<p>Since it is often posted that a certain school should never be considered a safety, or even a match, for any student, I would be interested in hearing your ideas on which schools fit this group. Which specific colleges and universities cannot be relied on for acceptance, even if a student exhibits superior achievement and excellence throughout high school? </p>
<p>Also, if you have criteria that you use to place this designation, or if you completely disagree with the premise of this thread, please chime in.</p>
<p>Just look at the top 30 in the USN&WR rankings. From about 30 to 60 you can find true matches. And from 60 down you can start finding safeties. IMHO.</p>
<p>Note that this is a slightly different question from the thread title. This question asks for colleges which are not safeties for anyone, as opposed to colleges which are reaches for everyone.</p>
<p>For example, Berkeley and UCLA are selective enough (without any “guaranteed admit” criteria) to not be safeties for anyone, but there are some students who could consider them matches, rather than reaches (probably something like >4.2 UC-weighted GPA, >700 on all SAT sections).</p>
<p>In other cases, schools that are not that selective by stats, but consider “level of applicant’s interest” in admissions are not safeties for anyone, but could be considered matches for significant numbers of students.</p>
<p>The other thing to consider is the acceptance rate for the college.</p>
<p>“Which specific colleges and universities cannot be relied on for acceptance, even if a student exhibits superior achievement and excellence throughout high school?”</p>
<p>You cannot RELY ON acceptance at any of the top schools no matter how high your GPA and perfect SAT and ACT scores, because there are simply too many qualified applicants to admit them all.</p>
<p>Any school that is more than what one is willing to pay is not a financial safety. </p>
<p>I would agree that top 30 USNWR schools & top 10 LACs are not admissions safety. Keep in mind that many top schools use a more nuanced admissions criteria that can not be distilled by GPA & scores.</p>
<p>There are schools in the top 30 that can be considered admissions safeties for a select few students. A girl from my HS was an Emory athletic recruit and the coach told her to apply ED so she’d get in. Well she applied ED and Lo and behold she just returned to Emory for a second year. </p>
<p>If the son of the current president of Coca Cola were to apply to Emory (Coke is a huge donor), he’d get in. I suspect the same is true at many other institutions.</p>
<p>I agree. And I’m not saying the rankings should carry any weight. But if you started naming schools “off the top of your head” that are “reaches for everyone,” you’d probably end up with a list that pretty closely resembles the USN&WR top 30. (In my post I forgot to mention the top 10 LAC list, but yeah, that too.)</p>
<p>IMO, any school with < 20% - 30% acceptance rate shouldn’t be considered a safety. They have too many applicants to be assured of anything. Some can be matches as long as one realizes one may - or may not - get into a match.</p>
<p>Acceptance rates are not particularly reliable, since the actual selectivity depends on the strength of the applicant pool. Not that long ago, some non-impacted CSUs made the “lowest acceptance rates” lists with acceptance rates under 30%, even though they were obvious safeties for those whose HS GPA and test scores were at or above the CSU minimum eligibility threshold. Apparently, they had a lot of not-very-well-informed applicants with HS GPA and test scores below that threshold, or without all of the specified HS courses (or substitutions in standardized tests or college courses), applying.</p>
<p>^^^ For in state students, one should look to see if there is a different in state rate.</p>
<p>I still personally think, in general, that one can go off acceptance rates. For any specific school one can look beyond general - esp if they have hooks of any sort.</p>
<p>Some of the schools in BuBBLES FoR SALE Class I list can be matches for some students, based on Naviance. </p>
<p>I define match as a 35.00-94.99% chance of getting in. For my kids, I estimated their chances using Naviance and rounded to the nearest 10%. Then we considered reach 0-30%, match 40-90%, and safety 100% (really 95-100%). </p>
<p>Some of the class I schools were clearly matches, and some of the class II schools (Amherst, Swarthmore, Williams) were reaches, based on this method. </p>
<p>People on CC often underestimate their chances. Naviance can be an excellent tool to correct that. </p>
<p>For our school, WUSTL is a reach for everyone because there is no rhyme or reason to who they admit, and they accepted hardly anyone. Those who were accepted had a 3.5 average GPA. Most people who were competitive were waitlisted and didn’t choose to remain on the waitlist.</p>
<p>We’ve been over the whole naviance discussion, classicrockerdad. You can estimate whatever chances you want based on applicants from your high school, yet you don’t know the context behind the applicants outside of their academic qualifications alone. Guess what? ECs matter as much or more than academic stats at the elite privates. On top of that, connections and other factors will matter as well - things that cannot be gleamed from naviance.</p>
<p>And as to Bubbles post, don’t you go to berkeley? did you have these schools as an option?
I’d lend more credence to admissions officers or those who have been through the process and had these schools as options. They’d be more in tune with what it takes to get in.</p>
<p>Those non-impacted CSUs would have different admission thresholds for in-state and out-of-state students, but the thresholds are published numbers known beforehand (see [CSUMentor</a> - Plan for College - High School Students - Eligibility Index](<a href=“Cal State Apply | CSU”>http://www.csumentor.edu/planning/high_school/eligibility_index.asp) ), so any reasonably informed student (in-state or out-of-state) should know whether one of those CSUs is a safety or out-of-reach for admissions (there is no need to guess; the only admission uncertainty would be if the student is taking the SAT or ACT relatively late, or if the student does poorly enough in senior year to get admission rescinded). In any case, the non-impacted CSUs do not attract many out-of-state students anyway.</p>
<p>At schools which consider “level of applicant’s interest”, the chance of admission may actually go down at higher HS GPA and test score levels once one is above the typical range for the school, unless one figures out what “interest” buttons to push at the school.</p>