<p>Before you call me ludicrous, I'm quoting my guidance counselor. When I talked to her a couple of days ago about my college list, she said "Cornell is basically your safety."</p>
<p>Looking at my school's naviance, literally no one has been rejected yet with my stat range.</p>
<p>Is this semi-plausible?</p>
<p>If we could use number data to predict safeties, what would be your reach? </p>
<p>No, Cornell is no one’s safety.</p>
<p>It can be your safety if you’re prepared to do a gap year next year. </p>
<p>This is an ego trip for your counselor and the school. I hope you get into Cornell–it’s a superb uni–but I also hope you have the humility, realism, and independence to make an adult decision about a safety just in case you don’t get into any of the other schools to which you apply.</p>
<p>FWIW, admissions has more depth to it than these numbers, and that sample size is too small to rely on its conclusions absolutely. Moreover Cornell does admissions by its indivdual colleges, which each have somewhat different admissions pools and standards. These are not distinguished individually in Naviance, which dilutes its reliability for the particular college there that you are actually applying to.</p>
<p>However your counselor presumably has more data to go on than this one plot, and is familiar with your complete application beyond the numbers. So personally I wouldn’t dismiss the counselor’s comments, as for probability.</p>
<p>But if I were you I wouldn’t take the counselor literally, even if she is correct by probability. I’d at least ship an application to your state U.</p>
<p>As unlikely as it may be, you don’t want to wind up like this guy:
<a href=“We're picking up the pieces, but what went wrong? - Parents Forum - College Confidential Forums”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/47867-were-picking-up-the-pieces-but-what-went-wrong-p1.html</a></p>
<p>You can call Cornell what you want, but you’d be nuts not to apply to one school that’s a true guarantee. That typically means a state uni where your stats would put you in the top 10% and you don’t have to write an essay. It’s worth the application fee to have peace of mind like that. Just be sure to choose a school you can afford, and which you would not mind attending.</p>
<p>Glancing at your chances thread, you have an extremely strong application, and your chances at Cornell are quite good. That said, admissions decisions at the most selective colleges can be quirky, so almost nothing is a sure thing. </p>
<p>Scratch the UCs from your list. They won’t be affordable since you’re out-of-state. Consider adding some slightly less selective colleges if you’re rejected or deferred from MIT/Caltech in the EA round (e.g. Hopkins, CMU, Rochester). There’s a lot of great schools who’d kill to have an applicant with your stats and will happily give merit money. </p>
<p>Look into Macaulay Honors as well.</p>
<p>Will CMU or Hopkins be enough of a safety?</p>
<p>JHU has a reputation for looking beyond stats. So even perfect scores and GPA may be rejected. They do give merit money to candidates they deem their very best, however.</p>
<p>What are your financial needs? If you have a high financial needs and family financial condition does not warrant(fill out CSS profile will give the indication), then CMU or JHU are not schools with generous scholarships and make them not affordable, then they are NOT your safeties.</p>
<p>A Safety must both fulfill admission guarantee AND affordability.</p>
<p>Don’t both CMU and JHU guarantee to meet need?</p>
<p>
You could be the trailblazer</p>
<p>Your counselor is wrong. How long have they been doing this? Are you unusually outstanding, for your school? How old are they? See, I’m 30, and if I’d looked at your stats back in 2002 when I was applying, I would have told you “OMG you are so getting into a ton of Ivys!” I cannot tell you that today because it is no longer true. Someone who is older and hasn’t seen a lot of students go after the Ivys and get rejected might tell you this, but not someone familiar with the current landscape. Competition is so overwhelming–everyone is a “perfect” or near perfect candidate, that admissions to the top schools comes down to luck: meet the minimum requirements for perfection and then hope the first person to read your application connects with your essay/supplements/the school really needs your specific profile on that particularly day/hour. That said, you may very well get into all of your schools… or you may not. (I know a girl that applied to 9 Ivys/top elites… and got rejected from them all. It happens, more and more lately. You MUST have actual safeties, and Ivys are no one’s safeties)</p>
<p>So, Cornell is not your safety. A safety for you would be a competitive but not top elite school where you are more outstanding than 99% of applicants (instead of just as outstanding as most), particularly for your major. If your parents can afford to pay full tuition for a top private, you’re more competitive than if you need financial aid (sad but true: schools love people that can pay). If you do need financial aid, your safety will have to be a school that is known for being generous AND you exceed their minimum acceptance requirements. I would look at schools that accept between 30 & 40% of their applicants–that will probably be your sweet spot for a true “safety” (ie: you are guaranteed to get in AND you can afford it). Good luck!</p>
<p>@proudterrier ok I totally get it. I guess I didn’t really have a realistic understanding of college selectivity… Thanks!</p>
<p>“Don’t both CMU and JHU guarantee to meet need?”</p>
<p>Did they say meet all INTERNATIONAL needs? </p>
<p>In addition, “meeting needs” is defined by the school, not by YOU. There is a high probability that you will not get all the needs YOU wanted with those schools. They are not safeties by all means.</p>
<p>Can’t you just answer the question: “What are your financial needs?”</p>
<p>@siemensMIT It’s totally crazy out there right now! I honestly feel really bad for your generation–it wasn’t <em>easy</em> when I was applying, but it was easier. (even back in 2002, my class valedictorian w/ a perfect SAT didn’t get into MIT. It was pretty shocking.) But it’s just so funny… while it’s necessary to disavow current high schoolers of the notion that anyone is an “auto admit” to an Ivy, there are absolutely cases where someone gets into every single school they apply to (obviously there was the famous case this past year!). You may be that person (your stats really are impressive; I’d say you’ll have a slight edge on others as long as your essays are stellar), but just in case… Good luck! :)</p>
<p>
Eh? The OP is a domestic applicant. With his income (per the chances thread), he’d get a significant amount of financial aid at the selective full need colleges – quite a few of them would be loan-free, and the most generous (like Cornell) would eliminate the parental contribution altogether. </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.finaid.org/questions/noloansforlowincome.phtml”>http://www.finaid.org/questions/noloansforlowincome.phtml</a></p>
<p>sorry, mixed up with other threads :)</p>
<p>You have a perfect ACT score, a rank 9 award, and first gen.</p>
<p>You do not have a perfect GPA, a tragic sob story, an 800 on your Physics SAT, or a rank 10 award. You are not a URM. You are Asian.</p>
<p>You lack several qualities necessary for Cornell to be a safety.</p>
<p>Lots of kids with perfect ACT scores. I think one of our high schools had 9 in one year, IIRC.</p>
<p>Correct, it was 10 and not 9 after I googled it.</p>