Chance Me Absurdity

Applying to College
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Post related - Would love to see one of the very accomplished math-types on CC analyze whether a school with a 15% admit rate is really a reach for everyone. For example - when the SAT is submitted and 160 points higher than the average at a test optional school. Or, what about when you consider that that 1/3 of the applicants have a GPA that is a 3.5 or lower and the average is a 3.8 - and applicant has a legit 4.0. If I were smarter, I would really challenge the reach for all assumption.

Probably not at the most competitive schools, but those right below them.

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I really think those schools, just below the most competitive don’t give two hoots about a high SAT/ACT score in the absence of really really solid grades and rigor.

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Why do you feel that way?

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I’ve shared this before but I began posting regularly on CC after going through the admission cycle with my D. She went to a catholic college prep school. Lots of income diversity because of the city voucher program, and lots of very high achieving kids, and excellent college counseling/advising. We had a few students with perfect GPAS and test scores. Not close to perfect but perfect perfect. Highest rigor, sports, volunteering, research, etc.. the whole package. Results were WLs at schools like Michigan, Vandy, GT. Another friend with very high test scores and a decent GPA (3.8 ish) only got into his safety and none of the matches.

As such, if I respond to a chance me, I’m in the camp of making sure students have a balanced list of schools that they love. It’s a no go for me if the kid doesn’t like their safety or it’s not affordable. Then it’s not a safety. IMO, the value of the chance me posts are to try to be sure a kid isn’t going to be potentially shut out.

I also saw it year after year as an alumni interviewer. Kids that were AMAZING and I thought for sure would be accepted were not. As such, I don’t think we can be very accurate in chancing students without knowing a lot more context (and I at least knew their HSs and got to meet with them face to face). In the end, none of us know the institutional priorities in that particular year for the selective colleges that kids are posting about. I will make sure kids know about the common data set and where to find the stats. IMO, that’s the most accurate way of predicting the odds.

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But what is valid at one school doesn’t work at another– for every applicant.

In my neck of the woods, Vanderbilt (to pick one example) is known as the place where kids with high scores, strong GPA but very weak EC’s are likely to get in. I know from friends in other parts of the country that this is not universal- but if you’re a Northeast kid, clearly strong academics but not the well rounded applicant that fits the Vandy profile- you’ve got a much better chance at getting admitted than the stats suggest.

Georgetown- a tough admit if you go by the stats. But if you’re a kid (whether at a Catholic HS or not) who has shown a deep commitment to community service- not just “I have 100 hours of volunteer work” type of service, which is required at some high schools, but something deep, sustained, “Bend the Arc” type service- your admit rate is much higher than the national rate suggests.

Etc. There are lots of schools where the numbers don’t tell the entire story. And yes, holistic means holistic. I’m not sure the next Yo-Yo Ma needs to play varsity volleyball to get into one of the single digit admit schools. But with solid stats- and truly outsize talent- that kid may not get into Harvard- but will likely get into at least one of the mega rejective schools who love their musicians who have opted NOT for conservatory level training.

Etc.

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How sure are you about this? It feels off. Why do you think?

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I think there would be plenty of counterexamples of such kids not getting in.

Sometimes I’d (parent) like to do an anonymous chanceme for a certain student situation, and then I realize what the responses would be, and that ultimately, there is simply nothing anyone can say to reduce uncertainty other than “these are reaches, these are matches, these are safeties.”

Adding, it would be interesting if there was an option for private chanceme’s/list advice. Sometimes too much detail just adds up to it not being worth posting a permanently-public thread.

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Seen it a bunch of times. But I have no idea if it’s policy driven; if Vandy sees the rigor of the HS and the strong performance and decides that as an “academic admit” the rest doesn’t matter; etc. Maybe it’s just a lone “finger on the scale” for the lowly “I worked really hard in HS and will continue to do so in college” kid who doesn’t get a lot of love in holistic admissions. And of course- my observations are not a statistically significant sign of anything.

Just like the last five kids I know who got admitted to Harvard were all planning on majoring in something very humanities oriented. Not that Harvard admits by major of course. But it certainly looked like a bit of an antidote to the premeds and the econ/investment banking wannabees. A kid who loves Colonial History and wrote a bang up AND funny essay about Boston’s Freedom Trail? I mean- what Harvard adcom doesn’t love Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (he was never mentioned- but you can’t even THINK about Paul Revere at Harvard without summoning Longfellow!) Very subtle, very gentle, very effective
.

So I’m not an adcom and not a statistician. But I’m just pointing out that your thesis- that for SOME applicants, some college’s overall stats are clearly wrong, may be true, but proving it would be very difficult. And of course- a Colonial History superfan could write something fantastic about Philadelphia for U Penn, Baltimore for JHU, Providence for Brown, etc. So we’re back to the old “the Adcom’s are building a class” yada yada yada. And if the Adcom at Brown has just read 50 essays on Colonial Rhode Island, the 51st may be dismal.

So I’m back to MY favorite piece of advice- authenticity matters.

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I’ll just weigh in with one thought - the “Chance Me” is a misnomer and it probably shouldn’t be called that. Even “Match Me” is a ton better. And I think “College Search & Selection” makes the most sense for what posters on this forum want to offer.

Because of the naming, there are a lot of posts that are coming in asking for “chancing” when posters don’t really want to do that (“It’s a reach for everyone.”)

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great idea

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If I post, I’m generally giving them the best that I have. I don’t work in college admissions or as a college counselor and never have. I don’t want my potential ignorance to lead a family astray.

When I first started reading CC and would see the kids with superlative stats and ECs getting rejections and waitlists, not just from SHYMP-types but even popular public engineering programs and such, it was very eye-opening. I realized that times had changed since I’d been a senior in high school and that the bulk of the pool of students applying to low admit schools were high achievers in high school.

Since I don’t have any professional experience in this realm, when a school has an admit rate below 20% (and usually below 10%), I am one of those who will usually put it the low probability bucket (<20%). Occasionally there will be a super strong student and I might put a school with an admit rate in the 15-20% range as a lower probability admit (20-39%), but that’s as high as I feel comfortable going with the extent of what I’ve picked up over the years. And for the schools with low single-digit acceptance rates, it doesn’t matter how strong the applicant, because even if they’re 3-4 times stronger than the typical strong applicant, 3-4x the acceptance rate is still below 20%.

There are times when an applicant has shared enough about their background/application that I will use an additional category to describe those hard-to-get schools. I might label it as extremely low probability (<5%) whereas for regular “reach for all” schools for strong students I keep it as low probability (<20%). Alternatively, I might say something along the lines that it’s probably not worth their effort or that I personally wouldn’t bother or that the odds of an admission are extremely low, but I try not to just flat out say that there’s not a snowball’s change in Hades, because what if I’m wrong?

In terms of schools like Wisconsin (some locals have mentioned high-stat in-state students getting rejections for certain majors) or Tulane (known for being big on demonstrated interest and sensitive to yield), I’d rather be overly cautious and let families have better success than expected than to raise expectations too high and then need to deal with extra disappointment in the results. But for a “typical” strong student on CC I’d probably call Wisconsin a toss-up (40-59%) and Tulane either a low (<20%) or lower (20-39%) probability school.

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I can’t say for certain with kids - but I write like crap on here and other social media - typos, errors, etc. It doesn’t make me dumb. This is all anonymous but I can assure you I am not and have academic and testing pedigree to prove it. In fact my day job requires really professional, polished writing of a very particular kind/style (and to change styles sometimes!). I type fast, don’t re-read and really just don’t care in this forum. Why waste time on strangers? As long as what I write is remotely understandable, I am fine with it. You can call that shallow, or lazy, and I am fine with that. I don’t think it means they aren’t capable of writing an essay. They don’t text like they write an AP list essay either.

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I definitely think a more casual style of writing on here is fine, as long as it’s not to such an extreme that we need a text-acronym glossary.

It does give me pause when students misspell the names of schools of interest.

And when an OP doesn’t offer thoughtful responses to follow-up questions, but rather persists with unanswerable questions like WELL, HOW ABOUT PRINCETON - WHAT PERCENTAGE CHANCE DO I HAVE THERE?
 it really causes me to question whether AO’s are going to see the maturity and perspective they’re looking for, in the application.

I think “chance me” threads can be useful when the purpose is to build a balanced list and to manage expectations. When all the OP wants is a crystal ball, the absurdity begins to creep in.

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Re Vanderbilt, totally true in Atlanta.

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Perhaps it’s due to yield. Just guessing.

An Atlanta to Nashville student is probably more likely to attend than a NY or Denver to Nashville student.

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i am not a frequent poster here, but from the sample of ChanceMe posts i have seen over the years, i agree that the comments given may not always be the most helpful to the poster. i wonder if a better output/conclusion from the experts on this forum would be to reference/contextualize the final advice/conclusion to be higher than, same as, or lower than the published acceptance rate. that way, it is clear that there is never a 0% chance that one could get in, but qualitatively lets the poster know where the experts on this forum qualitatively estimate the probability of them getting in relative to the general population. basically, one could give all the reasons/rationale for their estimation, but at the end of the post, the poster says “I think you have a higher/similar/lower probability of getting in compared to the publicly available acceptance rate”. Just a suggestion.

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Vanderbilt has an exceptionally high number of test-optional students. 49% to be exact, thus admissions for test-submitting students is straightforward.

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Our S24’s feederish HS used these for what I would call presumptive categories, and I think they work reasonably well:

https://support.collegekickstart.com/hc/en-us/articles/217485088-Differences-Between-Likely-Target-Reach-and-Unlikely-Schools

In terms of Reaches, it says:

  • Reach: the admit rate is less than 25% or your academic performance puts you in the bottom quartile of students from the previous year. These schools admit very selectively, so the risk is higher of being denied, even if your academic performance is strong. We recommend having at least two in your list to give yourself some upside.

I do think you need to try to understand acceptance rates as applicable to your type of applicant. Like, in-state versus out-of-state versus international can matter. If they admit by school or major, that can matter. And so on.

But once you have your applicable acceptance rate, this system does presumptively categorize any undergrad program with an applicable acceptance rate for your general type of candidate of under 25% as a “reach”, regardless of individual qualifications.

But in that feederish HS, this is really just a starting point. Reaches of interest are going to be analyzed in much more detail, to the point that these categories stop having a lot of utility at the final list formation stage. The utility is mostly in the initial exploratory stage, and the idea is just to make sure each kid is exploring an appropriate range of options.

That said, as I understand it, part of what is going on here is a sort of implicit warning to kids about issues like “yield protection”. Not all sub-25% colleges necessarily do a lot of yield protection, but I think it can be an issue at enough such colleges to support this presumptive categorization.

In terms of colleges not to apply to, it says:

  • Unlikely: the admit rate is less than 25% AND your academic performance puts you in the bottom quartile of students from the previous year. Statistically speaking, these schools are likely to be out of reach unless there are unique circumstances that set you apart from the applicant pool (underrepresented minority, first to attend college, special talent, etc.).

As this suggests, this is also just a presumptive categorization, but I tend to agree you need to be honest in self-assessing what would make you unique enough in other ways for such a college to accept someone who does not have the academic qualifications they normally look for. If, being realistic, you don’t have the qualifications they normally look for and are not really plausibly unique enough in other ways to be an exception, I don’t mind suggesting you should focus your attention elsewhere.

In terms of my own habits, I try to be more or less consistent with this approach. Categorizing colleges as Reaches, Unlikelies, or so on is not intended by me to be the end of a conversation, but I think it can be helpful as a way of starting a conversation about what can happen in selective college admissions, what a well-balanced list is typically going to look like, when and when not you are likely to get exceptional treatment, and so on.

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So I am always reluctant to give applicants numerical probabilities, even by implication, because I think they can easily be misused. Indeed, one of the very real problems for applicants when forming lists is the probabilities in question are clearly not fully independent. It is not always clear why, but some applicants end up not admitted to a bunch of colleges where that clearly would be statistically improbable if the probabilities were independent, and similarly some applicants get admitted to a bunch of colleges where that would also be statistically improbable if the probabilities were independent.

That said, the general concept of understanding what a selective college typically considers a competitive applicant, and assessing realistically whether or not you are as competitive as their typical successful applicants, or less competitive, or more competitive, is I believe a useful one.

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I think by far the most common “Chance Me” and similar post on CC has a format something like this:

“I always thought I was a really fantastic student for xyz reasons. Now this thing has happened that makes it clear I’m not as fantastic as I thought. Can you please reassure me that I am actually as fantastic as I thought?”

like:

“I had a 4.0 but now in my AP classes junior year I’m getting all Cs can you help me get into Harvard”

So naturally the responses on CC are in the vein of, “hey, you’re not actually fantastic anymore” but it’s always said much more kindly, as in, there are a LOT OF GREAT COLLEGES and stop focusing on the five or six ones people always focus on.

Sometimes, someone will say, “hey apply you never know”

And that is why it gives some people the impression OP mentioned.

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