<p>I saw this idea mentioned on another thread and thought it was quite clever. To all the previous Swarthmore applicants--what was your safety? Swat has slowly, gradually become my top choice and I am thinking about ED. My only "real" safety at the moment is Knox, which I'm not sure my parents will pay for; also Rochester as a high safety and maaaaybe Bryn Mawr. But it occurs to me that none of these schools, other than Bryn Mawr--and I'm not enamoured of the women's college thing--really resemble Swarthmore.</p>
<p>So, current Swatties and estwhile prospectives, what was your safe backup to Swat?</p>
<p>Even though I was accepted ED to Swarthmore, my safeties would have been Colby College in Maine and Goucher College in Maryland, among a few others. These might be good schools for you to look at as safeties because they are small LACs like Swat. Goucher also requires all of it’s students to study abroad so if that is something you are interested in (and I am) I would definitely check that out.</p>
<p>My safeties were the University of Washington honors program and Grinnell. Matches (which are more like safeties, I think, considering that I got in to all my “matches”) were Carleton, Macalester, and Reed. I applied to U Chicago and Wash. Univ. in St. Louis (which I never really wanted to attend) as reaches. I got into all my schools except Washington Univ. Some schools I considered applying to but I didn’t: Allegheny, Pitzer, Columbia, Tufts, Whitman, Willamette, Pepperdine, Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Carnegie Mellon, Amherst, Williams, Beloit, Knox, Kenyon, Trinity College, Haverford, Earlham, College of William and Mary, Vanderbilt, Bates, Colby, Bowdoin, Johns Hopkins, Brandeis, and the Univ. of Rochester. I would have thought about Claremont McKenna, Pitzer, Pomona, Harvey Mudd, Rice University, and Trinity University if I didn’t hate hot weather.</p>
<p>I mean the list will obviously vary from person to person. For me, my advisor said Colby was a safety but again every person is different and your college advisor will probably know what each college is looking for in its applicants in a given year.</p>
<p>But I agree that neither Wesleyan nor Haverford are safeties for anyone. Duhvinci likes to say things like that to get a rise out of people…</p>
<p>I was accepted to Swarthmore and my safety schools were Lafayette and Binghamton but I got rejected from JHU, even though Swarthmore and Hopkins are similar in terms of difficulty of getting accepted so nothing is a guarantee. But then again, I considered Swarthmore and Amherst to be reach schools, even though I got into both with early writes of acceptance for regular decision. My friend also got accepted with an early write regular decision to Swarthmore but was rejected from Colgate and Haverford and she considered Colgate as almost her safety.</p>
<p>When I applied to Swarthmore I was ED, so it wasn’t an issue, but I thought of Wesleyan/Middlebury/Williams as my second-tier schools, and Haverford/Hamilton/Trinity (Hartford) were safeties of sorts. </p>
<p>That said, conditions change for different people. The Williams dean of admissions basically seemed to tell me I was an auto-admit (I’m a legacy, so had a strange conversation with him) which made their application process a lot less intimidating than any other school with a similar reputation.</p>
<p>In looking for schools that felt similar to Swat, my son applied to Brandeis and Bard as match/safeties. He didn’t get into Swat but is very happy at Wesleyan.</p>
<p>My advice if interested in Swat and similarly small high-ranking schools is to apply to a lot of them. Each one takes such a tiny number of new students that you could be well qualified for every one and still be rejected (or, more likely, waitlisted) by many. More applications will increase your odds. </p>
<p>I suspect you’re going to do very well and I think your back-ups of Knox, Rochester and BrynM are right on track.</p>
<p>I got into Swarthmore as a transfer, and my safety was Bard. From what I understand they have similar academic philosophies. It was a safer bet for me though, because I went to Simon’s Rock, which is affiliated with Bard.</p>
<p>Bard is a very good choice though I don’t consider it a safety in admissions stats. What make it a safety is that it has EA which can then allow you to apply to more selective schools along with Swarthmore as other choices once you are in Bard. Actually I know several kids who ended up at Bard because they preferred it once all of the chips were in and they had their choices.</p>
<p>Look at a number of LACs such as Wheaton, Bennington, Sarah Lawrence, Lawrence that have selectivities of more than 50%. Also some of the smaller state schools and Catholic schools. I don’t consider Wesleyan or a number of other choices listed as safeties. They would be good additional choices along with Swarthmore, but I would not categorize them as safeties.</p>
<p>It’s really interesting to see the range of schools noted as “similar” to Swarthmore–from Colby to Bard is a pretty broad range of “vibe.”</p>
<p>Just because they’re what Swarthmore applicants counted as safety schools doesn’t mean that they’re similar. Grinnell is very different from Swarthmore. I think that these are mostly liberal arts colleges where intellect is important somewhat.</p>
<p>Well, my theory was that Swarthmore applicants would prefer schools similar to Swat but (significantly) less selective, as safeties. And actually, you can sort of see an “NE prep”/“quirky” divide. Swat sort of sits in the middle, with an intellectual intensity matched only by Reed and UChicago.</p>
<p>I’m not saying I was <em>correct</em> to think that. I never had to apply to any of these schools, so I never had to show that they were safeties. With any reasonably highly ranked school, admittance is a bit of a crapshoot.</p>
<p>^ Well, that was kind of the point of my thread. I’m not looking for a “reasonably highly ranked school [where] admittance is a bit of a crapshoot”–that wouldn’t be a safety. What less-selective schools–let’s say accepting >40% of applicants, which is generous–are similar to Swarthmore?</p>