MIT is weighing in on high school admissions

By Joyce Szuflita

OOOOWW! MIT. How fancy!

Over the years, first we were so thankful for the crumbs: the clumsy Applicant : Seat ratio to guess at our chances at popular schools that were 30:1.
Then parents forced the DoE to reveal the random number, but they didn’t build context.
NOW MIT to the rescue with a very large but (to my limited mind) not terribly complicated combination of data to tell each student if a specific school is a long shot, medium shot, or pretty good shot. (Also no guarantees in the fine print.)

They are taking the number of seats at each program, and their admissions priorities, and an applicants screened group or Ed Opt group, and their random number and whether they are Gen Ed or SWD and feeding it into Big Blue to tell us if a school is a safety or a reach.

“MySchools now projects for each applicant if they have a low, medium, or high chance of getting an offer to high school programs. This gives families more information about the estimated chance of getting an offer to each program of interest, making it easier for them to build a balanced application.”

I should be grateful, and I will be if it helps parents make a good, balanced list.