New Facebook app predicts admission chances

Worrying about applying to college and graduate school may be a thing of the past. Because now, there’s an app for that.

AdmissionSplash is a new Facebook application that predicts the probability of a student’s acceptance, with accuracy as high as 90 percent for certain schools.

Co-founder Allen Gannett compared the application to Farmville — the difference, he said, is that it’s useful. Instead of “making cows,” AdmissionSplash allows high-school students to make very important decisions about their futures, he said.

Gannett also said a graduate-school version will be launched in the future.

AdmissionSplash can boast such high accuracy because it is based on information released by the colleges themselves. “We took data of students who had been admitted to the schools previously and worked backwards from that” to create the formula, Gannett said.

According to Dean of Admissions Eric Furda, a formula for admissions isn’t something that even Penn has. “I’m a dean of admissions and I can’t tell you who’s going to be admitted five weeks from now,” Furda said.

College freshman Devin Chavira, who tried the application, found that AdmissionsSplash accurately told her she could be accepted into Penn. But even though it was able to correctly predict what had already happened, Chavira said she would probably not use the graduate school feature in the future. If the application had been available when she was applying to college, Chavira said she probably would not have found it helpful.

“I don’t think that it would have affected my opinion,” she said, adding that the admission process should be something more complex than a formula.

Although Gannett declined to describe the exact formula — which he said was “sort of like [our] secret sauce” recipe — AdmissionSplash takes into account both qualitative and quantitative information. Users are asked to provide SAT scores, GPAs and education information, while also answering more open-ended questions that relate to extracurricular activities such as sports.

Like any Facebook application, AdmissionSplash also provides the opportunity to publicize results. Although Gannett had believed the information released would be too personal for profile-posting, he said that some users do take advantage of the sharing option to compare results with friends.

Broti Gupta, a junior at the Seven Hills School in Cincinnati, refused to publish her results. And it wasn’t because she didn’t like them. As she explained, if she didn’t like what AdmissionSplash told her, she “would just hit the back button and then lie about all [her] grades.”

For Gupta, acceptance information — even predicted results — should remain private. “I feel like it would be really awkward and uncomfortable and most people would just try to ignore that it’s there,” she said. College applications are a serious matter for Gupta, and a source of stress.

Gannett is hopeful that the application can help reduce the “really overwhelming and stressful,” aspects of the college application process. AdmissionSplash is designed to allow students to gauge their standings and also start thinking about college instead of cows.

Although the application was only released to Facebook Feb. 8, it already has around 3,500 users. Gannett is hopeful that AdmissionSplash will provide an “additional data point” that will help high-school students find their right college.

Furda believes that the application might be “helpful for applicants in the extremes.” AdmissionSplash provides a new way of approaching the application process — which could be a good thing, he added.

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