Every spring, seniors across the nation wait anxiously for the moment they learn which college they will attend for the next four years of their lives — and when the time comes, college portals crash, cursors hover hesitantly over the “status update” button and finally, the decision appears. Whether it’s showering confetti or the dreaded, “We regret to inform you…” behind the button, the stressful, anxiety-inducing wait is often overwhelming as students anticipate their decision.
To deal with many of these emotions, especially anticipation, student applicants might turn to portal astrology to find out their admissions status earlier. Portal astrology is an unofficial term invented by various students on platforms such as Reddit and College Confidential to describe the act of “scrutinizing” or “investigating” university applications or student portals to observe slight changes between admissions pages to predict a student’s acceptance or rejection before the official admissions decision date. These changes range from the ability to view a student ID to the presence or disappearance of a banner on an admissions page, and are often unreliable.
Senior Mahathi Rajkumar utilized Reddit to meet students with similar grades and extracurriculars to hers, in order to compare portal astrology results. While she has only tried a few college portal astrology tips that involve logging into official, public student portals, such as financial aid or student account portals, she emphasizes the confusion and uncertainty that portal astrology still comes with.
“A lot of my interactions and exposure to portal astrology is passive,” Rajkumar said. “You hear people talking about it, and then you go and check Reddit about how to do it. I’ve also talked to a lot of people online to see what their results have been, such as comparing GPAs or extracurriculars for our applications to verify whether or not the signs we were seeing are actually legitimate.”
Additionally, Rajkumar emphasizes that, because of the lack of official results or correlation, there will always be some variation between different college portals. She mentions how communities online, such as the ApplyingToCollege thread on Reddit, often create forms for applicants to fill in their GPA or extracurricular ratings, and use the data to make histograms to see if there is actually a correlation between their ability to log in to a page, the strength of the applicant and their admissions decision.
According to MVHS ‘23 alum and UC Berkeley junior Anusha Sainarayanan, portal astrology has become increasingly prevalent with the expansion of social media. She cites that she would occasionally come across videos or articles featuring various ways students are experimenting with college portals to find a pattern and correlation with their admissions status. However, when Sainarayanan was applying for colleges, she never thought about trying portal astrology, as she did not want to know her results beforehand, with the exception of one school that she tried one for fun during school on the date of the school’s decision release.
“Obviously, it was hard when I applied to college, but it’s definitely getting harder and harder in recent years, because people care more and more about which schools they get into,” Sainarayanan said. “Many people might find their happiness or worth through acceptances into these schools — especially because of all the hard work they’ve done — but at the same time, there are certain things you can’t control, and because of that, you should just try your best, and just leave it.”
Although MVHS College and Career Counselor Rogelio Calderon has no personal experience with portal astrology in college admissions, he has still heard students talk about it in his classroom during breaks. Calderon believes students turn to portal astrology because of the overwhelming buildup of anticipation leading up to college admission decision dates.
“There was one time where I asked the students who were talking about trying portal astrology, ‘Why were they focusing on these things?’” Calderon said. “A decision is a decision, and for some students, trying portal astrology might not necessarily be helping the students at all, and instead, it induces a little bit more stress added to their plate by paying attention to those details.”
In Rajkumar’s experience, though some of the schools she applied to showed a negative sign when she tried logging in, which she assumed meant she had been rejected, her actual decision — a waitlist — still came as a surprise. However, she does not regret trying portal astrology.
“I thought that it was kind of nice to have a little preview,” Rajkumar said. “If you’re somebody who doesn’t deal with rejection well, portal astrology gives you more time to cope with the decision, because sometimes a rejection might be really painful to process. However, when you really get into portal astrology, it could lead to you overthinking or being chronically online, like how I would check Reddit almost every day to see if somebody else had discovered something new, or to see if there were different results.”
Calderon acknowledges that some students will still choose to invest their time on the internet after college applications, but cautions them to ensure they are taking care of their mental health. He also notes that it’s important for students to focus on other aspects of their application journey as well, such as investing time with family and friends, or exploring new opportunities, rather than fully focusing on unofficial research and sources on patterns between portals and admissions decisions.
“When you decide to try these things, such as portal astrology tips for college admissions, you usually have to think, ‘To what extent is doing all this worthwhile?’, and if you feel content at the end of the day doing this,” Calderon said. “When you hear the truth about something, finally, after you’ve done so much investigation, does it actually make a difference in a student’s life? And if the answer is yes, then, by all means, go for it. But if it doesn’t make that big of a difference, then I think that’s where it’s worth thinking about, ‘What’s the point of looking at it this way?’”
Although she did not initially intend to try portal astrology, Sainarayanan ultimately says she does not regret the one time that she did. As she videotaped herself opening all of her admissions results, she says her uncertainty about the portal astrology’s legitimacy still allowed her to experience her full, raw reactions. However, she also feels that people should wait to open decisions on their intended date.
“I’m a firm believer of the idea that if you work hard, then you’re going to go where you’re meant to go, especially because you can only work so hard,” Sainarayanan said. “I feel like part of that feeling of college decisions is from opening the actual letter on the day of the decision, and it doesn’t make sense for colleges to tell you, ‘Oh, a decision is going to be available on the 22nd,’ and you going on the third of that month and finding out beforehand. There’s a beauty in getting the decision, and then you start following all the social media pages, and they’re all posting, ‘Welcome incoming students,’ and ultimately, you get to experience what it’s like to open your decision with millions of other people.”
