If your kid wants a specific program within a larger school, for example, one of my kids is looking at engineering programs at some schools like UMD, and UMN where engineering is harder than the average major to get into, how do you figure out admissions odds?
Usually the large colleges provide data. UMD acceptance rate for engineering is 40% and they have a bunch of info on line. Preparing to be a Maryland Engineer | A. James Clark School of Engineering, University of Maryland
They also say it’s more competitive out of state so I’d say it will be an easier admit for your child.
UMN is a harder admit and I’ve read closer to 30%, and again, harder for OOS applicants: Academic Profile of Fall 2025 Admitted Freshman Applicants by College | Office of Admissions
Personally I’d consider UMD a target and UMN a reach.
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Hard to do it exactly other than knowing engineering is always more competitive than average, but you can often get some idea. Some colleges publish actual admission rates by school, or like UMN at least publish the breakdown of middle 50s, so you can at least judge where you stand in terms of competitiveness, and specifically whether or not you are above the 75th percentile.
When we were doing our application-related spreadsheet for C26, we always used the middle 50 for the specific school within the college if available to try judge chances. We also noted both the admit rate (specific if available, for whole college if not) and the out of state admit rate where applicable to make some kind of adjustment for publics. I think of the ones we looked at, only Boulder published OOS admit rate by major but otherwise we just kind of applied the general ratio. So example if the overall OOS admit rate was half of that of the published admit rate, we’d do that to the school specific admit rate too - rough but best we could do. Then some combination of admit rate + where they stacked up vs the middle 50 gave us likely/target/reach. C26 didn’t apply to any super-selective, reach for all type schools.
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Agree with others that it can be harder to do, but that is why it is intellectually interesting for me. Feel free to message specifics and I will give you best odds.
S just applied to 23 schools with specific program and I predicted 17 (and I missed it by 1). Been doing this for 30 years.
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Yes, it is nice when there is actual data, but I also feel like realistic, informed guesstimating is often good enough. Maybe not for your most critical Very Likely/Safety sorts of colleges, but I think some categorization uncertainty on the rest is fine.
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It’s knowing what is a “safety” that he cares about. He is a kid with a low tolerance for risk in this area.
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If your kid was above the 75th percentile, what kind of admissions rate made you think it was comfortably a safety?
My kid was also risk adverse. Her safeties were schools with greater than 85% acceptance rates. Better yet one had rolling admission so she was accepted in early October. It was a big relief to have that early acceptance and made the entire process less stressful.
One of her safeties was Clarkson which I know was mentioned in one of your other threads. They allow for stacking of scholarships and their outcomes far exceed their ranking. With your child’s stats they would see multiple scholarships there.
We definitely have Clarkson on our list to check out. Thank you!
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For us it was tricky because my kid was low gpa high test scores, so we didn’t consider anything other than auto admit a safety. So - as it turned out, kid was at or above 75th percentile SAT everywhere they applied (though with gpa mostly below 25th percentile) and got in everywhere (one after a deferral). Of course, that doesn’t take essays etc into account which also matter. But - if I had a kid who was above 75th on both GPA and scores, I’d probably consider schools with 50-60%+ admit rates for your major as likely and say 30%-50% as targets. (I personally don’t like the use of the term safety unless auto admit because I’ve seen too many people in person and on here rejected from their “safeties” and I am probably more conservative on classification than many others here.)
Then go for an auto admit or two, have that in the back pocket and go for the others. And somewhere rolling like Pitt (apply early in the cycle) which may give you an early admit that could turn into the safety.
The UMN thread this past year was quite active, as was Pitt if that is of any interest, so it may be worth browsing those to see the outcomes that were reported. As I recall here on cc, there were generally favorable outcomes for the higher stats engineering applicants, often with merit.
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So if helps . . .
In my S24’s feederish HS, it was pretty normal to start with one or two early Likelies, which basically meant top 25th numbers and above 50% acceptance and known affordability. My S24 used Pitt and St Andrews (which everyone assured us counted, including the St Andrews rep who visited).
The deep backup plan would be to add an autoadmit if that didn’t work. I note a variety of autoadmits do not have hard RD deadlines.
I actually don’t know anyone in his class who needed to do that, but I don’t know everyone’s story.
OK, but some people also had an early autoadmit. Maybe they just liked it a lot. Maybe there was a priority merit deadline. But maybe they just wanted additional peace of mind, and usually these applications were not so difficult it was a meaningful addition to their overall busy schedules.
By the way, Iowa and Iowa State were popular autoadmits that people either talked about, or sometimes actually applied to. And I agree they can be great choices for that role, although maybe not in your family’s case.
I agree with the suggestion of finding a rolling admit school. A rolling school was an important part of my D26s strategy. In fairness, I was the one that made sure she found and applied to at least one rolling school. For her it was Pitt.
I will say that she didn’t “love” Pitt, but the psychological impact of “at least I’m going to college!” was way higher than I expected. She really did feel like a burden came off with that acceptance. She never really considered going in the end, but just knowing she could was enough until her “real” safety acceptance for a school she wanted to go to came in January. That was a long time to wait for a safety, so Pitt was useful in this regard.
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I will add that this is how Pitt started for C26 (though for them it was never a safety, which made the fact that it was their first non-auto-acceptance even more exciting) but it ended up in their top 3 choices once they were in and started looking more deeply into it. So much love out there for this school.
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Pitt has such a great engineering program!
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Pitt does seem to be the sort of college that often grows on people the more they learn about it. It definitely doesn’t hurt it is very well-located in a fun city that often greatly exceeds expectations for people who have not visited before.
Which isn’t so much a sales pitch for Pitt, but a further explanation of the value of getting an early admissions like that. That is also more time to consider and investigate at leisure.
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