What exactly does it mean when USMA ranks your profile as "competive"

[cmccollum4693]

How good of a ranking is it? And are most people considered competitive?

 

[marciemi]

The MALO system classifies candidates into three areas - competitive, risk, and screened. This is assuming they have enough data to classify - until then, they'll show as undetermined. From what I can tell, for the most part, it's based on your academic standing (primarily class rank and ACT/SAT scores). Just to give you a vague idea - if you have a 20 ACT, you're probably going to show as screened (meaning not rejected, but not considered a very viable candidate at that point, but could change if you improved your scores significantly). If you had a 24 or so, you'd probably show as risk (again, other things taken into consideration as well). With say a 30, you'd definitely be competitive. The line between the three numbers obviously is very blurred since it's not the only factor, but I can pretty much look at an ACT score and guess what they'll come up as! (We use ACT around here so I'm much more conversant in that than SAT).

As far as numbers, they tend to break down fairly evenly - you have a similar number of people in any of the 3 categories (usually far more in the undetermined category - especially this early in the process). For the most part again though - this seems to be only based on Academics. Athletics, activities, CFA, and medical all show up somewhere else on the system and could help a risk candidate get accepted or prevent a competitive one from getting in.

 

[Szpieg]

where would this be on your profile?

just reread your post marciemi got a 28 composite for my first ACT (24/31/31/25)