Whats a good percentage chance for admission for reach schools?Answered
I have about 5-26% chances for the reach schools, what's a good percentage to aim for in terms of admission chances for reach schools?
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3 answers
Well, definitely more than 26%. I would say, use the CollegeVine chance calculator, and if it says 40%-50%, then it means that it would a target school. It would perhaps be a hard target, but still a target and not a reach.
For your information, I had a reach school (17% admission chance according to CollegeVine chance calculator, but at the same time, I didn't put in all of my extracurricular activity in so I'm not sure if that would have increased the chance). Well, I got my results today morning, and I got deferred. The college admission officers promised to check my application a few months later. I have no idea what to think of this, but just telling you to not get your hopes up for a 5-30% admission chance school.
Also, as you know, chance calculators don't work 100%, so sometimes you can get accepted even though your admission chance is expected to be low, and sometimes, it will be the opposite.
By nature a reach school's definition is a college that is a stretch for you to get into. So that means that you should apply to more schools if they are in the 5-26% range. It doesn't mean you won't get into one but if you say, apply to 8 reaches, you might get into 1 or at least wait-listed into one.
Colleges that give you a 30-45% chance will be hard targets so you will have a better shot at those. And targets might be 46-60%, even easier still.
I didn't have any reach schools last year when I applied. I got into Columbia ED with 37-48% and feel lucky about it.
Considering that this years ED and EA rates are almost identical to last years for top schools, I'd err on the side of caution when applying to T20 schools. I feel admit rates are all going to fall between 3.5-7.5% again this year.
Good luck.
Hi @BigSmoke! Thanks for your question! However, this is not exactly how we recommend you interpret your chancing results. Use our chancing engine to figure out what schools you would be competitive for and how to increase your chances of acceptance to those schools by improving various parts of your application. Also, use it as more of a guideline to figure out what schools to apply to. It'll help you come up with a good list of safeties, targets, and reaches.
Here is some more info on how it works: https://blog.collegevine.com/is-collegevine-chancing-accurate/
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