Reach / Target / Likely Assignment Sheet

Reach, target, and likely are planning labels, not personal admission probabilities. Assign the label after you document the admission unit, current official evidence, affordability, and unresolved risk. The method is in Reach, Target, and Safety: Build a Balanced College List.

Start with the actual admission unit

Complete this sentence before comparing any numbers:

I am applying as a [applicant type] to [campus/university], for [college/major/program/pathway], in the [cycle].

College / program record

Copy this record once for each college or program. Fill the working label last.

How to use the labels

• Reach: admission remains highly uncertain for this applicant at the level that actually makes the decision.
• Target: current evidence suggests the student is plausibly competitive, but admission still carries meaningful uncertainty.
• Likely: current evidence supports a clearly less uncertain admission outcome, with no hidden program, affordability, or pathway constraint left unchecked.

No category is a guarantee. If the intended major has separate selection rules or the relevant data are not published, record the uncertainty instead of inventing a probability.

List-level check

• We have multiple usable options that are meaningfully less uncertain than our reaches
• Those options are affordable enough to use
• The student would actually attend them
• We separated university admission from access to the intended major
• The list still works if every highly uncertain application is denied

First names live on the starter worksheet. For help, work with an Ivy Ready expert.

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