Glossary
Admissions terms, in plain language
The vocabulary of selective admissions — defined clearly, without jargon-inside-the-jargon. 34 terms families actually run into.
- Acceptance rate
- The share of applicants a college admits in a given year. A 10% acceptance rate means it admits about 1 in 10 applicants.
- ACT 25th-75th percentile
- The middle range of ACT scores for admitted students: a quarter scored below the low number and a quarter scored above the high number.
- Attribute importance
- How much weight one factor (such as cost, location, or size) carries in your decisions compared to all the other factors.
- Calibration
- A check that makes the percentages mean what they say — so that across many students, things we call 70% likely really do happen about 70% of the time.
- Common Data Set (CDS)
- A standardized report most colleges publish each year with admissions, test-score, and financial-aid figures, making schools easier to compare.
- Conjoint analysis
- A research method that figures out what you really value by watching the trade-offs you make between whole options, instead of just asking you to rate features one by one.
- Cost of attendance
- The full estimated yearly cost of a college: tuition, fees, housing, food, books, and other expenses, before any financial aid.
- CSS Profile
- An additional, more detailed financial aid form required by some (mostly private) colleges to award their own institutional grant money.
- Demonstrated interest
- Signs that you are genuinely interested in a college — visiting, opening emails, attending events — which some schools track and factor into decisions.
- Early action (EA)
- An early application that gets you an earlier answer but is not binding — you are free to compare offers and decide later.
- Early decision (ED)
- An early application that is binding — if you are admitted you must attend and withdraw your other applications. You can apply ED to only one school.
- Efficient frontier
- The set of college lists that give you the best balance of ambition and safety — the most upside for a given level of risk.
- Elite ranking
- A tier grouping that flags the most selective, highly sought-after colleges, so you can see where a school sits among the toughest admits.
- FAFSA
- The free federal form that determines your eligibility for government grants, loans, and work-study, and is used by most colleges to award aid.
- First-generation (first-gen)
- A student who would be the first in their immediate family to earn a four-year college degree. Many colleges consider this in context.
- Holistic admissions
- A review that weighs the whole applicant — grades, essays, activities, and context — rather than relying on test scores and GPA alone.
- Legacy
- An applicant whose parent (or sometimes other close relative) attended the college. Some schools give a small edge to legacy applicants.
- Merit aid
- Scholarship money awarded for achievements like grades, talents, or test scores — not based on your family's financial need.
- Monte Carlo simulation
- A way of running your college list through thousands of pretend admissions seasons to show the range of likely outcomes, rather than a single guess.
- Multinomial-logit model
- The standard statistical method behind conjoint analysis: from a series of either/or choices, it works out a score for each option's features so it can explain — and predict — which one you'd pick.
- Need-based aid
- Financial aid awarded based on your family's ability to pay, as measured by forms like the FAFSA, rather than on achievements.
- Net price
- What a family actually pays after grants and scholarships are subtracted from the sticker price — usually far less than the published cost.
- Part-worth
- A score showing how much a single feature — like a lower price or a bigger campus — adds to or subtracts from how appealing a college is to you.
- Priority Refiner
- Our guided tool that learns your real priorities from a few side-by-side comparisons and reorders your list to match them.
- Reach, target, safety
- A way to balance a college list: reaches are long shots, targets are solid matches, and safeties are very likely admits and affordable fallbacks.
- Regular decision
- The standard application timeline, with later deadlines and a non-binding decision usually delivered in the spring.
- Revealed preferences
- What your actual choices show you care about, which can differ from what you say you care about.
- Rolling admission
- Applications are reviewed as they arrive and decisions are sent out continuously, so applying earlier often helps while spots last.
- SAT 25th-75th percentile
- The middle range of SAT scores for admitted students: a quarter scored below the low number and a quarter scored above the high number.
- Stated preferences
- What you say matters to you when asked directly, as opposed to what your choices reveal.
- Test-blind
- A policy where the college will not look at SAT or ACT scores at all, even if you submit them.
- Test-optional
- A policy where you choose whether to submit SAT or ACT scores. If you don't, the rest of your application carries more weight.
- Trusted Odds
- Our label for probabilities that have been calibrated against real historical outcomes before we show them to you.
- Yield
- The share of admitted students who actually choose to enroll. Colleges watch it closely, which is why some weigh how interested you seem.