Can NYU be a safety?

<p>lol old thread, and I'm not lying, and neither is the other 2012er I know who didn't even submit his SAT scores to NYU and got that "early" postcard.</p>

<p>He's not lying, but it's still rather asinine to gloat about submitting a half-assed application to a selective college, and then brag about being admitted.</p>

<p>Go Hahvahd!</p>

<p>I applied as a match. Given there are tons of ppl who would love to attend, I wouldn't expect them to have Tufts syndrome if your just obviously overqualified by a huge margin, you probably wouldn't attend... why give the seat to you when there are others who pounce at the chance of attending NYU.</p>

<p>What is Tufts syndrome? I always see it around here in CC.</p>

<p>Its yield protection. Knowing your just overqualified by a huge margin and would be accepted to numerous other higher caliber schools, they reject you knowing you won't attend their school anyways. I heard Tufts does that often to many highly qualified individuals. That is not to say yield protection is inherent only to Tufts. Myself was rejected by Tufts after having the ridiculously good interview with a Tufts alumnus. I got into many top tier schools like Hopkins, Duke, Dartmouth, and Brown.</p>

<p>Likewise to say, many other less qualified ppl from my HS got into Tufts. Yeah, Sucks.</p>

<p>So...is it a bad thing?</p>

<p>Depends what you like. I'd rather have universities accept the best and then provide merit based scholarships to lure them to your university. That is one measure that would proactively bump up your matriculation rate. Saying no to the best and brightest on the assumption they would not attend is not what admission counselors should be doing. I find that wrong, but hey, its life.</p>

<p>So why are they trying to protect their yield?</p>

<p>^ Acceptance rate, one of the few controllable factors in the US News ranking, which whether they admit it or not has become an obsession with college admissions officers. </p>

<p>There may also be other reasons for "yield management" as admissions professionals prefer to call it. One prominent one is also US News-driven. Schools like Tufts will surely notice that applicants with 2250+ SATs and 3.9 GPAs, say, are less likely to choose to attend Tufts if accepted than are students in the next notch or two lower in the statistical profile. So why admit a student in the 1550/3.9 range who is unlikely to accept (because she's likely to get more attractive offers), when you can admit a kid who is 1490/3.8 and is far more likely to accept, when the 1490/3.8 is both above your 75th percentile on the SAT and in the top 10% of her HS class, and therefor helps you just as much in your SAT rankings as the 1550/3.9 kid?</p>

<p>Accepting the nominally marginally less statistically qualified student simultaneously reduces your acceptance rate, boosts your median SAT scores and HS class ranking factors just as much as the nominally better-qualified kid, and puts you closer toward projecting what your 75th percentile SAT scores will actually be, since it's more predictable that the marginally less qualified kid will attend. This puts you in a position to make finer-grained decisions with respect to the rest of the class. </p>

<p>Besides, it's just a pain to have to deal with a bunch of kids you've accepted but who, statistically, are just unlikely to attend. Why bother?</p>

<p>It's only a safety IF you are sure to get in AND you are sure you can pay for it (and pay for med school on top of that).</p>

<p>
[quote]
He's not lying, but it's still rather asinine to gloat about submitting a half-assed application to a selective college, and then brag about being admitted.

[/quote]

It's even more asinine to take those kinds of posts seriously in the first place. Go LACs!</p>

<p>NYU can definitely be a safety to some people.</p>

<p>^ I agree, but to decrease your chances of being Tuft'd, I would visit or show some kind of interest.</p>

<p>i disagree with most of these people. nyu is still a risk, i think, simply because it is a competitive school. look at bu, UMD (would be great for med), umass, northeastern, penn state (also great for med), u pitt, or villanova for northeastern safeties in urban areas.</p>

<p>After the fact, any school can be a safety. ED, EA can be a safety mechanism for any school too, IF you are accepted, with your entire process done if you are accepted ED. But a true safety school is not a school like NYU where really anything can happen. Also, NYU is very expensive and does not guarantee to meet need. If you are not a full pay, it can be a tough one for aid.</p>

<p>hah, i just thought of a situation to illustrate my point in post 34. my valedictorian friend at a top prep school called vandy her safety...she applied to princeton, dartmouth, amherst, williams, midd, etc...much like you are thinking of similar schools, and want nyu as your safety, which has a similar acceptance rate to vandy (i would go as far to call nyu the vandy of the north, maybe, but idk if that is pushing it). anyway, long story short, she was wait listed while accepted at better schools (northwestern, w&l, etc). her college counselor, who is president of NACAC (aka, he knows what he's talking about), said that vandy WL'd her because they didn't think they had a chance at getting a yield. so, apply to nyu, but find a "safer" safety so you don't end up in her situation!</p>