Accepted: who will be the chosen few this year?

October 22, 3:47 PMLA College Bound ExaminerEllen Richards

Previous Next

Comment Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the LA College Bound Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

The Anticipation of College Admissions
created in photoshop

Over the past few months, emails that share a common theme have inundated students' inboxes -ways for students to take advantage of  "the next best thing" - a way to predict their chance of acceptance at their chosen college. One site in particular, AcceptEdge.com -promises to give students an accurate idea of which schools fall within their target range.

While the website does not possess the power to read minds, the student must enter a considerable amount of information, including GPA, SAT scores, ACT scores, courses taken, activities participated in, interests, music choices, etc. In order to shorten the somewhat tedious process of inputting data, AcceptEdge offers the option of linking to a student's facebook account. AcceptEdge then imports music, book and movie preferences as well as interests from the student's facebook account.  

For a few skeptical students, AcceptEdge sounded too good to be true. How could a website accurately determine not only where a student should apply but also where they will have the best chances of admission? They decided to run a test. Using their older siblings past college applications, they attempted to see for themselves how well this site could predict the future.

Here's what they found for one student (after inputting the information for one student, they decided they had enough tedious gruntwork):

They flipped through Amy's transcript, SAT scores and list of extracurricular activities and entered information into the AcceptEdge system. Amy was an aspiring filmmaker who had done well on the SAT, received good marks in high school-mostly A's and B's-and had shown an ongoing interest in the string bass, having played continuously for ten years.

Amy's top choice schools were NYU (Tisch), USC (Film School), Brandeis, Wellesley, Emerson and the University of Maryland. After they finished uploading Amy's information into the system, they anxiously awaited the results. After all, this could be the crystal ball that could tell them their future. She was ultimately rejected from Brandeis, Wellesley and University of Maryland and accepted to NYU and USC and Emerson. 

AcceptEdge was right! However, their momentary idolatry subsided. AcceptEdge suggested that Cornell, Georgetown, Northeastern and American-schools Amy had no interest in attending-were also great matches. Furthermore, none of Amy's other top choice schools were present on the AcceptEdge list.

They determined to give AcceptEdge another shot. The site allows prospective students to add schools to their Best Personal Fit list and view their Admit Chance. By adding Amy's other top choice schools to the list, AcceptEdge correctly predicted that Amy would not have a good chance of gaining admission to Brandeis, Wellesley or University of Maryland. However, AcceptEdge incorrectly predicted that Amy would not be admitted to USC.

After running my somewhat-scientific experiment I came to the following conclusion: AcceptEdge may not be an infallible predictor, but it is not without merit. As long as it's used as a guideline rather than a Bible, AcceptEdge is definitely worth checking out. At the very least, students will be on the "Edge" of their seats!