College List vs. GC

mathmom
Tue, 18 Oct 2011 21:39:24 +0000

I’d say a match is a school where I think there’s about a 50% chance of being accepted. If you look at Naviance there’s a mix of red and green dots in the area. My older son’s non-safeties were all so called lottery schools though I actually did think that he was probably close to a match at the school he was a legacy at despite its ca. 15% acceptance rate. (It’s even less now.) (He had some other things going for him that for various institutional reasons were going to be especially favorable that year.)

With my younger son it was hard to judge - his CR score was in the top 25%ile everywhere he applied and his math score was close to the bottom 25%ile. His GPA was near the bottom 25%ile, but his rank was good, but bumped up by the fact that it included orchestra grades. But we knew his safety was safe, which was all that really mattered.

I agree with erlanger if the student has the stats for those sub-15% schools, it’s good strategy to apply to more than 1 or 2.