15
2 years ago
Admissions Advice

What is going on?!?
Answered

Hello, as of yesterday, my college admission chances have all dropped significantly even though I didn't change any of my statistics. For example, my admissions chances for University of Texas Austin went from ~58 % to 25%. My Rice University admissions chances went from ~11% to 3%. My Northwestern chances went from ~9% to 2%. All of the other colleges on my list seem to still be ok, however they also all droped a few percentages. My Texas A&M chances dropped from ~95% to 79%. Has this happened to anybody else? This has stressed me out a bunch and would like to know what is going on.

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3 answers

7
Accepted Answer
2 years ago[edited]

What is going on is that College Vine rolled out a new update on the chancing engine. This update is supposed to have a more accurate method of calculating your probability for admission to a particular college based of more accurate admissions data collected from a database of applicants who applied in the recent few cycles. It is supposed to have better input data like more accurate admissions data sets for each college like GPA, 50% range test scores SAT/ACT, test-optional bias (whether or not submitting test scores factor into decisions), past admissions rates for both ED/EA/RD and demographic biases which favor BIPOC, first gen, low income, marginalized students and penalize over represented groups like White and East Asians. And so forth and so on. So the intent is very good because everyone on CV wants to know a more realistic opinion of what their chances are so they can curate a more informed list of colleges to apply to.

That being said, the rollout of this update has been more controversial than previous updates to the chancing engine because of its complexity and added functionality. I would imagine there is far more code in this one singular update than the original chancing engine Version 1.0. So there are going to "bugs" and calculations are going to spit out wrong numbers. But not to be alarmed because the rollout is sort of an "hard release Alpha update" not a "soft Beta to 500 CV users." So there are going to be more upset people who might feel this as a punch to the gut.

Therefore be patient and allow the CV team to fix the bugs and help them by either contacting support@collegevine.com or posting a real life issue with the outputs. For example I immediately noticed that my chances for Caltech went from 25 or 30 to 1 percent. I knew this was wrong. I also noticed my MIT chances went from 45 to 20. A day later the Caltech glitch is getting closer to what I think the right number is. It's currently 7% for me, and MIT is 20%, I think both Caltech/MIT are like sister schools in terms of admissions criteria so think they should be closer to parity than having a 13% spread between them. I think the same for say Amherst/Williams or Pomona/CMC or UCB/UCLA or BostonU/BostonCollege. If you are a high achieving valedictorian profile then you wouldn't have 13% percentage points difference in these schools if they are on your list.

So hang in there and keep reporting your outputs online to the community and that will help determine if they are specific bugs with a college and how it's hard coded into the algorithm or something more general.

Hope that helps answer your concern and worry.

7
5
2 years ago

I've experienced this as well. We can only assume this is a glitch, or my current hypothesis is that the class of 2022s' admission statistics were just inputted into the system, making the chancing reevaluate everyone's profile. As every year gets more and more competitive than before, we see significant drops in predicted acceptance with the newly implemented statistics.

5
2
2 years ago

its a new chancing update, where they're now basing it off current trends rather than last years, to give a more "realistic" view. however, so many people's have dropped extremely significantly, even with an amazing resume, so there may be some bugs, But yes, this was a planned update announced by one of their workers a few days ago :)

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