Cost Constraints / Budget (High school students: please get a budget from your parents and compare with the results of the Net Price Calculators on the web sites of colleges of interest; please specify if your parents are divorced or separated, because some (not all) colleges require both parents’ financials in this case)
The reason why is that some student posters do not disclose their divorced parents until later, making many of the previous college suggestions and chances unaffordable due to an uncooperative non-custodial parent.
For admissions decisions URM may not move the needle much as reaches remain reaches, etc., but I’m not sure how posters would know to point students to potential funding opportunities like The Mercile J. Lee scholarship at Wisconsin that may need supplemental application or the Myaamia Heritage Award Program at Miami of Ohio.
And while we can never cover all contingencies, respondents should be cognizant that what is a boost or hook for one school is not applicable for every school. Indeed, even the definition, e.g. legacy, FGLI, can vary by school.
May I also suggest that this thread not devolve into a discussion about what colleges should use for admission or if X hook is more important than Y hook.
I’m not sure I agree URM status doesn’t move the needle. Not saying a less-qualified URM will get in - but if there are two applicants that are comparable (very high stats, exceptional ECs, strong essays and LoRs) but one is a URM and the other is unhooked, and the school can only accommodate one aren’t they more likely to pick the URM applicant?
Can I suggest that less is more? Keep the template straightforward. I agree that budget should be #1. Maybe provide easily accessible instructions with all the extra info about how to list a GPA and how to determine budget. We ask kids and parents to be specific, but we are always going to have to ask questions.
I feel this post is skirting around an obvious point, and I am choosing my words deliberately: there is lot of anxiety for some students about getting into selective colleges. It’s not entirely unfounded anxiety, but it’s also not a problem with our templates. It’s a problem with Common App, colleges that use holistic admissions, family expectations, peer pressure, rankings, and a lot of other stuff.
We users here on CC can help mitigate this by making students aware of realistic college options and giving suggestions of how to improve their applications. So many people just apply to the colleges they have heard of, or the colleges that their parents want them to apply to. There are hundreds of selective colleges that would love to have the students that make an effort to seek help here.
For budget, would it help to give examples of how to summarize budget and cost constraints, in a compressed enough way to fit this into the subject line of a post?
For example
“full pay 50K budget”
“need based 20K budget”
I’m sure others here can do a better job with these suggestions. Just an idea.
I wouldn’t consider the tippy-tops a match for anyone so, no - one of these schools wouldn’t move from reach to match.
However at most other selective colleges “match” and “reach” are subjective based on boosts provided by an applicant’s achievements and profile. Not just URM status but other boosts too that are valued by that school. So I would consider URM status just like any other factors in determining if that school was a match or reach for that particular applicant.
One thought: how useful is Chance Me? Given the vagaries discussed here and in the other threads, wouldn’t it be better to focus on helping the student come up with a good list of schools based safety, reach etc?
In other words, jettison Chance Me for a particular school and give a range of schools which, I think, is Match Me?
But when you move away from the most selective colleges, the colleges tend to have less top-compression with academic stats, so that non-academic attributes become less important relative to those based on academics.
If a HS doesn’t calculate rank, how is a student’s estimate helpful? It could be wildly off base. My kid tends to underestimate himself and would probably say that he is in the top 50% or top 25%… and we know other kids at the same academic level at his school who tend to overestimate themselves and might tell you they are top 1%.
I agree with this as well. If it is important to the applicants and important to the colleges, it ought not be totally ignored here. But that raises the more difficult question of what the race/gender/ethnicity category means in terms of admissions for those answering chance me threads.
Some of the other suggested tweaks make sense to me, like adding “recruited” to athlete , and perhaps emphasizing budget issues up front. I never understood the self evaluation of essays either, except that perhaps it gets them thinking about the essays.
But generally I think we may be focusing on the wrong end of the snake. If there is a problem with these “Chance Me” threads it may not be with the info provided by the OP, but rather with how the threads are answered.
Perhaps there needs to be a template, format, or guidance for how one should respond.
The irony of this question is that (as you know), after examination of all of the statistical evidence (not just the oft quoted expert report submitted by the plaintiff) the District Court sided with Harvard, and the ruling was upheld on appeal in the Circuit Court. That may change if the SC changes the law and remands for reconsideration, but as of now the outcome of the litigation is not what many seem to think it is.
It is useful / necessary to know how the school places comparable kids into colleges – if the person asking the question is in the top 10 percent, it is helpful for them to tell CC that the school put the top 10 % kids into X, Y, Z college.
Chance me is perpetually popular and brings a lot of students to the forum. I don’t see it going anywhere. Better to make it more easily usable I think, and I do like that it’s now called “What are my chances and matches?” because it enables people to make suggestions without just crushing someone’s dreams.
Oh, I agree that it drives a lot traffic. Coincidentally, and before I saw this thread, I had made a PM suggestion yesterday to @CC_Jon yesterday about perhaps using the CC college calculator (with appropriate updates/revisions) as the first step for the kids, and then, if they want, they could have the option of sending it to the Chance Me forum for more detailed analysis.
I know there have been some issues with college calculator thingy here, but one benefit is that it could streamline the output that the CC commentators have to review.
Jon, I hope you don’t mind that I shared that here, and I have no idea if it’s feasible/warranted. But @Lindagaf is right: I guess kids flock to these kinds of calculators, and where they have the benefit of detailed comments from experienced CCers (not me!), that could really set CC apart from the other calculators and also give the commentators here something more objective.
It was just a wild thought. But I do agree the template should be changed. To be meaningful, IMO, it would need more rather than less detail.