<p>"well, ok, I don't know what that has to do with what I said about Caltech. "</p>
<p>my mistake. i associated what was being said with hmc with your comment.</p>
<p>hehe I think you have an inflated sense of Caltech admits. But it's understandable, more common than you think. There are smart people and dumb people at every college.</p>
<p>Though I do agree that Caltech and HMC may have slightly more self selective applicant pools than MIT. And MIT in turn more self-selective than any of the Ivy Leagues, which in turn... you could go on, but what's the point? There's very little proof of any speculation of this sort.</p>
<p>p.s. I didn't know much about Harvey Mudd when I was applying (but I wasn't considering west coast schools anyways), it would have been a decent fit for me, probably- I think the reason people don't know about Harvey Mudd has less to do with the fact that they are not "in the know" than the fact that they don't "live on the west coast". Just sayin'. Your school should advertise better.</p>
<p>So, is that the way it is... "there are smart people and dumb people..." </p>
<p>I think there should be less focus on smart and dumb and more focus on there are 'in the know' and beyond 'the know'. You know?</p>
<p>
[quote]
You know?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>no? shoot, i'm not in it :(</p>
<p>I'm applying to MIT, Stanford, and Columbia (Fu) as reaches, Carnegie-Mellon (Comp Sci) as a reach/match, UChicago as a match and University of Washington as a safety, but I'm a little worried that it might be a good idea to apply to another safety in addition. What do you guys think? Will I be okay with just these?</p>
<p>In various places, I've seen online discussion of the MIT early round admissions results. Now that early round results have been announced, I hope everyone applying to MIT has remembered to apply to a sure-bet safety college. Don't most of you have offers of admission in hand by now?</p>
<p>I got deferred to MIT but accepted EA to Case Western, so i'll just sit back and wait until March to hear from MIT again now.</p>
<p>Following up on this, do most of you have acceptances from a suitable college now, while you wait for news from the MIT regular round?</p>
<p>As an EA admit, I also applied and was accepted to Notre Dame, UChicago, and UMich (in-state) early. On the actually topic of this thread, which sort of went down the drain with the Mudd discussion, UChicago seems to be a really popular match/reach school for MIT applicants (this year, at least) and I'll give a vote to Case Western as a pretty good safety as well.</p>
<p>I'm not going to go back in the thread and see if this has already been said, but to all you juniors: apply early to a rolling decisions school, because it's darn nice to have an acceptance in your hands within a week or two of pressing submit to MIT or whatever other school you apply to early. It was definitely a nice ego booster.</p>
<p>im surprised i havent posted anything on this thread.</p>
<p>i got to UChicago and Carnegie Mellon during the early round, in addition to MIT.</p>
<p>CMU normally only has binding Early Decisions. however, it is generous enough to those of us who went there for the summer (i was in diversity AP/EA, which is free) so that we could apply under Early Action and receive a result by the first week of October. if you are interested in CS/ECE, CMU may be even better than MIT. its math/science/engineering is top-tier and fitting to be a backup for MIT applicants.</p>
<p>UChicago is a good place for the MIT applicants who have strong humanities background in addition to being crazy about math/science. despite the increase in the applicant number and the decrease in admission rate, UChicago is still easier to get into than MIT.</p>
<p>You guys are lucky, as a international student i have to apply for generous school. There are just a few safeties for us</p>
<p>@token adult:
Accepted Early Action: MIT, UChicago, UNC-Chapel Hill
Waiting for RD: Yale, Harvard, Princeton, UPenn, Duke, NW, UFlorida
Considered (did not apply): CMU, Rice, RPI, Rochester, CalTech, Virginia</p>
<p>My state school (UFlorida) eliminated ED this year and does not have a rolling admissions program. All applications were due 11/1/07, answers due 2/15/08. Applying to one or more EA schools is an obvious alternative to the suggested rolling admissions schools, as a way to (potentially)take the pressure off several months early.</p>
<p>Berkeley's not a safety school. I took my son on an admissions tour of the Berkeley campus last weekend. The admissions officer explained that while overall admissions now are at 20% for students who do not declare a major or who apply to noncompetitive majors, individual majors have quite different admissions rates. Students who apply to Berkeley must declare majors in some fields. For instance, a student applying to Berkeley's School of Engineering to study Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) is facing an admissions rate of 6%. As far as I know, that is the most selective admissions rate in the country.</p>
<p>Berkeley is a safety school depending on where you are at in California. Top 10% at any decently good high school in the Bay (Lynbrook, Gunn, Mission, Harker, Lowell, etc) are essentially guaranteed to get into Berkeley. </p>
<p>At my high school (one of the above), 50 students a year go to Berkeley out of a class of 500 -- most of them engineering or MCB/bio/chem applicants, too. Perhaps 15 crack HYPSMC etc. but that's beside the point. </p>
<p>Side note: for a student like me with good numbers but not much else, Cal was definitely a safety-- everywhere else I applied to was a reach. I can't exactly say I had any match schools -- it was Berkeley, then the top ten (not saying I applied to all of them)</p>
<p>@above post:
If you return to the OP's question at the start of this thread, a "safety school" is one in which a student could be assurred of admission. I stand by my post that Berkeley is not a safety school by that definition. I'm very familiar with the Bay Area high schools listed by KnightMair. They are each ranked as among the top high schools in the country, and their student bodies produce roughly 30 national merit finalists per year (source: the websites of each individual school, which reports this data to the State Department of Education). So to say that 10% of students from such a group go to UC Berkeley each year does not, in my opinion, provide evidence of a "safety school." For one, you haven't given the stats for how many are admitted to EECS at Berkeley (MIT's largest major, by the way, so one to consider in this thread). My guess is that the number admitted to EECS at Berkeley is comparable to the number admitted to MIT, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and Princeton, because Berkeley admits only 6% of applicants to that program. </p>
<p>And of course, Berkeley's more competitive for a student from another state.</p>
<p>Being the OP :) , I'll explain that my concept of "safety college" is a concept that is fluid, depending on characteristics of the applicant. So it would be valid to call Cal a safety college for a Bay area student whose high school class rank alone assures admission. That student can go on up from Berkeley (?) to load up his application list with other desirable colleges. </p>
<p>Because I don't live in California, it's much more doubtful that Berkeley would be a safety for any of my children.</p>
<p>how about U of minnesota-twin cities for chemical engineering??
and U of wisconsin~~
they both have good engineering programs~~
probably UMN is too easy for MIT applicants??</p>
<p>Did your safety college come through for you now that MIT has announced its admission decisions?</p>
<p>how about U of minnesota-twin cities for chemical engineering??
and U of wisconsin~~
they both have good engineering programs~~</p>
<h2>probably UMN is too easy for MIT applicants??</h2>
<p>u might be better off going to a school which has strong programs across the board. U. of Illinois is top 10 in most engineering programs. Wisconsin is #3 in Chem E and strong in bio and chem, but not as good in EE or CS. Conversely, U. of Michigan is very strong in mech. E and EECS, but not as good in chem E (though probably still ok.)</p>
<p>So be sure about your major if you are basing your school decision on that. A lot of pick ChemE because they like chemistry and they want to be able to work after graduation, but end up hating the engineering part of the major.</p>
<p>Go to Michigan. I got rejected from MIT and that's where I'm going. It's the nicest looking engineering school I've visited.</p>