That’s Long Overdue

Decision Day

How the game works, and where its numbers come from.

Updated 28 September 2026

What it is

You tell the Committee about yourself: a first name, your GPA, test scores if you have them, your AP classes, your home state, the kind of high school you attend, a major, and three traits that describe you. Then you choose up to ten colleges from a list of 200 and apply, early where the college offers it. You can visit up to three campuses. Then the letters arrive, and you open them one at a time.

Each decision is drawn at your odds for that college, so the same application can go either way. After the letters, every result comes with the Reader’s Notes: a worksheet that shows what helped, what hurt, your odds against the average applicant’s, and how the college says it weighs each part of an application.

Not affiliated with any college

Decision Day is made by That’s Long Overdue. No college or university is involved in it, has endorsed it, or has reviewed what it says.

• College names and colors are used only to identify the colleges, the way a guidebook uses them.
• The game never uses a college’s logo, seal, mascot, wordmark or letterhead. The travel posters and pen-and-ink drawings of real campus landmarks are made for the game, and the pennants are our own design.
• Every letter is marked Simulated, says at its foot that the college did not issue it, and is signed “The Admissions Committee”, never by a real person.
• Nothing in the game is an offer of admission, a scholarship or financial aid.

College and university names are trademarks of their owners, used here only to identify them. SAT and AP are trademarks registered by the College Board, and ACT is a registered trademark of ACT Education Corp. Neither is affiliated with Decision Day.

Where the numbers come from

Everything the game knows about a college comes from public sources, and every figure is recorded with the address of the page it came from.

The Common Data Set

Most U.S. colleges answer the same standard questionnaire every year, the Common Data Set, and publish it, usually through their office of institutional research. It is the game’s main source. Where a college hasn’t published the 2025–26 edition, the game uses its newest public one. The two colleges on the list that publish none are covered by federal figures and their own pages. The game reads these sections:

C1	Applicants, admits and enrollment, overall and by residency: the admit rate
C2	The waitlist: how many were offered a place, and how many were admitted from it
C7	How the college rates 18 factors, from grades and course rigor to essays, character, where you live and your interest in the college
C9	The middle 50% of SAT and ACT scores, and the share of students who sent them
C11, C12	The high school GPAs of the entering class
C21, C22	Early decision and early action, with their admit rates
H2A	Merit scholarships: how many first-year students receive one, and the average award

The colleges’ own websites

• Admissions pages: the testing policy for students applying now, which often differs from the Common Data Set; the admission rounds; interviews; and in-state and out-of-state admit rates at public universities.
• College and department pages: how a first-year student gets into each of the game’s 18 majors, including majors with their own admission and their own admit rates.
• Honors and scholarship pages: named scholarships and honors programs, who is eligible, and what they pay.
• Cost of attendance pages: tuition, fees, housing and other costs, which price awards such as half tuition.
• “What we look for” pages: what the college says it values, in its own words.

Federal data

• The College Scorecard, from the U.S. Department of Education: each college’s official name and location, its place on the map, whether it is public or private, and any religious affiliation. Also cost figures, where a college’s own page couldn’t be found.
• IPEDS, from the National Center for Education Statistics, through the Urban Institute’s Education Data Portal: how many first-year students each college enrolled from each state in fall 2024. It shows which states a college draws from, and which it rarely sees.
• The U.S. Census Bureau: the state and county boundaries behind the campus map and Use my location, and how much of each county is urban.

How a college is researched

One college at a time, from the same brief:

1. Read the college’s newest Common Data Set and its own pages, and record every number with its source. A number that can’t be found or verified is left blank, and the gap is written down. Nothing is guessed.
2. Check the admit rate against the college’s own reports, the testing policy against its admissions site, and the hard-to-enter majors against how it actually admits.
3. Record every judgment call separately, with the reason. A college’s favorite traits come only from its own “what we look for” wording, never from its reputation.
4. Build the college’s profile from the research with a script, so it can be rebuilt and corrected at any time.

Programs awarded on family income, first-generation status or background are left out, because the game doesn’t ask about them.

How the odds work

The game doesn’t hand everyone the admit rate. A college that admits 5% of its applicants doesn’t give each of them a 1‑in‑20 chance: some are far likelier to be admitted than others, and many have almost none.

• It starts from the admit rate for applicants like you. At a public university, that’s its in-state or out-of-state rate. At a private college, it’s the rate for applicants from the U.S., without international applicants, where the Common Data Set splits them out.
• Then it compares your record with the college’s entering class: your GPA against its students’ GPAs, your SAT or ACT against its middle 50%, and your AP classes against what a college that selective expects. Each counts as much as the college says it does in its Common Data Set.
• The more selective the college, the more your record matters. Where most applicants are admitted, a strong record changes little. Where very few are, an applicant in the middle of the admitted class has two to three times the average applicant’s odds, and one far below it has almost none.
• The rest of the application moves the odds a little:
  • your three traits, weighed by how much the college rates essays, recommendations, activities and character, and more where its own words favor them;
  • where you live, where the college considers geography: a small edge from a state it rarely sees or from a rural county, and a smaller cost from a state it sees often;
  • your major, where students are admitted straight into it and it is harder or easier to get into;
  • applying early, from the college’s own early admit rates. Only part of the gap counts, because recruited athletes and other hooked applicants crowd the early rounds, and no one in the game has those hooks;
  • a campus visit, where the college counts an applicant’s interest;
  • a religious high school, at religious colleges that weigh religious affiliation;
  • holding back your test scores, which reads as a score just under the college’s 25th percentile, since students who don’t send scores are admitted at about half the rate of those who do. Test-blind colleges never see scores.
• Nothing is certain. The odds never go above 98%.
• The decision is a roll at those odds. An applicant who isn’t admitted may be waitlisted, about as often as the college’s own waitlist numbers suggest.

The curves were checked against outcomes that colleges and researchers have published, such as admit rates by SAT score and by GPA.

Scholarships

The scholarships and honors programs in the letters are real programs at those colleges, taken from their own pages. The game decides who is selected from each program’s published rules (GPA and test cutoffs, residency, major) and from the strength of the application. Amounts are the college’s published figures, and an award of a share of tuition is priced from its cost of attendance. Where a college publishes only a range, the amount is drawn from it. Where it publishes no amount, the game estimates one around the college’s average merit award. Treat every amount as an illustration, not an offer.

The letters

The letters are written for the game. They follow the way real decision letters are built, a short fixed form whose variation lives at the edges, and each college keeps one voice, drawn from its own public pages: whether it names the entering class by its year, its word for the entering term, the cheer on its admitted-students pages. They never copy a college’s real letter. Where a letter cites numbers, such as how many students applied, they are the college’s own figures, and only colleges that admit fewer than 40% of applicants cite them.

What it leaves out

• Real admissions offices read your essays, recommendations and activities. The game stands in for all of that with three traits.
• It doesn’t ask about family income, first-generation status, legacy status or athletic recruiting, which count at many colleges.
• It doesn’t ask for class rank, so it misses guarantees built on it, such as automatic admission to the University of Texas at Austin for Texas students near the top of their class.
• Where a college doesn’t publish something the game uses, such as its students’ GPAs, the size of its waitlist or its admit rate by residency, the game uses the college’s overall figures, or typical ones for a college that selective.
• Admit rates change every year, and the newest published figures are a year or two old by the time students apply.

The odds are estimates, not predictions. Before you apply anywhere, read the college’s own admissions website and talk to your school counselor.

Corrections

If something about a college is wrong, email admin@thatslongoverdue.com with the college, what’s wrong, and where you found the right figure. We check it against the source and fix it.

Privacy

Decision Day has no accounts and no ads. It counts which parts of the game get played, never your name, grades or scores, and you can switch that off in its settings. The details are in the privacy policy.

Thats Long Overdue LLC · Seattle, Washington