Both my kids had safeties they really liked. Makes me wonder if you should rethink your chosen safeties and consider some others. Perhaps enough time hasn’t been placed on carefully picking safeties as much as reaches and matches. Was the selection of safeties more of an afterthought?
In my view (and what I told my kids) it isn’t a safety if you don’t want to go to school there…
@EllieMom I agree! I’m thinking that I might not use the words “safety” or “reach” for as long as I can get away with it. A school can be just a SCHOOL - one that fits your academic needs, works for you socially, and is affordable. Of course, some are easier to get into than others… but some of the easier admits may actually be a better fit!!
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At D’s school they use “likelies” instead of “safeties” because safety sounds too much like settling. I can see their point.
The “I hate my safety” factor is one reason I’d suggest putting a lot of likely schools on your visiting list if possible. After seeing the 90% admit school the 70% admit school your kid has the stats to consider a safe bet might look pretty good in comparison. It may start to fell less like the worst school on their list and more like an attractive option.
I use the term “safety” here but not with D. Every single school on her list is there because of fit and scholarship potential. They are all excellent fits and D is all about the scholarship. One school has generous automatic scholarships and D understands that that is where she will go if other merit offers aren’t competitive or she prefers the automatic merit school to another comparable offer. Because the automatic merit school is a great fit, D is very happy with that option and will amass a crazy amount of spirit gear if that’s where she ends up.
So yes, I think the term safety may be problematic for some students as well as the fact that some safeties aren’t really a good fit for the student. If not a good fit, then if other affordable options are available, that school shouldn’t be on the list, imo.
Clark University moved up. None of us expected to like it as much as we did. My son was very favorably impressed (and so were we). Physically well-kept school with very warm and enthusiastic students and staff. We saw a little of their freshman orientation, and we liked what they were doing for new students.
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To me, it would seem if they hate their safety, it really isn’t a safety because they don’t want to actually attend?!
oh this process, what a journey! Learning so much, thank you CC.
It makes more sense to visit a “safety” than a “reach” school.
I’m partial to the term “likely” or “probable” over safety. And I agree that it doesn’t belong on their list if they’re going to be unhappy attending. (With the caveat that there are some kids who think they’ll be unhappy attending anything other than their dream school(s). Those kids need to do some work on adjusting expectations.)
And what @Sue22 said about visiting a range of likelies. A few of the schools we visited when we did that were sufficiently far off the mark for my kid that having visited them really helped with the impressions made by the other schools. It wasn’t intentional on our part – we thought they were all solid possibilities when we planned our visits – but contrast helps.
Alternate terms for Safety:
Can of Corn
Iggi (I’m Gonna Get In)
July Texas Thermometer (90s F)
Tropical Humidity(90s%)
Grunge Band ('90s)
Nonagenarian
I’m not a fan of the word safety although luckily it doesn’t seem to bother my S at all. Likely, as a word, lines up with Match to me so doesn’t resonate.
Of course fall back and back up are worse than safety so I’ve no good solution. Either way if the child will not be happy to attend it’s not a safety. We have 2 kinds of safeties on our list, admission and financial. If those worlds collide, perfect but if not we need some of each.
In my case the fact we are calling them safeties has nothing to do with my D not wanting to visit. It is just that all our safeties are in state (affordable and easier to get into). Since they are close to home she knows some kid that goes there that ruins the school for her without even considering it. Ughhh. This crazy process has been complicated even more with a overly emotional teenage girl on my hands 
Can you find safeties that aren’t so close to home?
Depending on the nature of your kid and the size of your kid’s high school, I could see where knowing someone else you do not like who goes to an in-state school would be problematic. Especially depending on the size of the in-state school. But it seems to me that unless its a very small in-state school, that is an issue that the kid needs to overcome. Although I know families who have sent kids to off beat schools for that very reason (often paying more for it).
I think that if the despised classmates were headed to Brown or Vassar or Vandy and your child really wanted to go to one of those schools, suddenly it wouldn’t be such a problem to have Mean Girl or Obnoxious Boy High School Classmate at that school. It’s only a problem if it is Rutgers or UMass or one of the directional colleges that have been deemed a safety.
My daughter attends her first choice, which also happened to be an a auto admit for her. Gasp, a safety! First choice. And two kids she went to Kindergarten with also attend. Not a big deal.
I think it’s helfpul to just try to avoid labeling the schools. I made sure my daughters had a wide range of schools they liked and we could afford, some more competitive than others. That way neither would ever have to feel like they “only” got into their safeties. Those schools were just some of the several places they applied. Afterall, someone’s safety is another person’s extreme reach (Cornell for example) so we tried as much as possible to stay away from categorizing them, as long as they had, as mentioned, a wide variety of schools they were applying to. I understand that means they had reaches and safeties in their mix, we just never referred to them that way - they liked all their choices…
All but one of my D15’s schools were academic safeties but perfectly desirable schools. We were looking for merit aid so the majority of them became financial safeties when all was said and done. She has mentioned that some of her classes have been too easy, but that’s given her the opportunity to shine, receive invitations to participate in special activities, and to develop the non-academic parts of her life where she needs a little more practice (e.g., time management, social skills, leadership activities, etc.). I don’t think she will find the upper division classes to be too easy.
Yes, we had a number of ways of characterizing the assortment of schools beyond relative selectivity. Level of competition/stress, opportunities to shine, relative chillness, etc. There are lots of ways in which a more accessible school can also be more appealing.