that’s not overrun by those who are in competition for for elite schools.
6 Likes
I have to wonder whether a 3.5/1150 student is intimidated away from posting…
And when we tell a 3.95/1500 student that schools with 30-50% acceptance rates are still “low reaches” etc… then I wonder if the 3.5/1150 student is intimidated away from asking their chances, thinking “sheesh… if a 3.95/1500 student is told that a 40% acceptance rate college is a reach, then I don’t want to know what they will say about me”
6 Likes
According to the College Board, there are 2,235 4-year colleges. As the number of schools sorted by admissions rates below total 1,743 by my calculations (and not the CB’s 2,235), I will use 1743 as my denominator.
-
26 (1.4%) of them have admissions rates between 0-10%
-
59 (3.3%) of them have admissions rates between 10-25%
-
250 (14.3%) of them have admissions rates between 25-50%
-
1,411 (80.9%) of them have admissions rates between 50-100%
Most schools accept most of their applicants. It just so happens that the schools many students on CC are desirous of are in the 20% of schools that offer less than a 50% chance of acceptance (and mostly, the 4.7% that have less than a 25% chance of acceptance).
I think it highly unlikely that most 3.5/1150 students are aiming for the 5% of schools that are extremely selective/rejective. Perhaps they, like many Americans, think that colleges always accept the best applicants as determined by stats. So they might well think that a 3.95/1500 student is likely to get in just about everywhere.
If, however, they have been on CC for much time they’ve started to hear terms like “yield protection.” And doing a quick search through CC on that term they’ll learn that students who apply to schools with an admissions rate below 50% (when the student has stats that are tremendously higher than the school’s accepted students’ stats) are sometimes subject to yield protection. Meaning, that if the college doesn’t think the student is likely to attend if extended an offer, the college will reject the student’s application to protect their yield rate, or the percentage of accepted students who decide to enroll. Since some very popular ranking magazines care about yield, colleges care about their yield. So unless a super-overachieving student shows lots of interest and the college thinks it has a decent shot of the student enrolling, the 3.95/1500 student is likely to be turned down. Some colleges that are well-known for this include Northeastern, Tulane, and American, for starters. Others do this as well.
That’s one of the reasons why I don’t label my posts with reaches/matches/safeties. I place applicants in a range of where I think their chances are, whether 0-20%, 20-40%, 40-60%, 60-80%, or 80-100%. People can attach whatever term they want to a percentage, because not everyone uses the terms the same way. But if I have indicated that a student with a 3.95/1500 had a 20-40% chance of acceptance at a school with a 50% acceptance rate, please let me know where.
1 Like
Can this be correct? There’s about 20 four year schools and 10 LACs I’ve read about on the CC. All require you to have cured cancer or interned for MIT as a HS Sophomore.
Where are the other 2,000?
6 Likes
I understand the good intention behind your grouping system - but I wonder if one truly has sufficient information for such finer granularity, to accurately predict any one student to within 20% odds at any college. And if the “assignment” into that many categories itself has a higher than 20% margin of error than this exercise becomes moot?
(Kinda like people insisting of calculating arithmetically-correct to the 3rd or more decimal - when the base numbers were integers.)
1 Like
Which is not surprising? Most people are motivated to use CC and similar resources, precisely BECAUSE they are seeking to better their less than 25% odds. If the odds are already 50-100%, then there is indeed very little “pressure” on parents/students to learn every slightest bit on how to “play” the system.
Applying a few of these 1,411 colleges will yield acceptances. Adding a decimal to the HS GPA won’t be a concern, planning of “most effective” ECs, which “most relevant” APs to take, etc. for HS sophomores is not a priority, neither will be the questions of whether selective college “A” is worth the extra investment over the scholarships offered by selective college “B” - if one is strictly applying to the 50%-100% schools.
1 Like
The beauty of CC is that I’m not the only person who will chance various users. They get to have lots of different opinions. And I always try to include the caveat that it is only my guess as to what might be their chances at the various colleges. I could take the percentages out of my category descriptions, but I wonder if students might then think I believe their odds are worse than they are.
For instance, I have used the term “Possible” for the rough 20-40% range. But then since I used 'less likely" for the 0-20% range, people thought that it made it seem as though it was impossible, since possible was the next category up. I don’t think that using “Possible” and then using “Low Probability” is going to make much of a difference with that mindset either. People thought that using the term “unlikely” for the 0-20% chance was too dispiriting for applicants. If I were to use the terms “lower probability” and “low probability” and did not include percentages, there might be people thinking that lower probability is like 10-20% chance and low probability means that you have a better chance of spotting a UFO than of getting in.
If there are terms that you think would better get across the idea that the odds are low and really low (but not entirely impossible), then feel free to share.
Maybe I’ll revisit the titles to say:
- Most likely a yes
- Likely a yes
- Maybe yes, maybe no
- Likely a no
- Most likely a no
Then again, I think the last two categories are far too pessimistic.
I don’t see most people coming on CC to learn how to play the system. I see them either trying to figure out their odds or trying to come up with ideas of schools to add to their college lists, ideas that they should consider when going through the college process, things to investigate on their visits, etc. No matter how much I respect other CC users, there’s very little anyone on this forum can say that will maximize an applicant’s odds at schools with less than a 25% admissions rate.
Wouldn’t “most likely a no” be the usual estimate for HYPS for nearly all “chance me” posters?
2 Likes
I like your lists, and the accompanying prediction categories. I find them to overall be a bit on the conservative side, but that fits my own inclination with regard to this process. Most users of CC are fairly sophisticated consumers of information, and will not take your predictions as gospel, but one more piece of information to weigh amongst the many many others on this board.
1 Like