<p>If you have 2400, 4.0 UW / 4.5+ W, tons of AP/honors classes, and decent EC’s and essays, UCLA is a safety. Maybe USC, but maybe not, I know some kids with pretty high stats who didn’t get in.</p>
<p>^ Someone I know got into Claremont McKenna, Berkeley with Regents, and loads of other schools. Waitlisted at UCLA. Even then, UCLA is not a safety.</p>
<p>I would add more matches especially If your reaches are like the Ivies.</p>
<p>Safeties: UCD, UCSB, UCI, Cal Poly, Santa Clara (gives merit money). I would also suggest Lewis and Clark (not in Cali, but close, and gives a lot of merit money). </p>
<p>UCLA and USC are matches, but they aren’t safeties. A safety is somewhere you are SURE you will get in. In fact, a safety is what you just described-somewhere where an applicant is WAY over the middle percentages.</p>
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<p>AFAIK, “safety school” means you have a 90-95% or better chance of getting in. Depending on their stats, maybe they did have a 90-95% chance, but that isn’t 100% so maybe the unlikely thing just happened this time. The large majority of people with the same stats as your friend probably got into UCLA, and probably some with Regents there.</p>
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<p>I also saw someone from that board get into stanford and rejected from UCLA. He didn’t seem too bothered by it.</p>
<p>This result might be due to cross-admit battles percentages. I mean, what percentage of cross-admit battles against MIT or Harvard does UCLA even win? While, [it</a> does happen,](<a href=“Mayim Bialik - Wikipedia”>Mayim Bialik - Wikipedia) i imagine it doesn’t reflect the majority of cases.</p>
<p>Also, since UCLA receives more apps than any US university, they might have to be very conservative about the people they accept. Look at the OP for example, he’s essentially just using UCLA and USC as safeties in case he doesn’t get into better schools (but if he does he’ll most certainly choose those over UCLA and USC.) I imagine that they’ve started taking that into account.</p>
<p>UCLA CS is top notch. Not a safety for anyone. Take a look at the accepted thread and note the stats of the CS admits and rejects Plenty of rejects with SAT scores >2300 etc.</p>