Every admissions figure InGenius Prep publishes comes from one admissions year, counts only written offers of admission, and covers every enrolled senior in that year rather than a selected subset. Our published rates have been checked by Armanino LLP, a top 25 US accounting firm, under an agreed-upon procedures engagement. This page defines each term behind those numbers.
Most firms in this category publish an acceptance rate and stop there. A percentage with nothing underneath it is not a result, it is a headline. This page is the arithmetic: which students we count, what we count as an offer, how each rate is calculated, who checked it, and what the numbers cannot tell you.
Which students are counted
Every senior we worked with that year, not a selected group.
If you want the numbers themselves, they live on our results page. If you want to apply the same questions to every firm you are considering, we wrote a guide to reading any firm's results.
Our rates cover the 500+ seniors we worked with that year who submitted college applications. Not the students who finished a full program. Not the students whose results we liked best. Every one of them.
That distinction matters more than it sounds. A firm can quote a rate for students who "completed the full engagement," which quietly removes anyone who left early or whose year went badly. We do not filter the group before we count it.
No. We do not require a minimum GPA or test score to work with us, and we do not turn away students because their profile would drag a percentage down.
This is the part of a results claim that families almost never think to ask about. A firm that only accepts students who already hold a 1550 and a near-perfect transcript will publish excellent outcomes without having changed a single one of them. Selecting for students who were already going to be admitted is not a result. It is a filter.
We would rather our numbers be honest than flattering. Some of our students arrive already competitive. Many do not. All of them are in the figures on this page.
What counts as an offer
An offer is a written offer of admission from the university to the student. An offer a student turned down still counts, since the decision we are measuring was the university's.
"Top 30" means the 30 universities on the U.S. News & World Report National Universities ranking. For the year on our results page, that list is:
Princeton, MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Yale, University of Chicago, Duke, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern, University of Pennsylvania, Caltech, Cornell, Brown, Dartmouth, Columbia, UC Berkeley, Rice, UCLA, Vanderbilt, Carnegie Mellon, University of Michigan, Notre Dame, Washington University in St. Louis, Emory, Georgetown, UNC Chapel Hill, University of Virginia, USC, UC San Diego, and UT Austin.
We publish the list rather than the label because the label is where most of the inflation happens. A firm that never defines "top school" can move the boundary to fit the result.
How each rate is calculated
Every figure covers a single admissions year, named on our results page. We do not blend cycles. A multi-year average can carry one exceptional year and hide several ordinary ones, and by the time a family reads it, it no longer describes the team they would actually work with.
Who checked these numbers
Our published acceptance rates have been checked by Armanino LLP, one of the top 25 accounting firms in the United States, under an agreed-upon procedures engagement. Armanino recalculated the rates from our own contract data and compared them against the rates we publish.
An agreed-upon procedures engagement is not an audit, and we would rather say so than call it something it is not. Armanino carries out a set of procedures agreed in advance and reports what it found. It does not express an opinion or a conclusion on our results the way an audit would. What it does establish is that someone outside this firm recalculated the numbers and compared them with what we advertise.
Our most recent engagement covers the Class of 2028.
Outside checking of any kind is rare in this industry. No regulator, association, or accrediting body reviews what an admissions consulting firm publishes about itself, which means almost every number a family reads has been checked by nobody but the firm that benefits from it.
How long we work with students
On average, three years.
This belongs on a methodology page because time is part of what the numbers measure. Most firms in this category meet a student in 12th grade and help with essays and submissions. That work has value, but by senior fall the transcript, the activities, and the academic direction are already set. A firm that arrives in the final months is editing a candidacy that someone else built.
When you read our rates, you are reading outcomes for students we worked with across several years of academic planning, research, writing, and self-presentation. That is a different claim from the same percentage attached to four months of application help, and the two should not be compared as though they were the same thing.
Applying from 40+ countries
Our students apply from more than 40 countries, and a substantial share apply to US universities from outside the United States.
International applicants face materially lower admit rates at top US universities than domestic applicants do. A firm that works mostly with domestic students and a firm that works mostly with international students can publish the same headline number while doing very different work to get there. Ours includes both, reported together in a single figure rather than split out.
What these numbers do not tell you
What a percentage leaves out.
A percentage cannot tell you whether a student grew. It cannot tell you which student arrived as a long shot and left with an offer, or what the work looked like in between.
That is why we publish case studies alongside the rates: where a specific student started, what our team did over which years, and where that student was admitted. A before-and-after account is harder to write than a percentage, because it commits us to specifics you can check.
Two more things, and we would rather say them here than let you find out later
No firm can. Any firm that implies otherwise is describing something it does not control.
A grid of university crests tells you that someone, somewhere, was admitted. It does not tell you how many students earned those offers, or what the firm had to do with it. We use both in our marketing, and you should read ours the same skeptical way you read anyone else's.
What to ask any firm, including us
Five questions that separate a result from a headline.
Has the number been checked by anyone outside the firm, and what kind of check was it?
How many students does it cover, and over how many years?
Does the firm accept a range of academic profiles, or only students who were already competitive?
When did the firm's work with those admitted students begin?
Can you see case studies with real before-and-after detail?
If a firm cannot answer all five, the number it is showing you is advertising. Ask us the same five. The answers are on this page.
Work With InGenius Prep
Every student we work with is paired 2-on-1 with a Former Admissions Officer, who brings the perspective of the committee room, and a Graduate Coach, who recently came through the process. Behind them sits the world's largest team, 160+ counselors who once decided admissions at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, MIT, and every Ivy.
To talk through what that would look like for your student, schedule a complimentary consultation.
Frequently asked questions
Yes. Armanino LLP, one of the top 25 accounting firms in the United States, recalculated our published rates from our own contract data under an agreed-upon procedures engagement. That is not an audit, and Armanino expresses no opinion on the result, but it does mean someone outside this firm checked the arithmetic. Almost nothing in admissions consulting is checked by an outside party at all.
The 500+ seniors we worked with in the named admissions year, rather than a selected group.
No. We set no minimum GPA or test score for enrollment, and every enrolled senior appears in the figures we publish.
No, and no firm can. What we can describe is how our figures are defined, who checked them, and how long we work with the students behind them.
It is the share of counted students who received at least one offer from a school on our published Top 30 list. A student with several Top 30 offers counts once, so the figure describes students admitted, not applications accepted.