Sorry, I should have explained a bit more what I meant by universality. I meant taking into account only basic objective factors, like acceptance rate and where the applicant’s academic stats appear to fall for the college rather than what I think AustenNut is saying, computing numerical acceptance odds for a particular student (sorry if I am misinterpreting, AustenNut!). I don’t know if what I’m trying to say makes sense…
So maybe what I’m trying to say is that I would categorize by a combo of acceptance rate and test score, with a look at GPA, but I don’t know how to go any further in categorizing because I find GPA difficult to consider, and I don’t understand how to further consider the transcript, and any additional subjective factors, to truly individualize odds for a particular student, nor do I understand how to create a combined % chance for the particular student even with just two objective metrics (acceptance rate and test score).
We defined 4 broad buckets - likely, target, reach, and high reach.
The likelies were ones where D26 had overall much higher stats than most accepted students AND the school accepted more than 60% of students.
The targets were ones where she either had much higher stats than most students but they accepted less than 60% OR she had stats similar to most students and they accepted over 60%.
The reaches were ones where she had stats that were typical, but they accepted less than about 30% of students.
The high reaches were ones where they accepted less than 10% of applicants or she had stats that were below typical of admitted students.
In every case, we tried to remove the international pool to get to a more general domestic rate. We also took out the ED students since she wasn’t EDing anywhere. That gave us what seemed like the most real admissions rate for students similar to her.
I’m struggling with situations where acceptance rates are 60-80% but where my child is pretty within range (as far as I can tell because GPAs are calculated so differently everywhere). It would seem these are targets, but then again there are probably a whole set of applicants who are accepted with higher stats but don’t enroll… and even with targets, thats what…a coin toss or maybe slightly better? IDK I’m not trying to overthink it - I just want him to have a few good options - but it is anxiety provoking. (He does have a solid very likely and we can add another - but he’s not super excited about them).
Yep - D26 ran across one college like this. She had better than average stats, but not crazily so. But the acceptance rate was reasonably high (65% or so). We decided this was a target. Perhaps a low target, but there wasn’t a lot of value in trying to overclassify it. At the end of the day, we weren’t trying to gauge specific likelihoods of acceptance. This was more about making sure that there was enough schools of each “type” she might be interested in. And in fairness, she had enough targets that if any individual one would have said “no”, it wouldn’t have been that big of a deal because she had a bunch of others.
Copying my response from a different thread, but I think it gets at what you’re asking for. When chancing people, I start with the school’s admission rate and then…
And for clarity, if a student is submitting a test, then if they’re above the 75th percentile then I’ll generally move them up a category or below the 25th percentile move them down a category, but only if there’s a significant number of students submitting a test score.
Unless your numbers put you in the top quartile for your type of student (as best you can tell), I think it is safest to keep those as Targets.
If you have a good enough rolling college offer or autoadmit, it may be fine not having anything else that is not a Target. Although choice is nice, it doesn’t help if you wouldn’t choose it over your rolling/auto.