Chance Threads - A Tale of Caution

calmom
Thu, 30 May 2019 04:22:55 +0000

@circuitrider – the second, 2016 thread was not “chances” – it was posted in the financial aid topic and was asking for sources of merit money for a higher stat student. Those requests are pretty common on CC – and usually people respond with info about colleges that offer guaranteed merit money based on stats.

@TomSrOfBoston -there was plenty of info in the opening post for Barnard admissions, which is why I then gave the advice I did. The first listed activity is & was huge for Barnard, at least up until quite recently. With that info alone, Barnard was a pretty good bet, especially in the ED round. The problem is that CC is obsessed with test scores, and although Barnard wants scores to be submitted, their admissions focus much more on high school GPA, rank, & various types of ECs that they value. So my opinion then (and now) is that the high school transcript, class rank, and extensive dance background would have made Barnard a match for any applicant to Barnard back in 2014. (Admit rate was still about 24% at that time, and above 40% for ED. So it made sense for the student to leverage those strengths with an ED app). No one could have guaranteed admission, but Barnard was a definite match for that student.

Since then the admission rate has plunged — putting Barnard in “reach” territory for just about all applicants. There’s just a very big difference between a 1:4 admit rate and a 1:8 rate that makes admissions more quirky and unpredictable.

But the point is, the OP was given horrible “advice” by people who can’t do math. (That is, the math involved in looking at CDS numbers). - and who had no direct experience with the schools in question.

I’m not a fan of chances threads, but I do make a point of countering bad advice about the only schools I have direct experience with.

But of course the OP can only know the outcome from Barnard, since that was the only school applied to. But I still think the best source of information about how a college weighs standardized test scores is in the CDS, not CC.