Why chancing is unreliable

Chance Me / Match Me!
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<p>I created this thread to post a few thoughts I have had about the inherent risks of chancing threads. Whether or not these ideas are useful or relevant to others, I suppose I don't really know. Some of what I write may only apply to people in NYC private schools or their equivilant in other cities. Hopefully though, if you've been discouraged by someone's attempt to evaluate your chances, this will cheer you up a bit.</p>

<p>A few of my friends and I who had been admitted to HYP created alternate accounts on this forum and posted our stats post-admission, altering them so we appeared to be juniors. We asked for our chances and generally learned we might just have a chance at getting into schools like NYU, Rutgers, and maybe Tufts if we were very, very lucky. This was amusing, but also useful in that it highlighted the flaws of this boards chancing system. I'll try to make a list of reasons various evaluative methods used here are inherently innacurate. </p>

<p>GPA: This one is a killer. First of all, GPA is vastly different from school to school. In the school I go to, no one has ever gotten a 4.00 GPA. In other schools, it's not uncommon, especially after weighting scores. On this board it is assumed that everyone who is admitted to a top school has a close to 4.0 GPA. In my school, we access to a website that allows us to see the GPAs (anonymously) of students from past years in our school who have been admitted to various colleges. The average for Yale and Harvard is around 3.75; the average for Columbia is 3.4; the average for Brown is 3.4 as well. Speaking to my friends from other schools who have been admitted to HYP or other top schools, I've learned the numbers remain fairly low, rarely if ever entering the 3.9+ range. In other schools though, this would obviously be false, and a very high GPA would be needed. Unfortunately, no one from College Confidential can really be sure how this affects your chances.</p>

<p>Class Rank: Perhaps of some use, perhaps not. Some schools rarely if ever send kids to Ivy League schools. Some routinely send over 1/3 of the class to them. Depending on the school, class rank has a drastically different significance. </p>

<p>ACTs, SATs and SAT 2s: These are somewhat more accurate. Obviously, the point of the SATs is to give colleges the chance to evaluate everyone on the same test. However, owing to inherent flaws in the test, most colleges see SAT scores as only a rough guide. No college will see a 2270 as being a better score than than a 2250 and judge admission on that basis. Once one gets within an acceptable range, then SATs are unlikely to help or hinder an application much. In terms of usefulness for chancing, SATs can make it easy to eliminate someone as a candidate (you aren't going to get 1650 SATs and go to a top ten school and stuff like that), but aside from that they are not of the greatest use. If you want to see SAT/ACT ranges at various schools, they almost always have them posted on their websites. </p>

<p>Essays: College essays can be very important parts of an application, but without actually reading someone's college essay, it's impossible to know how good it is. I suspect my college essays got me into several schools, but just writing "College essays: excellent" would not really let a chancer know that. Besides, who is going to submit an essay they don't consider excellent? Actually showing a chancer your essay is not the best idea, partly because one still doesn't know how good this person is at evaluating essays, and also because there's some risk of theft. </p>

<p>Recommendations: You can say that they are good, but you don't know this for sure (unless the person who wrote it for you wrote such a nice one that he/she gave it to you; this does happen sometimes). Also, just how good the recommendation is will not be clear in a chancing thread unless you actually have the recommendation in front of you and type it verbatim on college confidential, and that just doesn't happen very often.</p>

<p>Course Load: This is easier to evaluate at public schools than private, where classes are often strangely labelled or there are no AP classes. Many would say that it is important to be in a high number of AP or advanced classes. I would agree that it helps, but I know students who have avoided all AP or advanced classes in order to get very high GPAs and have been admitted to Harvard, Yale, Duke, etc. It is very hard to say just how important a rigourous course load is. Obviously, it is better to be taking harder classes, but just how much better is extremely hard to say.</p>

<p>Extracurriculars: A very important part of an application, but one out of necessity mostly overlooked on this board. Two examples: I'm a Juilliard Precollege musician and a friend of mine is one of the best ballet dancers for her age in the nation. This was probably the largest factor in getting us both into multiple Ivies, but chancers generally don't take much note of these factors, because they don't always know what they mean. Someone extremely plugged into the network of top NYC high schools might recognize that these extracurriculars are massive application boosters, but many others won't. Similarly, I would have no idea, if chancing, of the significance if someone from Boston were to mention that they study at the city's premier music institution. I couldn't give a good evaluation. All college confidential can really judge is the list of medals, awards, clubs, etc. that hardly contribute to an application. The members of this board, because of ignorance (not their fault; there's no way to know all about every city's institutions) cannot consistently evaluate top extracurriculars and simply add these top ones to the list of irrelevant ones.</p>

<p>In conclusion: chancing is inherently an unreliable system. Too much in your application is dependent on who you are and where you are. If you want to know your chances at a school, you'd do best to see your college councellor if one is available. Also, compare yourself to other students from your school who have been admitted to the college you're looking for. This is by no means a fool-proof way to see if you can get in, but it helps. Also, always feel free to just take a risk. A friend of mine was told by her parents and college councellors not to apply to Duke because she didn't have a prayer. She ignored them all, applied anyway, and was accepted. You really don't know what'll happen until the decisions come back.</p>

<p>That was much longer than I thought it would be. I hope it helps some people.</p>

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<p>Chance threads would not be useless if those asking gave all of the relevant info, which few do. You bring up some good points–GPA needs context, EC’s need context. People ignore things like where they’re from which is key. As is income level and type of high school.</p>

<p>Other than at schools taking less than 15% where things become very random and luck becomes a significant part of the equation, a pro can give pretty accurate chances with all of the necessary info.</p>

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<p>I agree completely that if all the relevent info is provided, a pro could certainly give fairly accurate assessments. However, this is very impractical on these message boards. </p>

<p>The fact that essays (unless one posts them) and recommendations cannot be evaluated except by one’s own college counsellor who generally sees them is basically an unsolvable problem.</p>

<p>Context could be solved if one got a copy of the high school’s information card, providing information about median GPA, SAT scores, grade distribution, etc. and posted this, but as you said, that rarely happens.</p>

<p>The last factor is that most people here aren’t expert evaluators, and are largely drawing on their own personal experience combined with anecdotal information. Also, one never does know if the person checking someone’s info is an expert or someone with little to no information.</p>

<p>That said, I do agree that at less selective schools, chancing here probably becomes considerably more accurate.</p>

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<p>Good job Bigstan. In many ways chancing threads seem pointless. The data is user submitted and anonymous. The assessors/respondents are, (for the most part), non-professionals in the field and the CC community is hardly representative of the general population. It’s a dangerous mix of pseudo-information and pseudo-insight. </p>

<p>Posters in these threads seem to fall into a few basic categories: the forlorn, “I got a B+ in 7th grade Art. Am I done at Harvard?”, the delusional, “I’ve got a 2.98 from a really good school and 1050 on my SATs, how do I go about picking out my classes at Stanford?”, to the egotistical (the most reviled group), “I have an 8.0 GPA, 10,000 on my SATs and Jesus wrote me a recommendation; I’m hoping to get into New England School of Trucking.”</p>

<p>The one aspect I find useful in these threads is that they can have the benefit providing students with other schools to think about. Too often the members of CC obsess on a handful of schools, ignoring other appropriate options. Usually the “chances” thread will give up a few new ideas.</p>

<p>To me the best outcome of these threads is to give the poster a better sense of what is a reach, match and safe school. No one should take the answers posted here as immutable truth.</p>

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<p>I’m pretty sure everyone knows chancing is unreliable. There is no admissions process predictor. But it can be a huge help for students who really have no idea, and it can be a reassurance for students who do have an idea. It can also help students classify their list of schools in the reach, safety, and match categories, as well as encourage students to choose more colleges in one category or another. It can also help a student learn about a specific school’s admissions process. I don’t think anyone thinks chancing is totally reliable.</p>

<p>…right? I mean… you all know that. RIGHT?</p>

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<p>I think chancing is not a reliable source for anyone, but especially for those elite private school kids. My friend goes to a top national school in Boston, and her GPA is around a 3.6. At her school, though, a 3.6/7 + 2200 SAT + good ECs = Ivy League Admissions. 1/3 of the class (about 60 girls in the entire class) goes to an Ivy League school. Harvard alone generally accepts about 5 of the 60 girls. So for people like them, chancing is highly unreliable. Also, class rank varies because some schools are HIGHLY competitive. The aforementioned school, for example, is a collection of would-be vals and sals at their respective public schools (with the exception of probably 5-10 girls). A lot of these students are fluent in 3 languages as well. I’m just saying, it is not chancings fault that it is sometimes inaccurate, but without the full story, it can be highly inaccurate for some. Also, my school is not “elite”, but it is a competitive private in which the valedictorian has a 3.9 UW GPA, but a 2300+ SAT. I think GPA is the most blown out of proportion thing on this website.</p>

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<p>In truth, admissions comes down to essays and recs at only a handful of uber competitive schools. For the vast majority admission is very predictable with GPA and scores alone.</p>

<p>Dreamsofivy, this is why rank is much more important than GPA. But you also need to understand that at elite prep schools it’s not the top 30% of the class that gets into te top colleges. Such schools have oodles of legacies which skews results. Many also have lots more recruited athletes than typical public schools and some of the top URMs in the Country through programs like ABC.</p>

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<p>to hmom, yeah I get the legacy part/athlete/URM part. As I mentioned earlier, Harvard accepted 5 kids from the school, but like you alluded to, one of those students was a URM and one of them had two parents that were professors. The others were highly qualified. The same goes for the others of HYPSM. Also, the class of 2010 plays host to the daughter of the President of MIT. So, I get what you are saying, but it does disprove the point that chancing is pretty much useless for those lucky enough to attend an elite prep school.</p>

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<p>Too true, especially when it comes to GPA and essays. Most of the people I’ve known who have gone to Ivy League/other amazing schools have not just been 4.0/2400/50 extracurriculars machines. Instead they’ve been very interesting, very individual, and very smart. Not really something that can be quantified, particularly on an online forum where nobody knows you.</p>

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<p>The whole school thing is important to colleges and is different for everybody. If you talk to my school counsler, they will say when colleges see my school’s name it is a plus. I assume for other schools the school name might not add anything to the app. A chance thread in most cases won’t take this into account.</p>

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<p>“Too much in your application is dependent on who you are and where you are.”</p>

<p>I can’t agree with this statement more out of all the good point Bigstan made. This is one of the most useful threads I’ve ever seen on CC. Yay for you!</p>

<p>I also like to add that too much in the process depend on events outside of students control because private schools, esp Ivies, are highly unpredictable on what they want. When they admit students, in a sense they do not admit individual students but rather an entire class of students–and if you fit into a niche in their image of an ideal class, then you are in. If you don’t, or if someone already have a that niche, then no matter how great you are, there will be no place for you at that school. </p>

<p>A personal story: I was told by many that I would not be able to get into any one of HYPMS schools. But I did. Why? I personally think it has to do with my unique background and life experience expressed in my essay that I couldn’t put on an internet forum for all to see:)</p>

<p>my personal advice (although someone on this thread probably said this already): Aim high! You never know if you have never tried!</p>

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<p>I completely agree. I made it to a handful of Ivy Leagues + MIT despite everyone saying that I had no chance in more than one “what are my chances?” website. </p>

<p>For those of you worried about your test scores:
I got under 30 on the ACT - to which everyone told me I was screwed.
Most of my AP test scores are 3’s. I don’t have a 4.0 either and my rank, which is based solely on GPA, is craptastic. </p>

<p>And yet I managed to prove everyone wrong. Many chancers seem to rely too much on test scores when judging a future applicant. Yes, good scores will definitely boost your application, but keep in mind that good scores =/= the golden ticket.</p>

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<p>^^you must have had some sort of hook then. I mean, even though I agree that test scores are not everything by any means, I still believe they count for something. Again, I’m sorry, but 3s and a score<30 is not great. But congrats on ur acceptances! That is awesome!</p>

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<p>I believe that GPA+SAT+Rank does play a huge outcome in the admission process, but it definitely depends on where you go to school as well. My school’s regular level classes are considered AP relative to the public schools in my area, so I think that has a lot to do with it. But I think that the most important thing is showing the college who you TRULY are and what you are like as a person;that’s why I believe that essays/recs/hooks are basically the only thing to go buy nowadays. Also, at top schools, there are exceptions, but most of the time there IS a bear minum SAT/GPA the schools are targeting. Just my two cents worth ;)</p>