Did your children get admitted to colleges that you thought matched their stats?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You need to determine reaches, matches, and safeties on your own.

For grades, you can try to do some comparison by looking at your high school's Naviance scattergrams for particular colleges. Look at both weighted and unweighted GPAs. (Score info from these scattergrams is less useful now that most colleges are test optional, because you cannot tell whether the score for a particular data point was submitted or not.)

For scores, I would use the last year before test-optional policies became widespread. That would be college class of 2024, for which admission data is included in Common Data Set 2020-2021. You can usually find Common Data Sets for each year posted on the college's website, though not all colleges post their CDS.

Determining reaches, matches, and safeties is about more than matching the student's stats to the school; you also must consider acceptance rate. Find the most recent acceptance rate somewhere on the college's admission website, for college class of 2026, or see if it's listed here: https://www.collegekickstart.com/blog/item/class-of-2026-admission-results.

There is some disagreement on how to use acceptance rates for determining reaches, matches, and safeties. For a high-stats student: schools with acceptance rates <30% = reach, 30%-60% = match/target, >60% = safety. If the student does not have high stats (e.g. scores over the school's 75th percentile), then you need to adjust accordingly.

Honestly, under test optional policies, the uncertainty is simply greater than it was under the old test-required scenario, and this makes categorizing reaches, matches, and safeties that much more difficult. There is wisdom in a more conservative approach: have more targets and safeties than would have seemed necessary in the past.

I agree with your percentages. People need to realize that less than 20% (or 30%) acceptance rates is a reach for everyone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DS got into a school that we labeled a reach. Strategy played a big role in this I think.

So...what was the strategy?

Maybe labeling it a reach, even though another person looking at exactly the same child might have labeled it a match

T20s are always reaches.

Yes, because their acceptance rates are less than 20%. Any school with an acceptance rate less than 20-25% is a Reach by definition. Does not matter if you have a 1600, 4.0UW/4.99 W, 15+ AP, a patent, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It was a mixed bag. Had twins. Twin with weaker GPA over achieved at top 15 SLACs and got into W&M as well (no UVA). Ended up at a top 15 SLAC. Kid with higher stats felt like underachieved but then the Pandemic got him off the waitlist at a top 5 SLAC. Now transferred to Ivy.

why did he transfer?

Wanted the major at the Ivy school. More specific.

[Anonymous]

No. My kid with a 2.7 GPA from a bottom-tier private got rejected by a school ranked 428 on Forbes and accepted at another ranked in the top 100. No rhyme or reason.

[Anonymous]

Our kids were accepted at schools and some were reaches, some were targets etc they went where they wood be happiest. Not necessarily the top academic school they were accepted to and they really are happy and enjoying it.

They didn't buy into the ranking stuff