<p>I've been trying to work on a college list and I'm not really sure what a few schools qualify as for me, as far as safeties/matches/reaches go.
I have a 2240 SAT/33 ACT/3.99 UW GPA w/ 9 APs by the time I am done with highschool (IDK my UW GPA). I got a 790 on Lit subject test and a 740 on French.
I have ECs that I think are pretty good, but I don't really want to list them. </p>
<p>Can you please help me categorize these schools?:</p>
<p>Tulane
Rhodes
Santa Clara
ASU / ASU barrett
Fordham
Whitman - I am a double legacy here</p>
<p>A truly safe institution meets these four criteria:</p>
<p>1) You would be happy to attend if all else goes wrong in the admissions process.</p>
<p>2) Your potential major is offered.</p>
<p>3) Your family can pay for it with no more financial aid than what you qualify for by filing the FAFSA (for federal aid) and/or aid guaranteed to you by your state and/or aid guaranteed to you by the institution itself because of your grades/test scores/some special talent.</p>
<p>4) You are flat-out absolutely guaranteed admission because you have the grades/test scores/some special talent that meet or exceed criteria for guaranteed admission as posted right smack on the college/university website. Many public universities do publish this information for in-state applicants. A few of them also publish it for OOS applicants.</p>
<p>Any institution that has consistently admitted students from your own high school with the same grades/test scores/special talent as yours can be considered pretty safe, but not absolutely dead-on safe for academics and may not be safe at all for your family financially. So run your current list past your own guidance counselor to get a reading on the academic side of things, and run the Net Price Calculators at each website with your parents to find out about the financial side of things.</p>
<p>With Rhodes, as with any smaller school, I would be careful of considering it a safety. Admissions at smaller schools can be unpredictable because there are not that many spots and maybe they don’t need another (fill in the blank type if student) so you get rejected.</p>
<p>Not sure about the other schools, but I know that Fordham has non-binding Early Action so I would get that application in early and hopefully you will know you get in by the end of December.</p>
<p>I can definitely afford ASU, and I think the others would all be doable based off of net price calculators (that don’t include merit aid; definitely hope I’d get merit aid as well though, since that’s always nice).</p>
<p>Any other opinions? Are these enough safeties/matches if the only other schools I apply to are reaches (and maybe one or two matches)?</p>
<p>You need at least for sure (on all of admissions, cost, academic suitability, other suitability) safety in your list. Everything else can be whatever you want.</p>
<p>When money is an issue, I think students need 2-3 financial safeties. The reason is this: If after all the FA pkgs come out, if none of the reaches and matches are affordable, then it’s good for a person’s morale to still have a choice to make. </p>
<p>If you only end up with one affordable choice, then you’ll feel railroaded into that one school…while everyone else is getting to make a choice.</p>
<p>Do financial safeties mean that they are affordable based off their initial tuition/guaranteed merit scholarships, or can a financial safety be based off net price calculators?</p>
<p>It may depend on if you and your family have a relatively simple financial situation that net price calculators tend to be relatively accurate with, or more complex financial situations like non-custodial parents (who may or may not be cooperative with college financing), small business ownership or other non-wage/salary income, etc… Also, if income tends to vary by a lot from year to year, basing affordability on worst case income (i.e. lower end of the range income) and worst case financial aid (i.e. based on the higher end of income) may work out better for safety purposes.</p>
<p>Financial safeties must be admissions safeties as well. It does nothelp you if you are not admitted to a school that you know that you can afford.</p>
<p>All safeties except Tulane because they tend to reject over qualified candidates in effort to maintain an impressive yield rate. My sibling got wait-listed at an ivy and accepted to other top 30 schools yet was deferred EA and then rejected from Tulane (even with legacy of sort). This found to be a common theme on CC as well.</p>
<p>Check the common data set of the school, or the admissions tab of the school’s entry at [CollegeData:</a> College Search, Financial Aid, College Application, College Scholarship, Student Loan, FAFSA Info, Common Application](<a href=“http://www.collegedata.com%5DCollegeData:”>http://www.collegedata.com) to see if the school considers “level of applicant’s interest”. If so, do not count on it as an admissions safety.</p>