<p>A motivated UM student who chooses her classes and activities accordingly can certainly be in frequent contact with many scary-smart students.</p>
<p>My S had both Michigan and UChicago on his list. Surprised the heck out of me, as he was not into large schools, but he was very happy with the classes and opportunities he saw at UMich. He ultimately did not apply after getting two EAs in December and coming to the realization that the department advisor at our flagship is known for slicing through red tape like noone’s business, which would make his life much better.</p>
<p>Around here, the stronger students apply to UMich > Wisc, but that may be a regional thing.</p>
<p>To the OP - I know nothing about UW financial aid, but UMich has fairly generous merit scholarships for students with your Ds credentials. You do need to apply early to get them though.</p>
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<p>This is silly. No one can possibly “have contact with” with 25,000 other students, except maybe by sitting in a football stadium with them and 85,000 other people a few Saturday afternoons. At a school like Michigan you interact with people doing similar things. If you enter in the LS&A Honors Program, that means you start in small classes with other HYP-caliber kids and move quickly from there to advanced courses in your major, most of which will end up being graduate-level courses with your peers and classmates being similarly advanced undergrads and grad students in some of the most highly respected and academically challenging graduate programs in the nations. Of course, you always have the option to do less. But the idea that you’ll somehow be dragged down or held back by some thousands of other people you’ve never met and never take a class with is pure nonsense.</p>
<p>First, I apologize to the OP for distracting from his thread. </p>
<p>Second, here are my comments again:</p>
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<p>bclintok said:</p>
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<p>Disagreeing with me is fine, but please don’t put quotes around things I never said or implied.</p>
<p>CRD, I read through this thread twice and feel it begs the question: Why does your daughter want to use Michigan OR Wisconsin as a safety when her #1 choice is Chicago? I happen to be a Michigan alum. My son looked at it seriously twice, both for undergrad and grad school. He decided against applying for undergrad because he wanted small or medium. He did apply to Michigan’s graduate program, visited and was impressed, but ultimately made another choice.</p>
<p>I have no doubt whatsoever that you can get a world class education at Michigan. I now live overseas, and believe me, the Michigan name carries a lot of weight in business, in academics, in government and in public service. [In fact, even though my son attended a very selective LAC our Asian friends are all convinced that he went there because he couldn’t get into a school like Michigan.
]</p>
<p>But despite respecting the quality of education that Michigan (or Wisconsin) offers, I feel that using a mega-sized university for a safety when the “real” list comprises nothing but small-to-medium privates is not a sound strategy. To me the whole purpose of a safety is to allow the applicant and the family to get some sleep between January and March. You don’t have love it the way you love your #1, but it shouldn’t make you break out in hives or fill you with dread. </p>
<p>I don’t know your daughter’s whole list but using Chicago as a benchmark it’s possible to find schools of the same general size, same general ambience that would serve as reasonable safeties. My experience is more focused toward the smaller LAC category but I could throw out Beloit, Rhodes, Smith. I’m sure there are similar choices that are medium sized, less selectives.</p>
<p>One other point that I would make about safeties is visit. Sometimes being on campus, talking to kids, meeting with professors, seeing the facilities can alleviate some of the negativity that’s attached to a safety. Even at less selectives, you will find that the professors received their PhDs from the same fine universities as those at the super-selectives. And there may be other reasons for lower selectivity such as gender balance or geography. </p>
<p>I’d strongly suggest that you and your daughter revisit her choice of safeties.</p>
<p>I tend to agree with Momrath that if your D is looking for medium size schools that her safeties don’t need to have different selection criteria (very large publics) and could have similar selection criteria as all of her other schools but simply be less selective than her highly selective schools on her list. Obviously, if she loves UMich or UWisconsin, no problem. I have a daughter who is a high achiever like your D but her safety schools still met her college selection criteria. She also wanted a medium size school and so her safeties were not large publics. They were still selective schools but were safeties for her and not as selective as her reaches and matches.</p>
<p>Momrath, it’s a fair question. </p>
<p>Without going into details, D is undecided about majors, but has certain majors that she’s seriously considering, one of which is hard to find at a LAC. She wants to go to a school that at least has serious departments in each potential major. If you want to study a topic in depth and the school doesn’t offer it, you can’t. That greatly limits the LACs to a very small group from which she has carefully selected 3 outstanding options with one reach and two likelies. </p>
<p>Medium-sized schools seem like an ideal balance, a smorgasbord of academics if you will. Among that group she has 4 reaches, 2 likelies and 1 safety which we visited last week as I mentioned, and she’s keeping on the list. The other safety is Wisconsin which she can live with. There are really no other comparable medium-sized schools that are safeties that peak her interest. </p>
<p>The posts that I’ve read here that say “Michigan is a safety if [fill in the blank]” say to her that it’s not really a safety but a likely. If she writes a great uncommon essay which she plans to do, she should get into Chicago too, so the idea that some essay or her ECs are a serious factor for Michigan turns her off. She already has a lot of likelies that she knows she likes so Michigan doesn’t really have a place on her list. Wisconsin IS by all accounts a true safety even with a minimal investment of time. I’m sure that she’ll write a fine Wisconsin essay but it will be less stressful, and it will be done next week. </p>
<p>While her list may be a little long, (11 schools - 5 reaches, 4 likelies, 2 safeties), it gets much shorter if she bags an EA, and if she doesn’t, then maybe the list isn’t too long after all. Also, she has some priorities so if it comes down to the deadline, some may wither by natural selection. </p>
<p>Thank you all for the replies, but she’s made up her mind and is moving forward.</p>
<p>That’s great, CRD. You asked your questions, got the energetic responses you knew you would find here, and gathered the information pertinent to your daughter’s situation.</p>
<p>I would like to say that my couple of posts were for the purpose of correcting what I though was inaccurate or incomplete information posted here and never to convince you or your daughter one way or another. I hope others posted in the same spirit!</p>
<p>All the best to your daughter.</p>
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I wouldn’t call it a safety, but have a good chance of admission.</p>
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<p>And, we wonder why parents might turn into complete neurotics as soon as their children enter high school? Can we get a grip of reality when giving an opinion that, for **this **candidate, a STATE school that accepts a LARGE number of students and is ALMOST ENTIRELY driven by tests scores and GPA would NOT be a safety? Please! </p>
<p>While we all know that the forum called WAMC is simply a source of entertainment, we should recognize that the OP asked a legitimate question, and that our answers should present a modicum of sense. In this case, if the daughter of the OP could not consider Michigan a safety, is there ANYONE in the country who could? Michigan is a wonderful school, but its statistics of admissions are what they are! </p>
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<p>Again, I think you and your daughter are making wise decisions. There is absolutely NO need to add any safeties, and especially not safeties such as Smith or Rhodes since you mentioned that no financial need is needed. While there are circumstances when such choices would be valid (let’s remember Curmudgeon’s D selecting an amazing scholarship at Rhodes over Yale,) this does not seem to have an impact on your daughter. </p>
<p>Safeties can play a wonderful role in the period of November to April, but there is never a need to add them … just for the sake of it. Inasmuch as students have been caught with a list that did NOT include any safeties, that is again not your case. </p>
<p>At this stage, 11 schools - 5 reaches, 4 likelies, and 2 safeties is very reasonable, especially with what appears to be a first choice that offers EA. </p>
<p>There is no need to dwell over Michigan, even if your daughter would have been a shoo-in if there was ever one.</p>
<p>PS By the way, I noticed that your D decided to retake the ACT and increased it from 32 to 35. Again, while this makes a homerun application become a “out of the park hit” application, for the ultra-competitive schools a la Stanford, please remember the importance of the essays. :)</p>
<p>Because there is really no true safety school, besides ones your absolutely sure you will get admitted, such as University of Iowa… which publicy shows on whether a student will be admitted or not, known as RAI. Some universities may experience the common term tufts syndrome, rejecting students who they assume may be using the university as a safety ( unless the student was applying under ED). Now if her D was a in-state student I would say the school could be likely a safety, though since D is out of state I said not a safety, but good chance of admission, which is not far off in terms of being a safety at all.</p>
<p>Coolbrezze, I am afraid you are confusing the terms “safety” and “guaranteed admission.”</p>
<p>Safety or highly likely schools do not necessarily offer the type of guaranteed admissions like schools in Texas offer to their students ranked in the top 10% of their HS class.</p>
<p>For this student, Michigan would **absolutely **be a safety.</p>
<p>I agree that for this student UMich is a safety / sure bet (I don’t think you need to have a school that has some sort of guaranteed admissions policy to call it a safety). I agree with xiggi that if this school is not a safety for THIS student, then who is it a safety for? In my view, Mich is a safety for this girl if she applies in early fall given the rolling process at this university.</p>
<p>^
I guess I could get guaranteed admission and safety somewhat confused. Perhaps the school is more close to a safety for her, I just usually don’t use the term safety as much because say she did get rejected, how highly unexpected would that be for her, and possibly devastating to be rejected from a university known as your safety. So since I personally try not to use the term safety, for someone who does use the term safety freely it appears they may state University of Michigan is a safety for OP’s D.</p>
<p>As I’am try my best not to use the term safety, I think OP’s D have a great chance of admission ( and as I’ve mention before, great chance of admission is not that far off from being a safety). OP’s D also have stats where I wouldn’t be surprise if OP D is looking at Ivy Leagues, and other highly elite universities.</p>
<p>My D treated Michigan as something of a safety, actually, more like a “match” and applied very early, as some other posters here have described. I must say it was a relief to have an early (positive) answer. </p>
<p>Michigan was a match because it is extremely strong in her main area of intended study. There are a good number of areas in engineering and humanities (history, classics) where Michigan is really tops. </p>
<p>Ultimately what it will come down to for the student will be “fit” and $$.</p>
<p>Well, the terminology being used is confusing things a bit. I consider safeties to by synonymous with liklies or safe bets. The OP is using the term likely for what I think is what I would call her match/ballpark schools.</p>
<p>The word “guarantee” is tricky as unless a school has a 100% admit rate, nothing is a guarantee. However, a safety or likely or sure bet school (take your pick on the semantics) should be highly probable.</p>
<p>Sorry, to be confusing Soozievt, I used likelies and matches interchangeably. Looking at the Naviance plots, converting the ACT to an SAT, if NOBODY in the general vicinity of her point gets rejected (or waitlisted), I consider it a safety. If most of the people in her vicinity get in, but not everybody, I view it as a match or a likely. If hardly anybody gets in or if it’s just totally inconclusive, I consider it a reach. Then I added some common sense (wouldn’t dare consider Northwestern as safety for example, despite Naviance indicating that it is).</p>
<p>She can’t know if the Michigan reject (actually waitlist) in her Naviance vicinity turned in the application late, or wrote a mediocre essay or had a criminal record or was simply in the socio-economic demographic that they don’t need more of. This has to leave a shadow of a doubt rendering it to the match/likely group. I asked the group because I wasn’t sure if I was being too conservative. My sense now is that I am not. </p>
<p>Looking a little further on collegeboard.com at the very important and important admissions factors comparing Wisconsin and Michigan, </p>
<p>Wisconsin:
Very Important: Class Rank, Rigor of secondary school record, academic GPA
Important: Recommendations, Standardized Test Scores, State Residency</p>
<p>Michigan:
Very Important: Rigor of secondary school record
Important: Application Essay, Recommendations, Standardized Test Scores, Academic GPA, First Generation College Student</p>
<p>For Wisconsin the essay is in the “considered” section. My read is that for students whose numbers don’t make it automatic, they read the essay, whereas for Michigan, they read and evaluate the essay as an important factor. She’ll write decent essays for Wisconsin without slaving over them for weeks like she will for the others. Now I noticed that for her other safety the essay is an important factor also, along with level of interest. It will be very nice to bag one admit rolling admissions very early.</p>
<p>Safety, guaranteed admission. whatever.</p>
<p>Instructive story: Our neighbor (in state) was rejected by UMich. I know for certain the following facts:
valedictorian
4.0 unweighted
35 ACT
Killer ECs</p>
<p>Knowing her strengths and the other schools that admitted her, I would assume that she had very good to excellent essays.</p>
<p>Not a single smirch on her record. The HS staff adored her for good reason.</p>
<p>Rejected.</p>
<p>The only reason I can see is that the GC messed up and did not send supporting docs immediately, but they were sent within a normal time frame.</p>
<p>I understand that someone from out of state might scoff at the idea that the OP’s student could not count UM as a safety. But this is how it goes.</p>
<p>mafool, when you say that the GC didn’t submit the supporting docs on time, what do you mean by “on time”? After the final deadline? Late in the process? Did the GC call to find out why the applicant was rejected? (Isn’t this what GCs do normally?) Just curious…it does seem sort of amazing.</p>