What percent chance are safety, match, and reach?

<p>What percent chance of admission do you consider safety, low match, match, high match, low reach, reach, and high reach to be?</p>

<p>Safety = 100% chance of admission and 100% chance of being affordable</p>

<p>Note that any percentages must be estimated for you individually; do not go by the overall admission rate which can cover a pool that is much stronger or weaker than you in terms of academic and other factors seen by the school’s admissions process.</p>

<p>The percentage of safety, target and reach schools will vary based upon a student’s stats. Both my kids, who had very high stats, applied to 11 colleges. Each applied to our Flagship State University as their safety and financial safety school. The rest of the schools were split about 50% target and 50% reach.</p>

<p>Not for any individual, just in general. So for any student a match would be a 50% chance of getting in so match schools would vary from person to person</p>

<p>In general, if you have average stats (1900-2150 SAT/28-31 ACT), you should probably apply to MORE target/match schools than reach schools. If you have above average stats, you could split them into 50% target/match and 50% reach * provided you also apply to a safety school where you have a 100% chance of admission and a 100% chance of the school being affordable.*</p>

<p>Thanks but what I was kind of looking for would be
Safety=100% chance of acceptance (with affordability)
Low match(sometimes I mix up high &low match)=99-70%
Match=60-40%
High match=40-30%
Low reach=30-20%
Reach=20-10%
High reach=10-1%
Out of reach=extremely unlikely (>1%)</p>

<p>Is that how they should be classified?</p>

<p>You have way too many classifications for my taste. I would break it down into 3 simple categories:</p>

<p>Safety = 100% chance of acceptance and 100% of affordability</p>

<p>Target/Match = Schools where you might have a 50% chance of being accepted. </p>

<p>Reach = Schools where the actual “real” acceptance rate is below 12%. </p>

<p>NOTE: Your acceptance at a reach school is based upon subjective factors, some of which are totally out of your control – so for any applicant, all the ivies, little ivies, plus Stanford and MIT are reach schools. </p>

<p>.</p>

<p>Oh okay thanks! :)</p>

<p>What I did with my kids is approximate the probability of admission using Naviance to within 10%.
0% - don’t bother if not first choice
10-30% reach
40-90% match
100% safety</p>

<p>Naviance was very useful. For D1, who had top stats, a subset of HYPSM was a match. A subset was 0%. </p>

<p>You can’t go by just the overall acceptance rate. You need to estimate YOUR chances. </p>

<p>The whole point of course is to estimate YOUR probability of attending a school, which is the probability of admissions times the probability of getting rejected at more preferable schools. This allows you to focus your time and energy at places where you have an acceptable chance to attend. If the probability of gaining admissions to your 5th choice is 10%, the probability of attending is very small.</p>

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<p>Often times it’s impossible to estimate your chances at some schools even with the help of Naviance. For example, at my kid’s high school, about 150 students each year apply to Harvard, and Harvard takes between 10 and 25 kids each year. From just looking at the stats, it’s impossible to predict which kids Harvard will take, as some years they have passed over the valedictorian and salutatorian to take lower ranked kids. And it’s the same with all the other ivies, little ivies, Stanford and MIT – which is why I suggested that any college with an overall acceptance rate of below 12% is a reach for everyone.</p>

<p>In what universe are these average stats?</p>

<p>(1900-2150 SAT/28-31 ACT)</p>

<p>^^ Generally speaking, those stats are average for most private colleges ranked somewhere between 20 and 40: <a href=“http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities[/url]”>http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>If that’s the universe you’re referring to, ok, but the OP didn’t mention rankings or selectivity in his/her original post. That’s why your response puzzled me. A ‘B’ student with 1500 SATs (500 x 3) still has safeties, matches, and reaches.</p>

<p>No, the OP didn’t mention rankings or selectivity in their post, but based on the OP’s posted history, s/he is looking at colleges ranked in the 1 to 40 range: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/1532897-linguistics-chances-updated.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/1532897-linguistics-chances-updated.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>LOL, You’re not trying to predict who gets accepted, you’re trying to estimate your chances. </p>

<p>It is NOT impossible to estimate the probability of being accepted from the scattergram. You basically take a reasonable circle around your dot and count the number of greens divided by the number of dots, and round to the nearest 0.1</p>

<p>Simple. Doable. Not Impossible.</p>

<p>Gibby, thanks for the explanation.</p>

<p>Just to add, if 150 kids apply and every year and 15-25 are admitted, it’s possible that after estimating your probability from Naviance, that your chances are still such that it’s a reach. </p>

<p>For our school it was possible to estimate admission to Harvard as a match through Naviance. </p>

<p>The same was true for MIT, Northwestern, Johns Hopkins, Chicago and other top schools. </p>

<p>Some schools like Stanford, Princeton, Penn, WUSTL Georgetown and a few others had no region of a Naviance scattergram which could have rendered it a match for anyone. WUSTL used to waitlist almost everybody. I believe they have curtailed that in the last few years. </p>

<p>Still, you CAN estimate YOUR chances if there is a reasonable amount data.</p>

<p>At my kid’s high school (average graduating class = 850), 90% of all applicants to HYPSM have a 94+ unweighted GPA with a 2200+ SAT, so most everyone who applies stands a good chance at being accepted. However 85% to 92% still get rejected from those schools every year. So, for those students (and parents) estimating your chances is a pointless exercise.</p>

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<p>No it isn’t. If your one of those 90% of the applicants, you can estimate your chances at 10%. If Harvard is your first choice, it means that there is a 90% chance that you will attend somewhere else. If Harvard is your 5th choice, it means that your chances of attending are probably too small to warrant inclusion in your list.</p>

<p>That’s very useful to know.</p>

<p>More often than not, at least at high-end colleges, I have found students need to use a scatter-gun approach to college admissions, as so much of the applications process is subjective and unpredictable. I’ll use a real world example. Both my son and daughter applied to HYP from the same high school with almost identical stats. My daughter was rejected from YP and accepted to H. My son was accepted to YP, but rejected from H. Had they not applied to all 3 schools, or calculated that it would be a waste of their time if they applied to one of them, they would never have known the results or, in my son’s case, had a richness of choices.</p>