Unlike current Fordham College at Lincoln Center (FCLC) students, prospective college students are able to view their odds at getting into the schools of their choice with the aid of newly released media outlets.

Social media giant Facebook recently launched “Admission Splash,” an application that allows its users to search a database of approximately 1,500 colleges and input their personal information pertinent to the college application process. Such information includes age, gender, anticipated major and grade point average. The application then compares all the user’s information to the selected school’s standards to determine the odds that that person has of being accepted to that particular school.

Another online admission aid is “College Confidential,” a website that allows you to search a large database of colleges and instantly displays information about said colleges’ standards. While it doesn’t make the same type of prediction the Admission Splash Facebook application does, it does categorize the factors students must adhere to if they wish to be admitted to the colleges they desire.

“I would’ve liked to have had these applications back when I was applying for college just to have an idea of  what schools I could get into,” Katherine Muniz, FCLC ’12, said.

Mary Kate Polanin, Fordham College at Rose Hill (FCRH) ’11, said, “I can understand how an application like this could be useful if you can’t afford flying across the country to visit Fordham or any college for a student tour.  But a little part of me remembers when I toured around the Fordham campus, I got the feel of the school, so when you don’t tour around campuses you lose that intuition at knowing the right one.”

Although many would consider technological tools like Admission Splash and College Confidential to be helpful alternatives to blindly applying to schools they may or may not be accepted to, the accuracy of these tools has yet to be officially documented by most colleges, including Fordham.

“I don’t think these particular tools are adding any value to students’ knowledge that they couldn’t normally assess from the information that colleges typically publish about themselves,” Peter Farrell, FCLC dean of admissions, said. “What these tools cannot begin to predict or understand is how subtleties in the admission process factor into the final decision-making… The 3.5 GPA you earned at your high school [based on the courses you chose to take], is going to be very different from the 3.5 GPA another student at another high school earned.”

Margaret Schwartz, assistant professor of communication and media studies, commented on the accuracy of these programs. “When students use these programs they’re getting feedback that isn’t necessarily accurate because they don’t take into consideration factors like being physically interviewed by a college,” she said.

Erin Murray, FCLC ’12, said, “I don’t know if you could trust these applications to give you an accurate answer at your chances because I think there is a lot more to applying to colleges than what the applications consider.”

According to CNN, approximately 85 percent of students who were predicted to be accepted to UCLA by Admission Splash were actually accepted.

College Confidential also offers the same type of statistical information for graduate schools as well as undergraduate.

“I’m not planning on going to grad school but even if I was, I wouldn’t use these applications because I don’t even have a Facebook account,” Murray said.