Questions students ask us

It's our estimate of how you compare with the people who typically get in there, expressed as a chance. It is not a prediction of a decision, and it isn't an average of anything. Read it the way you'd read a weather forecast: useful for planning, not a promise about Tuesday.

Because one published its numbers and the other didn't. We use the strongest evidence available for each university, in a fixed order: a real published acceptance rate first, then its world ranking as a proxy, then our own model. The label on the card always tells you which of those you're looking at, and estimates carry lower confidence on purpose. The methodology page sets out the full hierarchy.

Usually because ranking and selectivity aren't the same thing — a strong research university can admit a large share of applicants, and a smaller teaching-focused one can be far harder to get into. It can also be subject fit: if one of them actually teaches your field and the other doesn't, that moves the number.

No — those are separate things. Profile strength summarises your academics and activities on their own, with no university involved. Your chances are that profile measured against one specific university's selectivity. A strong profile can still be a reach at a school that admits four percent of applicants.

On each system's own terms. An IB 6 at Higher Level, an A Level B and an 85% on a CBSE board exam are not converted into a shared GPA and compared — they're assessed against what each actually signals, including whether you took a subject at the level your field expects. Maths at SL when you're applying for finance is a fit issue, and we'll say so.

Yes, deliberately. UK offers hinge largely on subject-specific grades and your stated course. Indian admission is mostly performance against a cutoff. US admission weighs a broader picture including activities. We weight those factors differently per country rather than applying one formula everywhere, because applying one formula everywhere would be wrong in five of them.

Then it was a bug, and it's fixed. A grade only counts against you in absolute terms — roughly an IB 4 or below, a C or below, or under about 60%. A 6 sitting next to a 7, or an A next to an A*, is an excellent result and will never be listed as a weakness. Subject-choice gaps that genuinely matter for your field are still raised, because those are about fit rather than performance.

No. Analyses are calculated from your profile as it stood, so adding a subject, a test score or an activity re-scores you. Adding real detail usually helps; removing it usually doesn't hurt so much as leave us with less to credit you for. If a number moves a long way from one small edit, we'd genuinely like to know — that's worth an email.

Try its short form — NUS, HKU, IIT, LSE all work, and so do partial names. If it still isn't there, it may not be in our catalogue yet; tell us and we'll look at adding it. Any university we do hold can be analysed on demand, whether or not it appears in your recommendations.

Around twenty, chosen to span the range from comfortable to genuine reach across every country you've selected — not the twenty most famous, and not twenty safe bets. You can analyse any other university yourself from Explore universities, and the result is saved so looking at it again is instant.

Your profile is stored against your account and used to produce your own analyses. Writing that assessment means sending the relevant academic and activity details to an AI provider, without your name or email attached. Nothing goes to universities, agents or advertisers, and nothing is sold. The full detail is on the terms and privacy page.

It's free. To have your account and everything attached to it deleted, email [email protected] from the address you signed up with — we do it by hand, as there's no self-serve button for it yet.