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Normagene
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Posted: Sat Jun 7th, 2008 09:08 pm |
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http://www.go4ivy.com/frosh_soph.html
Has anyone heard of this website that for a fee, will put your students stats into a computer program and based on the parameters of what each individual college is looking for can give you a percentage change of admission?
They have groupings of ivy league schools, engineering colleges, northeast, midwest etc. etc. But not all colleges and universities are listed.
Has anyone used this site. Was the information provided accurate?
Thanks for your help.
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DesperateDad
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Posted: Sat Jun 7th, 2008 09:19 pm |
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| sorry, I have no info on this site. But, I can assure you that anyone who claims that they can predict the chances of admissions at highly selective colleges for HS Frosh and Soph is selling snake oil. albeit online. Until test scores and Junior year AP/IB grades are available, you'd be better off buing a crystal ball from the local magic shop.
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Normagene
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Posted: Sat Jun 7th, 2008 09:30 pm |
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I agree, most people would probably wait until Jr year gpa and sat scores are available.
I am interested in cutting my sons application work down to 1 reach school early decision, 1 likely school he seemed comfortable at and maybe 2 safety schools. It seems to me that if a program can be written that is fairly accurate it may be worth the time, effort and lessened anxiety to use it.
So far I think that colleges are taking advantage of parents and students with the current system.
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WestrnMom
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Posted: Sun Jun 8th, 2008 02:55 am |
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I wouldn't spend money for a site like that. You can do the numbers yourself with the right data. Just ask.
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Canadian
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Posted: Sun Jun 8th, 2008 08:21 am |
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I think you are cutting your child's list too severely. Unless the application fees are a real problem, why not let him decide where he wants to apply? After all, it is he who will be doing the work.
I would not trust a computer program. College admissions are more of an art, and kids get accepted or rejected for all sorts of quirky and unfathomable reasons. A good college counsellor can help you sort out which schools are likely fits and likely admits.
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CarolynLawrence
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Posted: Sun Jun 8th, 2008 06:20 pm |
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Canadian wrote: I would not trust a computer program. College admissions are more of an art, and kids get accepted or rejected for all sorts of quirky and unfathomable reasons. A good college counsellor can help you sort out which schools are likely fits and likely admits.
I agree with Canadian. The trouble with these types of programs is that they only look at selected pieces of data -- they don't consider all of the factors that might come into play such as curriculum, grade trends on the transcript, personal characteristics, type of extracurriculars, recommendations, essays, interviews, and the student's fit with each school's admissions plan. As Canadian suggests, a computer can not translate the "art" part of admissions, nor help a student make sure that their list is well-rounded. And, that, I think, is where the real danger of these types of offerings lie: they can give a false sense of security or panic that is based just on a slice of the student's admissions profile, and that can lead to the wrong list of colleges.
A few years ago, I ran some numbers through some of the college databases to see what they would say about a person's chances at various schools --- the results show how varied and skewed computer "rate my chances" programs can be. You can find my write-up on computer databases here: http://collegehunt.blogspot.com/2005/04/college-search-engines.html
Last edited on Sun Jun 8th, 2008 06:31 pm by CarolynLawrence
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CardinalFang
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Posted: Mon Jun 9th, 2008 02:41 am |
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Normagene wrote:
I am interested in cutting my sons application work down to 1 reach school early decision, 1 likely school he seemed comfortable at and maybe 2 safety schools.
What would be the difference between a "likely" school in this scenario, and a "safety" school?
For me, a reach is a school that I estimate my son has a 25% chance or less to get in (there's a chance); a moderate reach is a school that he has 25-50% chance of success (he'd get in if he was lucky); a match, he has 50-75% chance of getting in (probably he'd get in) and a safety, >75% he gets in (it would be surprising if he were rejected).
He may or may not apply to any reaches according to this definition, but he'll probably apply to a couple of moderate reaches, a couple of matches, and a couple of safeties. In this admissions climate, I'm not comfortable with him applying to only three schools.
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Descartes
Super Moderator
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Posted: Mon Jun 9th, 2008 03:04 am |
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My own intutitions run like this:
Sure Bet/Safety/Foundation: >= 98% (It has to be highly reliable admit to be safe. It has to be guaranteed affordable, too, to be a financial safety).
Possible/Match/Structure: 35% to 98% (Reachy match/Ceiling 35-50%, Safe match/Likely/Floor > 75%
Speculative/Reach/Roof: < 35% (<20% High reach/Chimney, <5% Cloud/don't bother unless, so far as can be determined, its the same for everybody)
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CardinalFang
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Posted: Mon Jun 9th, 2008 04:07 am |
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| I understand why you'd pick 98% for a sure bet, but if your child doesn't want to go to an instate public with guaranteed admission, what schools would possibly qualify for that? By your metric, Fang Jr won't be applying to any safeties.
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Descartes
Super Moderator
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Posted: Mon Jun 9th, 2008 05:17 am |
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OK, maybe 98% is unachievable. (Who can be that certain about any admission? A confidential bad recommendation might sabotage you.) But that's they way my intuitions have it.
However, I think 95%+ is achievable. That's the range I'd want to be in on this chart if I were, say, to consider UW-Madison a safety.
http://www.admissions.wisc.edu/images/UW_FreshmanExpectations.pdf
If you're at or above the 75th percentile in every score, your grades match your test scores, you have no otherwise sour notes in your application (like bad recommendations or awkward essays), nor any characteristic that a school is known to look askance at (some might not like home-schoolers, for example) and the admit rate is relatively high (probably over 50% and hopefully a little higher) you are in all likelihood looking at a safety.
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CardinalFang
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Posted: Mon Jun 9th, 2008 05:21 am |
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Descartes wrote:
If you're at or above the 75th percentile in every score, your grades match your test scores, you have no otherwise sour notes in your application (like bad recommendations or awkward essays), nor any characteristic that a school is known to look askance at (some might not like home-schoolers, for example) and the admit rate is relatively high (probably over 50% and hopefully a little higher) you are in all likelihood looking at a safety.
But what if you do have one of those application flaws? Then how do you pick a safety?
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Descartes
Super Moderator
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Posted: Mon Jun 9th, 2008 06:05 am |
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I don't know. Anyone? Carolyn?
However it seems to me that if you can think of a reason of non-trivial probability why your application might be rejected then you don't have a safety.
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skibum
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Posted: Mon Jun 9th, 2008 12:14 pm |
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| I agree completely with westrnmom- No need to spend $$ for this kind of information.
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Normagene
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Posted: Mon Jun 9th, 2008 12:15 pm |
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My son does not want to apply to many schools. So far he has one reach school on his list that he likes alot, which he probably has a 50% change of admission which will be his ED school. He has a second school he likes, where he probably has a 75-90% chance of admission. I want him to apply to at least 2 more where he would have a 90+% chance of admission for safety. From what I have heard in my neighborhood, one girl applied to 12 schools and got admitted to 1, another girl applied to 14 schools and got admitted to 2. My son is not interested in this college roulette wheel and is more interested in approaching the problem by only apply to those schools that he really likes and can see himself at, so far that is not many.
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Chedva
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Posted: Mon Jun 9th, 2008 12:58 pm |
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| He may want to apply to a rolling admissions school, if you can find one he likes. If he applies early, he could have an admission before other applications are due. Once he has one admission that he likes and that you can afford, cutting down the list becomes much easier. He'd then only apply to his reach schools or to schools on his list that he likes better than the one to which he's admitted.
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Normagene
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Posted: Mon Jun 9th, 2008 01:23 pm |
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Thank you, that is good advice. The second school he likes is a rolling admission school. Should he apply to that this summer or would they expect an answer before it it was even time to apply to his ED school. I had originally thought he would apply to both of them at the same time in the Fall.
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Chedva
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Posted: Mon Jun 9th, 2008 01:35 pm |
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| Rolling admissions is non-binding, so he has until May 1 to reply to an admissions invitation, even if he gets it in September. So he can still apply ED to another school.
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CarolynLawrence
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Posted: Mon Jun 9th, 2008 05:44 pm |
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I tend not to think in percentages when it comes to chances, because it really is impossible to be that exact.
In terms of a list, I liken the process to building a house. When you build a house, you start with a firm foundation, then build the structure, then put on a roof.
While grades, curriculum, and test scores are certainly important, if you only use them to weigh the list, you can easily mis-judge. Instead, it's a matter of how the student's entire admissions profile aligns with both the admissions goals and admissions pool of individual schools.
At schools where decisions are made solely on the basis of curriculum, grades, and test scores (an example would be the Cal States), yes, being in the top 75th percentile is likely to make the school a foundation school. But, even then, the school is making decisions based on their objectives -- for example, the Cal States typically give some preference to students living within a set "service area" so a student from outside that service area, or from out of state, might not be able to consider that school a "foundation" school in quite the way that other students might.
Most colleges and universities have objectives for admissions. It could be that they just want to fill seats and make sure their books balance --- so, lots of kids might be able to consider that school a "safe bet."
On the other hand, if you're applying to a school where there's a large admissions pool, and 80% or more of students applying there have great grades and test scores, good grades and test scores alone won't make it a foundation school or, even, in some cases, a match school. What you need to do is look at what you are offering in your admissions profile, it's likely rarity in the admissions pool, and how it aligns with the school's objectives.
Take Yale, for instance. Yale gets literally thousands of applications from kids with great test scores, great grades, tons of APs, who want to major in some humanity or social science. They also get thousands of applications from kids who have participated in some music, art, or drama extracurricular. So, if you're going to be using a music, art, or drama extracurricular as your "hook" to help you stand out in a well-qualified applicant pool, you had better be participating at a very high level of achievement, and you had also better have something else to offer, such as a love for science that might fit better with Yale's goals.
Hope this helps. Sometimes schools which seem like "foundation" or "Safety" schools really aren't because the student isn't bringing something that the school values and that is rare to the table. And, sometimes schools that seem like reaches really are match schools, because the student has something that makes them stand out, and perhaps just as importantly, has found a way to highlight that fit between themselves and the school in their application package.
One last thing: By focusing on grades and test scores, and a laundry list of extracurriculars, people tend to forget that ALL colleges are looking for signs of intellectual vitality. Grades and test scores aren't the same as intellectual vitality. I've seen colleges take suprising risks on kids who had a real passion for learning that went beyond earning good grades and test scores. Any kid who can clearly and truthfully convey that in their application package, is going to be ahead of the game.
Last edited on Mon Jun 9th, 2008 05:45 pm by CarolynLawrence
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