How to find overlap schools?

[Anonymous]

How do you find the “overlap” schools? I see this term mentioned a lot. But when I asked the question at our school session, they talked about cluster schools.

I understood cluster schools to be where many of the students at our school apply. But overlap seems like it may be like cluster schools but based more on similar school characteristics versus peer-influence choices.

So where are you finding the overlap schools?

[Anonymous]

I dont understand what you are asking. what do you think is an "overlap" school?

[Anonymous]

I frequently see comments like this:

“Rice University is an elite school. Application overlap schools are Stanford, Duke, Chicago, Cornell, Vanderbilt, Harvard, Yale, and MIT as stated by Rice University. (Actually, I find this list hard to believe.)

Another source states that Rice's overlap schools are Cornell, Northwestern, Duke, Stanford, and the University of Texas at Austin.”

What are the sources of these overlap school lists.

[Anonymous]

Naviance has this feature. Colleges > Find you fit > College Match. It will show "STUDENTS WHO APPLY TO" with all of the schools your child has added to their list and overlap schools for each of them.

[Anonymous]

For example, the overlap schools for Rice are Stanford, WashU, Duke, Northwestern, and Cornell. Michigan's overlap schools are Northwestern, Cornell, NYU, BU, and UPenn.

[Anonymous]

Thank you! Our school uses Cialfo, so we don’t have access to Naviance.

[Anonymous]

Also the Fiske guide and either the Princeton guide or Colleges Worth Your Money (can’t remember which) have very short lists of overlaps for each listed school. And the overlaps have overlaps. Not as useful as you’d like but it’s a start.

[Anonymous]

The Fiske guide to colleges does this but more in a “if you like school x, this list of schools might interest you”.

[Anonymous]

Niche has this but only for some schools. For example, for University of Hawaii at Manoa it says students often apply to the other branch schools, University of Washington, Oregon, San Diego Stats. However, it seems like gif the majority of schools on Niche thus list is not provided. I wonder if universities pay for them to be suppressed?

[Anonymous]

Colleges report who they think their "peer institutions" are, some of these may be more aspirational than others

Chronicle of Higher Ed has a nice visualization where you can see peers
https://www.chronicle.com/article/who-does-your-college-think-its-peers-are

(Need to create a free account to view)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I frequently see comments like this:

“Rice University is an elite school. Application overlap schools are Stanford, Duke, Chicago, Cornell, Vanderbilt, Harvard, Yale, and MIT as stated by Rice University. (Actually, I find this list hard to believe.)

Another source states that Rice's overlap schools are Cornell, Northwestern, Duke, Stanford, and the University of Texas at Austin.”

What are the sources of these overlap school lists.

I wrote the above info re:overlap schools.

The first source was the Fiske Guide To Colleges which received the list of overlap schools directly from each college or university.

The second source was: College Transitions' Colleges Worth Your money which appears to be sourced from the book's authors.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thank you! Our school uses Cialfo, so we don’t have access to Naviance.

What schools is your child considering? I can report back with the overlap schools listed there if you want

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The Fiske guide to colleges does this but more in a “if you like school x, this list of schools might interest you”.

I have to disagree. Fiske seems based on where they apply to

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The Fiske guide to colleges does this but more in a “if you like school x, this list of schools might interest you”.

This is helpful. And then you can look at the options listed and they will have their own list of schools that might interest you.

[Anonymous]

Naviance; college vine; college raptor and google.