Who runs this
Aanya runs Honest Odds.
She is going through the college process herself, which is the whole reason this exists.
I am going through this myself, and most of the advice I found was either trying to sell me something or trying to make me feel better. Neither told me what my actual chances were. I wanted the version that just says it.
This is a family project, and it is worth being exact about who does what. Her father is a software engineer and wrote the code. She runs the business: what it says, who it is for, which families get a fee waiver, and every reply you get when you write in.
What that means day to day
- Answers every family who writes in — usually the same day
- Decides which colleges get added to the dataset next, based on what families ask for
- Wrote the fee-waiver rule and reads every request herself
- Decides what the site says and what it refuses to claim
The advice here is blunt because the alternative is worse. Being told your reach school is a reach, early, is more useful than being told it is possible and finding out in March.