Where might you actually get in?
Tell us your numbers. We score you against each school's published admit profile, factor in international applicant adjustments, and sort 30+ universities into reach / target / likely / safety. We don't fake precision — we'd rather be honestly approximate.
International applicants face ~30-50% lower admit rates at top US privates. We adjust scores accordingly.
Most top US universities reinstated SAT/ACT for 2025-26. Skipping the test is treated neutrally for test-optional schools.
Solid: regional awards, multi-year leadership, varsity sport. Honest self-assessment matters more than inflation.
A balanced shortlist is roughly 3 reach + 5 target + 3 likely + 2 safety = 13 schools. Adjust your inputs and watch the buckets rebalance.
No schools match this filter.
How we score it (honestly)
Our score for each school is a weighted blend of three signals. We do not use a black-box ML model — every adjustment is published below so you can sanity-check it.
- Base admit rate — the school's published acceptance rate is the gravity well. A 4% admit school is a reach for almost everyone, no matter how strong; a 70% school is a likely for most qualified applicants.
- Profile fit — when we have GPA / SAT median data, we score how close you are to the typical admit. A 1500 SAT at MIT (median 1543) is a fit; at a state flagship with median 1280 it's well above.
- International adjustment — top US privates admit international students at 30-50% of their headline rate. We multiply your base score by 0.6-0.8 for international applicants, depending on the school's international share.
- Holistic lift — extracurriculars, recommendations and essays move the needle on US private + UK Oxbridge applications. We add up to +20% for "Elite" profiles, but cap improvements: a Common App and a couple of awards won't turn a reach into a safety.
Buckets, not percentages
We sort schools into Reach (<20%), Target (20-50%), Likely (50-75%) and Safety (>75%). Inside each bucket the order is approximate — admissions are inherently noisy and we'd rather not pretend "MIT 5.2%" is somehow more accurate than "Harvard 4.8%".
What's missing
- We don't yet score by major (CS at MIT vs. Linguistics at MIT — very different odds).
- Demonstrated interest, alumni connections, athletic recruitment — not modeled.
- UK / Oxbridge interview performance — heavily weighted by them, hard to estimate ahead.
- Asia-Pacific competitive pools — we use the school's overall rate, which under-prices competition for highly-prepared cohorts.
Treat this as a sanity check on your shortlist, not a verdict. Pair it with the Cost Calculator to make sure your reach schools are also financially feasible.