Where do you actually stand?
Enter your GPA and test score once. Every college you add sorts into reaches, targets and likelies, using the admit rates and score ranges colleges report to the federal government.
No account, no email, nothing sent anywhere: your numbers stay in this browser. You get no percentage, because nobody can honestly give you one. You get the three piles, the real numbers behind each, and an honest note about what grades and scores cannot tell you.
How this works
Every college reports its admit rate and the SAT and ACT range of its enrolled students to the US Department of Education. Those figures, from the College Scorecard release of 2026-09-17, are what this compares your numbers against, for 265 colleges.
A reach is a college where your numbers sit below what they usually admit, or where they admit so few people that no profile is safe. A target is one where you are inside the range and the application itself decides. A likely is one where your numbers clear their bar comfortably.
No college admitting fewer than one in five applicants is ever called likely here, however good your numbers are. That is the honest reading, and calling such a school likely is the reason students end up applying nowhere they are confident about.
Some colleges do not look at test scores at all. On those, the score box disappears and your grades and course load carry the answer.
Starting with no list at all? The same federal numbers run the other way on find colleges by GPA and SAT, which sorts every four-year US college into the three piles from your numbers alone.
Grades and scores are what get an application read. They are not what decides it. Essays, recommendations, your intended major and a dozen things no calculator can see decide the rest, and at the most selective colleges they decide almost all of it.
Questions about chancing
- What counts as a reach, a target and a likely?
- A reach is a college where your grades and test scores sit below what it usually admits, or where it admits so few applicants that no profile is safe. A target is one where your numbers sit inside its admitted range, so the application itself decides. A likely is one where your numbers clear its bar comfortably. No college admitting fewer than one in five applicants is ever called likely here, however strong your numbers are.
- Are chance-me calculators accurate?
- Any tool that gives you a single percentage is guessing. Colleges do not publish the model behind their decisions, and grades and scores are only the part of an application that gets it read. What can be done honestly is comparing your numbers against the admit rate and score range each college reports to the federal government, and telling you which pile a college falls into. That is what this does, and it is why it gives you no percentage.
- Do I need an account, and where do my grades go?
- No account, no email, and nothing is sent anywhere. Your GPA and test scores are stored in your own browser and are used only to render the page you are looking at. They never reach a server, so there is nothing to delete and nothing to leak.
- Where does the admissions data come from?
- Every figure comes from the US Department of Education's College Scorecard, the public release of what colleges report about their own admissions: the share of applicants they admit and the SAT and ACT ranges of the students who enrolled. This site uses the release of 2026-09-17, covering 265 colleges.
- What about test-optional and test-blind colleges?
- Some colleges do not consider test scores at all. On those the score box disappears and your grades and course load carry the answer. At test-optional colleges a score in or above the published range still helps and a score below it is usually better left off, which is a judgement no calculator should make for you.
- How many colleges should be on my list?
- The shape matters more than the number. A list of nine reaches is the classic senior-year mistake and it is invisible one college at a time, which is what this page exists to show you. Most counselors want to see a handful in each pile, with at least two likelies you would genuinely be glad to attend.