How should Military Academys, Conservatories or HBCs factor into your chancing profile?
I would like your opinion on this because I think there is a disconnect with these specialty type schools and the chancing results.
As a White person, who has no proficient musical ability, and is a conscientious objector to serving in the military and against any capital punishment, I personally think I should be automatically disqualified from applying to these types of institutions because it would be waste of time both for me and the college.
Nevertheless, I have chancing results in the 90%+ for HBCs, 40+% chances at some elite music conservatories, and range of 30%-70% chances at US Military academies.
I think giving out chancing results which are essentially meaningless doesn't serve any purpose so please fill out this poll and let me know your opinion and thoughts about this in the comments.
My thinking is that when you fill out your CV profile, the questionnaire should have answers which figure out whether or not you even qualify to apply to these schools either through the demographics section, what your ECs are, and whether or not you would consider a military education.
When I see that my chances to get into Dartmouth, Cornell, UPenn, JHU, Rice, Williams is the same as Westpoint Military Academy, I believe everything except Westpoint? Regardless of their acceptance rate, academically they are not even in the same league and all their stats are significantly lower (GPA, test scores), and they really don't use a holistic approach to college admissions. Your success or failure heavily weighs on recommendations from Congress people or Senators and/or if you come from a WestPoint legacy or military family. Plus if you are a Varsity level athlete for which you can get recruited to play for Army, that means a lot as well.
Thank you, I'll reward 25 Karma to whomever has a compelling thought to add to this.
I think that you should be responsible for your own lists. I mean, if you don't want to go to an HBCU or a Military Academy, then why have it on your list?
However, on CollegeVine's part, really it is just a matter of adding a question when you create your profile:
Are you interested in any specialized Institutions?
-HBCUs, Military Academies, etc
And then, base the results of the college list of that person because of that.
I think this may be a solvable problem for their chancing simulator. When you make an account, they ask for race, so that could be used to change the HBC percentages. However, while doing some research on this topic, it seems that people of all races are encouraged to apply to these schools, and acceptance isn't skewed based on these factors. Perhaps then, these chances could stay the same because they would reflect the chances of any person getting in if they really wanted to.
Another idea for the specific conservatiories and military academies would be to base it off of hobbies. Initially, their percentages could be set extremely low. But, if you add extracurriculars that show unique musical talent, that could help boot up chances for acceptance into conservatories. Likewise, if you indicate that you wish to go to an academy like West Point, they could have a specific questionnaire for those users when they enter the website, indicating relationships to high ranking officials, sports, or military-related involvement, and that could help determine those chances.
Ultimately, I think minor tweaks are needed, but it should be a good fix.
While its might be true and accurate that HBCs encourage all types of folks to apply, at certain HBCs like Spelman for example, 99.6% of the student body is non-white. So in a way it's sort of self-selecting. Most White HS students are not going to pick an HBC even if their chances of getting accepted are reasonable. It's a bit more complicated with military academies.
At Military academies you have to pledge up to 8 years in combination of active duty and reserve duty in order to repay the US government for your education. Sometimes it's less if you go on to be a JAG attorney because part of your graduate school might factor into your time as well. So I think applying to a Military Academy is also very self-selecting and no one is going to spend the time and effort to apply just to say they got in or as a safety/target school.
Your chance of acceptance
Your chancing factors
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