It seems kind of pointless to ask strangers on this forum to guess about whether a given student has a high or low chance to get accepted to a specific college. For highly competitive universities, the decision is such a black box, and the competition is so high, I seriously doubt there is very much useful information at all. We haven’t seen the applicant’s essays, read the LOR’s, seen how the full package is put together or understand how they fit in a particular college’s needs in a given year. Or what the rest of the pool looks like for that school. Frankly, the only people who could even begin to provide any useful information would be an actual AO at that college who has seen the applicant’s package as well as others applying in that given year, and they aren’t responding to chance mes on CC!
Requests for names of suggested match schools or colleges that meet a student’s stated interests and parameters are much more useful, especially if the student learns about good options they weren’t previously aware of. But I think chance me requests are kind of silly and not useful.
when it’s really pointless is when the poster has ridiculously great stats and achievements. like what do they expect us to say? obviously you have a decent chance, you have perfect everything.
specific questions like will such and such SAT score keep me out, or the fact that I dropped French or whatever…those are legit posts.
I think for highly selective/rejective schools “chance mes” aren’t that helpful if a student is in the range.
I think for schools that are in a lower selectivity range they can be helpful if you are not sure how your stats stack up. You could probably do that research yourself and figure out your approximate chances at individual schools, but if it’s not something you’re familiar with the “chance me” can be helpful. I think about my S23, for whom when I just looked at the basic statistics, I thought WPI was a safety. His stats are well within their median ranges, and the data says they accept over 50% of applicants. But after asking here and learning more about it, I realize that his individual chances are actually significantly lower than 50%, and that encouraged us to add more true safeties to his school list.
My son is a case of overestimating his chances at a school and getting advice to add some less selective schools. On the other hand, as a highschooler myself, I had the opposite experience. Without good guidance counselor advice, I would not have applied to two of the schools I applied to. I got into both, one with a full scholarship and the other was MIT. But I would’ve never had that chance if someone had not encouraged me that I had the stats to try.
I think for someone who is not immersed in college application knowledge, and who doesn’t have a good local advisor, Chance Mes can be really useful and serve some of the purpose of a good college guidance counselor.
I also think that everyone handles the perceived “stress” of college admissions season differently. For some kids, the “Chance Me” post might just be a way to get some reassurance about their odds, for others it might be a sort of humble brag, for others it could be a way to deal with an uncertain process that yields a concrete outcome, and for some it could be nothing more than a way to try to “build community” if they aren’t surrounded by friends in high school who are heavily caught up in the college admissions process.
While I agree that “Chance Me” posts are relatively useless, I’m sure they serve some purpose for the original poster. It’s pretty easy to ignore these posts, so I don’t find them problematic.
To me “chance me” threads are often an opportunity to remind students that they also need to apply to safeties, and to reassure nervous students that they were at least not completely crazy when they applied to reaches.
“You really can do very well in life with a degree from your safety” also comes up relatively often, as does “your great results in high school will help you a lot, even at your safety which is going to be more work and more interesting than high school”. It is too easy to notice that one university is ranked in the 30’s, whereas another is only ranked in the 50’s or 90’s or lower. Of course the difference really does not matter.
I do relatively often try to remind myself that many of the people posting questions are high school kids, and many of the respondents including myself are adults with children who have themselves already graduated from university. I think that most of us do try to behave like the adults in the room, mostly.
To me this is often an opportunity to say “so do the other applicants to (name of top 10 university), it is a reach, also apply to safeties”.
I was thinking that we might want to write an AI program to respond to these. However, how do we know that someone hasn’t already done this?
I think Chance Me posts in junior year or the summer before senior year can be helpful in calibrating the band of schools where a student will likely have success.
By senior year — especially at this point — a qualified applicant to a highly selective school should know his or her chances himself/herself, without asking a board of strangers. A successful applicant will have done enough research on the school, understood the college’s institutional priorities, looked at Naviance/Scoir or talked to the guidance counselor, and been thoughtful enough with essays and interviews that the applicant will have as good of a guess as almost anyone.
I think that many of the “Chance Me” requests are just a chance for the student/parent to brag about credentials especially when they want the “cost is not a factor” assessment. Many schools post their levels of merit aid and associated requirements on their website. To me those are better tools to assess, not just acceptance potential, but how much that school really wants you and how much it may cost.
I do agree that the requests to identify other schools that match their interests and parameters does provide some value.
-Unlikely
-Not going to happen
-May get in may not
-Do you need FA?
-Have you considered a low cost southern state school?
-It’s not how much you can pay but how much you want to pay
-love the school that loves you back
-never fall in love with one school
-why are you pursuing prestige/pedigree/rank
That would cover the vast majority of responses that most chance me threads currently receive. All that would be needed would be a helping of personal anecdotal experience and a bot would appear almost human.
I’m not being sarcastic - I think they truly might be mostly therapeutic, in the sense that one gets to talk out some of their concerns, and either will get feedback that might soften the eventual blow, or at least had a place to “dump” all the initial anxiety, to then keep it to a more tolerable level.
I think it important on chance me threads to consider the anonymous nature and potential audience in context.
The vast majority of those asking for informed opinions are vulnerable 17 year olds who are under a great deal of stress, while those responding are adults. The OPs have no idea as to what the limitations, experience level or expertise is of those responding. At the same time those responding don’t know what degree of support the kids have, their mental state or their maturity or what has led up to the post.
Given such a lack of tangible mutual understanding a great deal of inadvertent harm can be done. A well intended “I don’t see it happening” could have unintended but significant consequences.
Additionally we often see threads dominated by financial inquiries that at a certain point should be in my opinion private family discussions not contested by strangers without parental awareness. Of course asking the circumstances in relatively vague terms informs a response but grilling a kid or in a determined way pushing a school based on its financial accessibility in the absence of understanding the entire picture is likely doing more harm than good.
Once again these are 17 year old kids who are coming here either in search of something or because of the lack of something. In either case I think it best to bite your lip unless you have either something nice to say or you can provide constructive feedback that is typically offered on CC by qualified professionals not us well traveled parents.
Regrettably I don’t always follow my own advice but I try.
However, it is often not possible to give a reasonable chance assessment without some information on cost constraints. A college that is known to be affordable may be a likely or safety for a given student, but an academically similar student who must aim for the top-level merit scholarship at the same college to afford it must put the college into a more difficult category (top-level merit scholarships are often reaches due to the lack of information available on how difficult they are to get).
I am a parent, and never posted a “Chance Me” for my student, but I learned a lot by reading Chance Me posts. College admissions have radically changed since the 1980s–selectivity, ED game theory, “merit” awards that are really discounts from inflated prices–all of this is new info. And I know that some CC members hate the questioning about budget and the focus on affordability, but for me it was helpful to hear it repeatedly.