Chance Me Absurdity

Applying to College
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Opinions are like…your big toe…almost everybody has one.

Anyone posting a ‘chance me/match me’ question knows that they’re asking for other people’s opinions. The individuals who reply are not necessarily college admissions staff or experts. So you’re getting their semi-educated guesses based on what they currently know and their own experience going through the process themselves or going through the process w/their kids.

Also, no one is obligated to reply. I read some and don’t reply because my gut says that the student isn’t going to listen to me anyway. They’re still going to apply to 30 colleges, probably get rejected from almost all of them, and then later feel like their entire adult life is “doomed” because they didn’t get into Harvard/Yale/Princeton/insert fancy school name here.

I agree w/what @tsbna44 said earlier in this thread.

Every year at my kids’ high school, there’s at least 1 student who doesn’t listen to the seasoned counselors’ advice and they apply to all top 25 US News & World Report colleges/universities + 1 or 2 in state public universities. The student does it either because of self-imposed pressure OR from intense pressure from their parents to go to a big brand name school. Student doesn’t get into the big brand name schools and attend elsewhere. Student is a “thrives wherever planted” sort of person and does well, gets involved, has a good experience where they did end up attending.

I do think it’s just kind of silly/foolish when somebody posts in a chance me thread that their essay(s) is/are “10/10.” Like, how does that student really know? All that REALLY matters is the opinion of the admissions staff…at the colleges you’re applying to…the opinions of the people who will be deciding Admit, Defer or Deny. And all of us are basically looking into a crystal ball and trying to read the proverbial tea leaves in the meantime.

At the same time, I don’t think it does a hopeful high school student ANY favors to not give them the straight facts. Just because you’re a 4.0 1600 SAT National Merit Finalist student doesn’t mean you’re going to get admitted to a Top 25 college/university. Sure, you’re exceptional and special, but so are literally thousands of other high school seniors all across the United States…like Harvard to fill their entire freshman class many times over just with 4.0 1600 SAT students. Or oh…you’re valedictorian? So are thousands of other people. That doesn’t make you getting in to Brand Name School a sure thing.

But if you do NOT apply? Then your odds are 0% of getting in.

If just to prove it to yourself that you tried and so you can sleep at night knowing that you tried, sure…give it a go. But go into that process with realistic expectations.

And make sure there are matches and safeties on your list.

Don’t be dumb and ONLY apply to reaches, thus possibly resulting in you having NOWHERE to attend next fall. That would be very unfortunate.

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I don’t respond to every chance me - especially if I think the student is very unrealistic. For example, I didn’t respond to the recent post about the (very, very smart) student who has some C’s and D’s on their transcript because my feeling is that they have a very low chance of getting into the HYPS type schools that they would like to attend (and which will be affordable to them). I tend to be conservative when evaluating kids’ chances at the very top (say T25-30) universities because even for the best students with outstanding backgrounds/ECs there is an element of randomness to it since we don’t know what the schools are looking for in any given year.

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This is so true, and I honestly didn’t know people thought otherwise until I found this board…To me, that went w/o saying but obviously it wasn’t common knowledge. I assume this was because it was my personal experience and that of those I knew well. Even at my HS back decades ago I was given a list of reach/target/safety schools for me, specifically. It was obvious to me that my safety was some kid’s ED/reach. (I went to a private school with real counselors, obviously).

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Many years ago, I tried to get people to embrace 3 categories…

Dreams - where the average accepted applicant is stronger that the one applying

Just Rights - where the average accepted applicant is similar to the one applying

No Problems - where the average accepted applicant is not as strong as the one applying

I failed at it.

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IMO, the kid who has a “dream school” is likely to apply no matter what they are told on CC. They don’t need platitudes. They know even if the chances are remote, they will have to apply to find out.

Maybe there could be a better name for the forum section than “chance me/match me”. Maybe something like “thoughts on my stats/my college list” (surely someone can come up with a better catchy title) might lead to less of the absurd, pie in the sky posts.

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That works! I do like idea of having separate names for school caategories and categories for individual kid

Like reach/target/likely schools and dreams/just rights/no problem for YOU.. (or whatever..)

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This is a really excellent point - the title/category primes one to think the post is something that isn’t really possible…renaming the category to something else would be helpful..

I see the posts most beneficial (to my seat) when people add to the list with great suggestions or point out when it is reach heavy or, very occasionally, the opposite, etc.

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When someone asks for their chances at a college with a very low acceptance rate, I boldly say that it’s really impossible to chance someone for a college with that low acceptance rate…and that the vast majority of well qualified applicants do not get accepted. Apply and see.

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70

I think those categories work well outside of T20 type schools. I don’t think “just right” describes T20s unless the student is hooked in some way since, in many cases, the academic profile of rejected students is similar to that of those who get in.

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Yes, this is the challenge that is represented in the first issue raised in the OP. There are colleges that routinely reject many highly qualified applicants because they simply don’t have space for more than a fraction, and when they make those final decisions they are looking at circumstances and information none of us, including the applicant, can actually see. There are again some that may also waitlist or reject VERY highly qualified applicants when their yield model suggests too low of a chance of an offer being accepted.

How to best communicate with highly qualified kids, or parents of such kids, about these colleges is not an easy question.

Frankly, it is just hard sometimes as a proud parent to really wrap your head around how many great kids are applying to college each year. That doesn’t make your kid any less great, but it just becomes a pure numbers game where the total enrollment slots limits how many kids applying to these colleges can get even one offer. And again, it doesn’t help some colleges may think your kid is unlikely to accept their offer.

So I do think more often than not, warning such kids and parents about what can happen is a top priority, because we have seen the results over many cycles for kids/parents who did not take these possibilities seriously enough. And at the same time we can explain as much as possible about how this truly is not a test of merit, but a numbers game where complex and often opaque institutional priorities are critical factors.

But there are so many other voices implying it is a judgment on the individual kid’s worthiness. Just a very challenging situation.

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agreed 100%.

I think some also have a hard time understanding JUST HOW GREAT some of the great kids are. There really are levels of great, but if you don’t know some of the truly superb kids, it is hard to understand. I live in an area where tons of kids go to good schools, and still, many of my friends (with teens) have no clue how much the kids getting into the tippy top schools are really doing and at what level.

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There is also an issue of how people perceive probabilities. People are notoriously bad at understanding what the percentages mean. For many people, 5% means “a decent chance”, 25% mean an even chance, 50% means “most likely”, and 70% means “sure thing”.

Furthermore, the “probabilities” aren’t actually probabilities. Saying “50%” means “roughly 50% of the people who come here who have the sort of profile that you shared with us were accepted to that college”. However, that can only be interpreted “there is a 50% probability” if the profile that the student shared with us is the entirety of their profile AND the entirety of the information that the college uses for admissions AND that admission assign the same importance to the elements of the application that people here do. That is probably not true.

There are also factors that cannot be known ahead of time. The profiles and the size of the applicant pool affect acceptance rates, and nobody knows what these will be ahead of time.

Admissions probabilities are treated as though they are weighted random probabilities, with the weighting being provided by things like stats and ECs. However, we do not know the actual weightings, we do not know all of the factors that affect weighting, and we do not know the size of the sample, nor do we know the size of the population from which the sample will be taken.

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Agree, but then do we just stay the course?

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Whoa. Anyone who thinks that needs a basic statistics course.

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Most people have never taken a basic statistics course, and most people who have taken a basic statistics course have never taken the basics of probability.

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Not helped by websites like collegevine who will call a 25% probability a “target”.

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I don’t think a categorization system that doesn’t take into account a school’s admission rate will work, at least not if the goal is to have a balanced list of schools on an application list (or at least some very likely admits that a kid would happily attend on the list). When an entering class could be replaced multiple times over without the stats at a school dipping, it becomes easy for strong, qualified applicants to overestimate their chances of an admission, which can often be a recipe for heartbreak.

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We learned basic probability in HS biology (when learning about genetics)

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The “intro” in HS biology is not an intro course, and is more or less useless in the context of statistics. It talks about dice and flipping a coin, and, if you are VERY lucky, it make talk about a Normal Distribution. Statistics is taught, even in stat courses in college, the same way math is taught - template memorizations. “To calculate the t value for a t-test, stick these numbers into this equation, open the table (or use a calculator) and get the P value”. They are not taught why a t-test is used, what a t-test even is, why the degrees of freedom are calculated in that manner, or even what degrees of freedom are. When it moves on to a Chi-square test, they ignore probability entirely, and if they even talk about non-parametric tests, forget about even mentioning probability.

While more complex stuff requires the help of a data scientist of a statistician, anybody using statistics should at least have a basic understanding of how statistics as a whole is related, and is based on, probability.

I’m not even going a little bit into probability in correlations and regressions.

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Nor do you need to. My point is, it doesn’t take much, especially for students vying for top colleges who have probably taken plenty of high level/AP/DE math and science courses (which represents probably the majority of the “chance me” posters here) and many of whom probably took summer advanced programs, maybe competed in higher level math or science contests, to know that 5% does not mean “a decent chance”, and 50% does not mean “most likely”. Likely even the potential history and philosophy majors would understand this as well. If they don’t, they probably have no business applying to these schools. So how about we talk again about re-wording the “chance me” thread title so it doesn’t pull for the absurdities that this thread was started for. No need to get into Bayesian statistics or SPSS statistical programs.

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