<p>For a california resident, I'm ranked 11/490 in a good public school, have a perfect UC GPA (8 semester weighted maximum) and i have an ACT of 34 with double 800 subject tests.</p>
<p>I'm not applying for the most competitive majors (EECS, engineering).</p>
<p>Is there a such thing as safety for berkeley? or if not, LA?</p>
<p>lolololol u have 69 posts</p>
<p>I’m not sure anyone would be able to call UC Berkeley a safety, regardless of how good your stats are. Remember, their acceptance rate is about 20%. With your stats, schools with about 40%-50% acceptance rates would probably be considered safeties.</p>
<p>Berkeley is definitely a safety for you.</p>
<p>@fledgling I have heard this reasoning before but I don’t see how it’s true. You say that because it has a low acceptance rate no one should call it a safety. </p>
<p>But they are selecting the top 20% of applicants from the pool. So if you are obviously above the 90th percentile of the pool, I don’t see why you couldn’t call it a safety. There are people who should even consider Harvard as a safety. It is very rare but prodigies still do exist that would be guaranteed into Harvard or any other top school.</p>
<p>NO ONE can make Berkeley a safety these days. </p>
<p>Because of the fact that Berkeley does not rank the applicants’ stats and admit students based solely on their ranking performance would make Berkeley not a safety school for anyone even for those who have perfect stats. We can make Berkeley a match, however, especially for those who have perfect stats. But I have seen kids with perfect stats who were rejected outrightly. On the other hand, I have seen kids with a 3.85 UW GPA and a SAT score of 1930 accepted, though many of them are from financially challanged families.</p>
<p>I don’t mean to be rude but no one can call the top schools a safety, and that harvard example isn’t true at all as it is a known fact that Harvard routinely rejects applicants with 2400 SATs 4.0 GPAs and the like; people who thought they were a shoe-in. The truth of the matter is, above a certain level admissions for some schools are a crapshoot for anyone, and it begins to seem more about luck than anything else.</p>
<p>There are people who should even consider Harvard as a safety.</p>
<p>^^ That’s stupid</p>
<p>For a black, legacy, basketball superstar, Val with a 2400, Harvard is safe:)</p>
<p>^True, but it doesn’t take quite that much. HYP, etc. are safe for a highly prized athlete (any race) in any sport so long as:
1 - they are above the 75% range in scores,
2 - they have excellent grades and rigor,
3 - they are fully supported by the coach, and
3 - they have no skeletons in their closet.</p>
<p>Yea Harvard can be a safety. It isn’t for someone who has a 2400 and a 4.0 GPA. I have those stats and I don’t consider it a safety. But that isn’t a perfect application. That is an application with a perfect SAT and GPA.</p>
<p>Yes an athlete is another example. My friend who just got into Stanford with much worse grades than me can call Harvard a safety. He doesn’t have the best grades but much more than he needs as an athlete. And he is out of the realm athletically.</p>
<p>Of course there are people who can call any school a safety.</p>
<p>I don’t see why Berkeley wouldn’t pick the best applicants. I’m sure there are people who Berkeley is a safety for. Don’t be ridiculous. Their application process isn’t random.</p>