These are mostly teens and in this TikTok world they live in, I think there is a lot less patience for more detail and more info. That’s why I think something concise is a better option. We of course think more detail is better, but we aren’t 16-17.
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I agree with limited patience, but how can CC’ers really answer without more?
Maybe the in-between is a drop-down template where they can quickly fill in key things?
Will admit that we used the Parchment calculator for both of my kids. We did not take the probabilities at face value, but it did give us an easy way to sort safeties, matches, reaches and high reaches when we were trying to get the lists down to manageable and balanced sizes.
I’ve fooled around with a couple of these calculators last year, before we had DD’s “final stats” (she’s applying this year).
While they are interesting, they seem too optimistic, especially for the “top schools.” That’s the feedback I’ve generally gotten from CCers.
In some ways, I suppose that’s accurate, as to who knows? But, my initial thought tying the calculator to Chance Me could really enhance the student’s CC experience and give the commentators standardized reports for each student.
After all, isn’t a calculator just an automated “Chance Me”? I am far from an expert on calls or Chance Me. About the only thing I recall having contributed on a Chance Me is telling a kid who might be beating themselves up for ONLY scoring a 1500 (gasp!) that they had a very fine score.
Yes the probabilities seemed high relative to admissions rates, but we just sorted based on relative scores/probabilities. It was a faster more efficient way to sort the initial list of 20-30 schools. When you get to the final 10-15, more individualized research by school on fit and likelihood of admissions is of course called for.
Got it. DD’s got her list pretty much finalized. I’ll use CCs and Parchment.
What CC college calculator are you talking about?
Do chance calculators include intended major? If not, they could give overly optimistic results for students intending popular majors (e.g. nursing or computer science at many colleges).
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I have yet to find one of those calculators that is anywhere close to accurate.
But as others have mentioned, kids engage with apps and the like so why not use a tool to create the Chance and Match threads rather than the current template. Programmatically it should be pretty simple to accomplish since it is only collecting data and presenting it in a standard format/template. That would allow each question or group of questions to have instructions to guide users to provide the most accurate and complete information.
Basically a Chance/Match Wizard that guides a user through all the questions, submit and then the new topic is created. They will be uniform in the titles and information presented to the CC community.
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It’s an automated chancer that does not deal with nuance or bring scenario specific experience that CC posters provide.
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Hmm… this college finder doesn’t give me any chancing information at all. It only tells me the school’s acceptance rate. My account does have stats in the “academic profile” section and I also tried filling out the “AI admissions predictor” filter thingy on the left side, but it doesn’t make any difference. I figured that the tool was broken or incomplete. Is there a trick to it?
I guess that’s the point I made earlier: why not combine both on CC and give the students the best of both worlds?
I’m not an internet marketer, but I would bet that would get DROVES of students here and it would give the regular CCers a standardized report for each student that wanted more analysis.
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No idea! I was going to try it out for the first later today for DD, since we have a real applicant this year in our family.
Oops. Guess I missed your earlier post about this. 
It may not surprise others, but since the Chance Me template is up for discussion again, I’m going to mention the possibility of renaming Safety & Reach. This thread goes into the rationale more, but it basically stems from the negative connotation of “safeties” and the idea that students have agency with “reaches” that they can work hard enough to get in and that if they don’t get a “reach” it’s because the student wasn’t good enough, and all the result mental challenges that might ensue.
• Safety (certain admission and affordability) → Extremely Likely: Certain affordability and would be very unlikely or surprising for it not to admit
• Likely (would be possible, but very unlikely or surprising, for it not to admit or be affordable) → Remove very
• Match → Lower Probability (I can live with the term Match, but it does seem to lead to possible confusion and it can be problematic that you only match to schools that are not likely to accept you)
• Reach → Very Low Probability (admissions rates of less than 20% for the institution overall or for the desired major would usually be in this category)
I think recruited athlete is better, but I might even say “recruitable” athlete. There was a recent post from an Indian swimmer who was getting national records/titles. Even if she hasn’t been recruited, I strongly suspect she’d be recruitable if she reached out to any coaches.
I can understand why this suggestion is made, but I think it might get confusing. I could see a lot of these threads appearing:
- Thread 1: $50k, 3.9UW, 1580, CS
- Thread 2: $40k, 4.0UW, 1550, CS
- Thread 3: $60k, 3.8UW, 1500, CS
For a subject heading perhaps recommend including the intended major(s) and any distinguishing situation/attribute (and I don’t mean race/ethnicity by attribute…obviously someone else would need to wordsmith). For example:
Thread 1: Match Californian cheerleader for CS
Thread 2: Match a student with special needs for CS schools
Thread 3: Chance an undecided/exploratory student for SEC schools
As we are actual people (and not computers) responding, having clearer distinctions between threads is helpful (for me at least).
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Your categories do not exactly line up with the traditional ones:
| Traditional category | Your category | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| Safety | Certain admission and affordability (for example, college with automatic admission criteria, and is affordable based on list price or automatic scholarship criteria, and the student meets these criteria). | |
| Likely | Extremely Likely | |
| Likely | ||
| Match | Implies more likely than not. | |
| Lower Probability | ||
| Reach | Very Low Probability |
Barring an auto-admit/guaranteed admit, nothing is certain. A school with a 95% admit rate still might choose not to admit a student. It would be very surprising and unlikely for them to refuse admission, but not impossible. When someone says that School X is their safety, nobody is quibbling about the 5% chance they wouldn’t be accepted.
I’m fine adding more categories…I was just trying to keep it as simple as not. When I have the Chance/match me posts I usually do Extremely Likely, Likely, Toss-Up, Low Probability, Lower Probability. I’m fine using these instead, or also adding in a Guaranteed category which was discussed in the thread I linked. But I’ve never heard of “Match” implying more likely than not. To me, that’s a likely. Which is another reason why I put percentages by my terms to indicate what I mean when I use these terms.
At my kids’ HS the counselors use this categorization:
Likely: Acceptance rate 60+%, my stats are in top 50% of applicants
Match: Acceptance rate 40-60%, my stats are in top 50% of applicants
Reach: Acceptance rate 10-40%, my stats are in top 25% of applicants
Dream: Acceptance rate 10% or less
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I am not getting it to work either. Might just be me.