I thought I’d talk about the different tools you can use to figure out your child’s chances of receiving an offer from a particular program. If you’re not familiar with admission methods or DOE designations such as groups and random numbers, please read up on them before continuing with this post. Note: people sometimes refer to the random number as “lottery number” and screened group as “tier”.
Applicants Per Seat
This is the most basic way to figure out a program’s popularity and your child’s chances of receiving an offer. There are different opinions on what “safe” vs “reach” APS numbers are, but the values themselves can range from almost 0 to 160. The problem with just relying on this number is that it doesn’t account for admission methods, priorities, or tiers.
Pros: Simple to use. Great for generalizing.
Cons: Only really useful for a handful of programs. Doesn’t account for priority or applicant complexities of the NYC school system.
Historical Offers
The DOE provides an alternate version of applicants per seat numbers in the form of applicants and offers. You can find this information in MySchools or through the “offers” link on NYC-SIFT under the appropriate program. When given the chance, programs will give out more offers than seats available. Schools will over-offer to account for students accepting specialized offers, leaving the public school system entirely (moving or going private), or accepting a waitlist offer from another school. The number of offers are pretty consistent year-to-year, so I would argue that it is better to look at the number of offers sent rather than the number of seats available. If you find are able to find out which students got offers in previous years (known as cutoffs), you can gauge your child’s chances of getting an offer in the future. The offer information will show you something like, “There were about 80 applicants eligible for free or reduced price lunch in this group and about 20 received offers. There were about 150 additional applicants in this group and about 10 received offers.” This is a good way to guess cutoff information when there are no alternatives. In fact, NYC-SIFT’s Cutoff Estimator (explained below) uses this offer text extensively to create cutoffs.
Pros: Better than applicants per seat. The closest thing the DOE comes to providing cutoffs.
Cons: Not summarized and needs to be deciphered individually
Surveys
Even though the DOE has received multiple requests to release cutoff information, they have so far refused to provide it. To fill this void, surveys have been created to figure out these cutoffs. The most well-known of these has been conducted by Amelie Marian, who has been collecting data from parents for the past few years and posting known cutoffs on her medium site (Amelie Marian – Medium). You can compare your child’s DOE information against her data to see where your child lands. Unfortunately, these surveys require a sizeable number of participants to be effective. There were 789 participants in her last survey, resulting in complete or partial cutoff information for 144 programs out of over 900 offered programs in NYC.
Pros: The most accurate data you can compare against.
Cons: Limited number of available cutoffs. Doesn’t always account for priority variables.
The DOE’s “Cell Strength/3-Bar” Predictor
This year, the DOE is publishing a new “Cell Strength/3-Bar” Predictor tool as a substitute for releasing cutoff information. When I previewed this tool in July with the DOE group in charge of its design, they indicated to me that they wanted to be very cautious because they didn’t want to give people false hope or affect the applicant pool by discouraging applicants. Accordingly, the results from this tool are very conservative. Your child must have a very high chance (99%) to receive an offer before being shown three bars and a very low chance (1%) before being shown one bar. I asked them to consider adding more bars, but they wanted to see how this current iteration worked before making any changes.
Pros: Based on actual cutoff data.
Cons: Not enough granularity.
NYC-SIFT’s Offer Prediction Model
NYC-SIFT can predict cutoffs for all Open, Screened (not Screened+), and Ed. Opt. programs that had over 100 applicants the previous year. The main idea behind the model is if it is provided a detailed picture of the applicant pool, it can predict the outcome of offers. Unfortunately, the DOE has been extremely reluctant to provide me detailed breakdowns of applicants. The current model is built off of offer and applicant data that is not distinguished by any properties other than DIA or priority groups. Because of this, some cutoffs can be inaccurate. I have a more in-depth explanation of how it all works in a post on NYC-SIFT: An in-depth look at NYC-SIFT's Cutoff Estimates & Offer Prediction Bar . I have spot-tested results from the model against those reported by surveys and the estimates are within a range that I am comfortable with. Luckily, any inaccuracies in the cutoffs are smoothed out by the offer prediction bar. If you supply your child’s DOE information, it will estimate your child’s chances of receiving an offer by positioning your child on a colored bar that has a gradient ranging from green (great chance) to yellow (ok chance) to red (low chance). Searching by program (NYC-SIFT: Search for NYC High Schools) will then display this bar for every valid program. Sorting by “Admissions Method” will allow you to order programs by offer likelihood.
Pros: Full cutoff estimates and offer predictions for 207 programs.
Cons: Has some accuracy issues for less popular programs.
Conclusion
You can use one, all, or none of the above to help you build and order your child’s list. The most recent admissions cycle found that city-wide (70,807 applicants), 77% matched their top 3 choices, 87% matched their top 5, and 94% matched their top 10. That was all accomplished with less than what everyone here is working with. Good luck!
Note: I added a new tool that combines the estimator, prediction model, and filters called the NYC-SIFT Advisor. It will suggest a list of programs based on your child’s preferences. If you feel overwhelmed by your child’s random number, group, and how it all fits together with finding a list of suitable programs, please try it out here: NYC-SIFT: Search for NYC High Schools .
