Understanding Admissibility Categories

Overview

This article is for counselors, high school account managers, and district account managers. It covers how Overgrad defines admissibility categories like Likely, Target, Reach, and Far Reach; how each student's chance of admission is calculated; and how these categories and calculations can be customized for your school or district.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Overview
• Explanation of Categories
• Calculating Chance of Admission
• Customizing Admissibility Categories

Explanation of Categories

Overgrad assigns each college on a student's list an admissibility category based on their estimated chance of admission. The default categories are: 

• Likely: student's chance of admission is greater than 80% 
• Target or Match: student's chance of admission is between 50% and 80%
• Reach: student's chance of admission is between 20% and 50%
• Far Reach: student's chance of admission is less than 20%

Calculating Chance of Admission

Each student's chance of admission depends on many factors, but our default equation uses the unweighted GPA and test scores for each student. This field is exportable and can be found under the field: College List - College List Probability of Acceptance. 

Customizing Admissibility Categories

The Overgrad team works with each customer (district or school) to make sure these categories reflect terms commonly used on their campus. Additionally, we can adjust the ranges for each category (e.g. adjusting "Far Reach" to 15% chances or less).

Additionally, we can customize the calculation of chance of admission to incorporate factors beyond GPA and test scores, and use historical data to make admissions insights more reflective of student experience at the school and district. We call this calculation the "match formula". If you would like to make adjustments to the match formula for your district, please have your district account manager reach out to us!