How to post a 'Chance Me / Match Me' thread -- START HERE

Chance Me / Match Me
,
115

Guidelines

  • Please check back to answer questions.
  • Please do not share identifying information.
  • Please do not include race in the subject.

Demographics

  • US domestic (US citizen or permanent resident) or international student
  • State/Location of residency:
  • Type of high school (or current college for transfers):
  • Other special factors: (first generation to college, legacy, recruitable athlete, etc.)

Cost Constraints / Budget
(High school students: please get a budget from your parents and use the Net Price Calculators on the web sites of colleges of interest.)

Intended Major(s)

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores

Unweighted HS GPA:(calculate it yourself if your high school does not calculate it)*
Weighted HS GPA:(must specify weighting system; note that weighted GPA from the high school is usually not informative, unless aligned with the recalculation used by a college of interest, such as CA, FL, SC public universities)*

  • College GPA: (for transfer applicants)
  • Class Rank:
  • ACT/SAT Scores:

List your HS coursework

(Indicate advanced level, such as AP, IB, AICE, A-level, or college, courses as well as specifics in each subject)

  • English:
  • Math: (including highest level course(s) completed)
  • Science: (including which ones, such as biology, chemistry, physics)
  • History and social studies:
  • Language other than English: (including highest level completed)
  • Visual or performing arts:
  • Other academic courses:

College Coursework (Transfer Applicants)
(Include college courses taken while in high school if not included above.)

  • General education course work:
  • Major preparation course work:

Awards

Extracurriculars
(Include leadership, summer activities, competitions, volunteering, and work experience)

Essays/LORs/Other
(Optionally, guess how strong these are and include any other relevant information or circumstances.)

Schools
(List of colleges by your initial chance estimate; designate if applying ED/EA/RD. If you aren’t sure of your chances, just list the colleges.)

if a scholarship is necessary for affordability, indicate that you are aiming for a scholarship and use the scholarship chance to estimate it into the appropriate group below; also, for colleges that admit by major or division, consider that in chance estimate

  • Assured (100% chance of admission and affordability):
  • Extremely Likely:
  • Likely:
  • Toss-up:
  • Lower Probability:
  • Low Probability:
116

Thank you all for the great work on this! I added the last back of feedback and I have updated the template to the above. This is now live.

3 Likes
117
  • Please do not include race in the subject.

What is the “subject”? Do we mean do not include race in the title of the post? In the Other special factors?

It may be simpler to just say “please do not include your race.”

2 Likes
118

Minor quibble
 there are extra formatting asterisks in the unweighted and weighted GPA lines that should be removed. It should read:

  • Unweighted HS GPA: (calculate it yourself if your high school does not calculate it)
  • Weighted HS GPA: (must specify weighting system; note that weighted GPA from the high school is usually not informative, unless aligned with the recalculation used by a college of interest, such as CA, FL, SC public universities)

And does the scholarship line really need to be in bold?

119

Updated the template with the last edits.

4 Likes
120

And IF should have an upper case I in the word
it’s at the beginning of a sentence.

1 Like
121

Where is this updated template? Is this current thread going to be closed?

In my opinion, there should be a new thread
How to Post a Chance Me/Match Me 2024, and this thread should be closed. The new template should be the first post in the new thread.

1 Like
122

Thank you!

If you create a chance me thread you’ll see it.

2 Likes
123

What does that mean? See my suggestion above your post.

124

If you go to the the chance me/match me forum and click “create new topic” the template appears for students/parents to populate.

125

Start a new thread. Select “Chance Me
” as the category. The template will be populated.

ETA: sorry cross posted with @momofboiler1

126

Thank you!

127

Ok
if you think that works best. But wouldn’t it be easier to have a fresh thread with this new template as the first post?

128

I think the first post here still provides the relevant instructions and is pinned.

129

Brand new chance-me thread. Not sure if the new template was used by this poster.

On one hand, they didn’t mention their race. OTOH they’ve used the old categories (reach, match, etc).

130

Ok, I am late to this conversation, but I did want to add one consideration that I didn’t see discussed here. The consensus seems to have been that students should not include demographic in their chance me threads anymore. I get the reasoning, and I agree that is at best unnecessary and at worst misleading to include race in chance me threads. However, my only hesitation, is that leaving the info out may make it less likely for posters to suggest college access programs, fly-in programs, and scholarship sources that are open to students based on demographics.

For example, Questbridge gets mentioned on CC often as a possibility for low income students, but the Gates scholarship, which is only open to Pell eligible minority students (including African American, Native American Indian/Alaska Native, Asian & Pacific Islander American, and Hispanic American students) is almost never suggested to students. Nor are any of the single demographic group scholarships aimed at specific minority communities or LGBT students. The standard advice here is that students should concentrate primarily on merit scholarships offered by the colleges themselves, and it is not worth the time to apply to research and apply to national ones, but as a parent of kids that won such scholarships, this advice has always struck as a little surprising since I think there is overlap between the students competitive for Questbridge and those competitive for these other scholarships. There seems to be a belief that these resources for low-income students are only open to underrepresented minorities, but that is not always the case --sometimes the eligibility is wider. And sometimes it is narrower; for example, Dartmouth has a fly-in that is only for Indigenous students. Or for students who are asking for advice as rising juniors, hearing about programs such as Thrive Scholars (open to students of color and first generation students) could be useful given their help with college advising.

2 Likes
131

To be accurate, the suggestion was to not include race. Other demographic factors such as FG/LI, rural/underrepresented area, etc. can and are still mentioned by applicants.

I agree though, that not mentioning race will impact some students for whom special scholarships, fly-ins, etc. exist. I’m not sure how to fix this while also addressing our previous concerns about students mentioning their race.

132

My original suggestion wasn’t to abandon race entirely, but to not use it as an adjective to describe themselves in the thread title.

133

Perhaps change the guideline on race and ethnicity to the following, in attempt to reduce the overemphasis on it that has been typical on these forums for years, but not exclude mention of it when it may be relevant to the particular student.

Guidelines

  • Please check back to answer questions.
  • Please do not share identifying information.
  • Please be aware that race and ethnicity by itself cannot be considered in US college admissions, although it may be included to the extent that it is relevant to your experiences described in essays, and it may be relevant for a small number of outside scholarships. For many students, it may not matter at all, and it is typically not important enough to include in the thread title.

Demographics

  • US domestic (US citizen or permanent resident) or international student
  • State/Location of residency:
  • Type of high school (or current college for transfers):
  • Other special factors: (first generation to college, legacy, recruitable athlete, etc.)

Cost Constraints / Budget
(High school students: please get a budget from your parents and use the Net Price Calculators on the web sites of colleges of interest.)

Intended Major(s)

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores

  • Unweighted HS GPA: (calculate it yourself if your high school does not calculate it)
  • Weighted HS GPA: (must specify weighting system; note that weighted GPA from the high school is usually not informative, unless aligned with the recalculation used by a college of interest, such as CA, FL, SC public universities)
  • College GPA: (for transfer applicants)
  • Class Rank:
  • ACT/SAT Scores:

List your HS coursework

(Indicate advanced level, such as AP, IB, AICE, A-level, or college, courses as well as specifics in each subject)

  • English:
  • Math: (including highest level course(s) completed)
  • Science: (including which ones, such as biology, chemistry, physics)
  • History and social studies:
  • Language other than English: (including highest level completed)
  • Visual or performing arts:
  • Other academic courses:

College Coursework (Transfer Applicants)
(Include college courses taken while in high school if not included above.)

  • General education course work:
  • Major preparation course work:

Awards

Extracurriculars
(Include leadership, summer activities, competitions, volunteering, and work experience)

Essays/LORs/Other
(Optionally, guess how strong these are and include any other relevant information or circumstances.)

Schools
(List of colleges by your initial chance estimate; designate if applying ED/EA/RD; if unsure, leave them unclassified)

If a scholarship is necessary for affordability, indicate that you are aiming for a scholarship and use the scholarship chance to estimate it into the appropriate group below; also, for colleges that admit by major or division, consider that in chance estimate.

  • Assured (100% chance of admission and affordability):
  • Extremely Likely:
  • Likely:
  • Toss-up:
  • Lower Probability:
  • Low Probability:
134

Perhaps also add another section at the bottom:

Additional preferences
(If you are looking for college suggestions and have additional preferences in a college beyond academics and cost, such as regarding location / region, rural / suburban / urban, religious / secular environment, ethnic or SES diversity or lack thereof, fraternities / sororities, spectator sports, participatory sports, etc., please indicate such preferences here.)

1 Like