What Are My Chances?

I want to share a couple of resources for students that may help them gauge how likely they are to be admitted to a particular school, based on the courses they've taken in high school, their standardized test scores and their GPA.

On College Board's web site, you can search for colleges of interest and then click on the "How Do I Stack Up?" link.  From there the student enters his/her high school classes (number of years of English, math, etc.), SAT scores and GPA and then receives a report showing how they "stack up to students who got in and enrolled".

Another resource is a free web site called Cappex.  Students need to create an account first, and then they can get similar feedback as what the College Board tool provides.  (I wrote about Cappex here in an earlier post.)  Cappex also allows schools to contact students via the Cappex web site when there might be a good fit.

Cappex - College Search Site

As a part of my studies I was introduced to a web site called Cappex.  Its tag line is "College search made simple."  There are several aspects to the site for students, as well as a portion geared toward college counselors.

On the student side of things, you can set up a profile that is then used by Cappex to find matches for you.  You receive information about colleges that might be a good fit, and if you see one that looks promising, you can contact the school.  You can also apply for Cappex scholarships once you have your profile established, though I don't know much about that yet.

Under the Tools tab you can find a collection of 16 articles about the college application process.  The articles are filed under the categories of Prepare, Plan, Apply, and Decide.  The Student Chances tab is described as follows:

The Cappex "What Are My Chances?" Calculator is a powerful college search tool designed to help set student expectations. The Calculator instantly tells you a student's chances of being admitted to almost any college in country. This isn't the final word on admissions, but, along with your counseling, it can be a valuable tool.

 As a counselor, I can associate my account with my students' accounts and monitor searches and such via the site.

I played with the Scattergram tool for a little while, investigating UCLA's scattergram.  This is designed to show who is getting into schools (based only on GPAs and ACT/SAT scores).  I chose UCLA as it is my alma mater.  :) 

For a review of Cappex you can check out this post at EDU in review.