<p>I am an American citizen applying from aboard, and I'm a little confused over what kind of colleges constitute safety scores for applicants. </p>
<p>I read from a guidebook somewhere that if my SAT scores are over the 75 percentile of a particular college then it is considered a safety for me. Is that true?</p>
<p>Thanks. =)</p>
<p>Not true if the acceptance rate is lower than, say 25% (to pick an arbitrary number). For example, you may have a 4.0 and 2400, which puts you in the top 25% for Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford-but would never consider these a safety, even with those kinds of stats because they admit so few and turn away many students with top stats.</p>
<p>And a real safety is one that you can afford and would be happy to attend. It’s not safe if you hate the idea of going.</p>
<p>natalle,</p>
<p>Are you attending a US-style international school or are you in a local school? If you are at an international school, your guidance office should be able to help you evaluate whether a college/university is an academic safety or not. </p>
<p>If you are at a local school, you should pay a visit to the closest office of EducationUSA. Their counselors can tell you which colleges/universities in the US have accepted students with your profile in recent years. If for some reason no one in that office has worked with a US citizen recently, they have colleagues in other offices who have. [EducationUSA</a> - Find an Advising Center](<a href=“http://www.educationusa.info/centers.php]EducationUSA”>http://www.educationusa.info/centers.php)</p>
<p>In addition to an academic safety, you need to find some financial safeties for yourself. Financial safeties are places that your family can pay for without any financial aid other than federally determined (FAFSA) aid. Are you considered an instate resident anywhere? If so, the public universities and community colleges in that state would probably be financial safeties for you.</p>
<p>There are several US citizens abroad who have posted here. If you search for their threads, you might get some useful ideas:
harmonium
lilspring
shaneobain
R3d3mpti0n
johnnyquid
MQ1993
shl
studyzone
farhan769</p>
<p>Wishing you all the best!</p>
<p>@ M’s Mom</p>
<p>What if the acceptance rates are, say, around 40-50%?</p>
<p>I’m looking at Boston University and University of Rochester at my safeties right now. =)</p>
<p>@ happymomof1</p>
<p>The lady in charge of Education USA in my city is currently on holiday leave. Unfortunately I’m not considered an in-state resident anywhere. I am hoping that I will qualify for financial aid at the colleges I apply to.</p>
<p>A school is a true safety if you’d be happy to attend, your family can afford it, and it is virtually certain to accept you. </p>
<p>If the admit rate were 50-75% for your stats, I’d still consider it only a “match” (not a safety) unless the decision date is early enough (as in EA schools) to leave time to apply to a less selective school. All the more so if there are any doubts about costs.</p>
<p>Natalie, I agree with tk21769 that your formula is not enough to consider a school a safety. In the US, many schools subscribe to a service called Naviance which provides scatter plots based on GPA and SAT for students from the same school. These plots are very useful in assessing the probability of admission, but also useful for identifying schools that practice “enrollment management”, whereby they reject or waitlist talented applicants because they conclude that they are being used as a safety and don’t want to waste and offer of admission just because the applicant is very unlikely to attend. This practice has been called “Tufts Syndrome”, although it appears that its namesake Tufts no longer practices it. </p>
<p>The two schools that you mention, BU and Rochester, are often safeties for students who are competitive for the most selective colleges. Neither of those schools appears to practice Tufts syndrome. If your grades are top notch and are test scores are way above their 75th percentile, they could be safeties for you. Just for your own piece of mind, I would agree with tk21769 and recommend that you find and apply to one additional school that you like that is either rolling admissions or early action (EA) that lets you know very early that you are accepted. If you haven’t thought about early action yet, it’s pretty late in the game for that since many of those applications would be due Monday. </p>
<p>Some suggestions: Tulane has an 11/15 EA deadline, Pittsburgh, which has a nice honors college, is rolling, and Ohio State, which has a nice honors program, has a 12/1 deadline.</p>
<p>natalle,</p>
<p>Have you sat down with your parents to run the financial aid calculators at [FinAid</a>! Financial Aid, College Scholarships and Student Loans](<a href=“http://www.finaid.org%5DFinAid”>http://www.finaid.org) and at [College</a> Calculators - savings calculators - college costs, loans](<a href=“College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools”>Calculate Your Cost – BigFuture | College Board) The formulas change a bit every year, but these will yield ballpark figures for your family EFC. You need to find out if your family can pay that EFC or not. If they can pay it, how much more can they pay? Most colleges won’t give enough aid to meet your EFC, so chances are you will be expected to pay more than your EFC.</p>
<p>If your family can’t pay your EFC, then you need to find out what they can pay, and use that smaller figure to find some financial safeties. Depending on your long-term career goals, your financial safety may be in your current country of residence. Also, as a US citizen you do have the right to just move here, get a job, and work for a year or more while establishing in-state residence. The rules vary by state, so you do need to investigate your options.</p>
<p>@Happymomof1</p>
<p>My situation is a little complicated so I don’t think I can estimate how much aid I’ll receive. (My parents are divorced and we haven’t had any contact with my dad for about 10 years) I have a few more safeties here in Melbourne, so worse comes to worse, I will have to stay here. I am also planning to work through college, so hopefully that will help with the cost. </p>
<p>@tk21769</p>
<p>I thought about applying EA but the end of year examination here in Australia is in November, so realistically I don’t have time to put together my application until late November.</p>
<p>@ClassicRockerDad
What would you consider as scores that are ‘way’ above average? My SAT I score is 2210 (730,770,710). Is that sufficient for Rochester and BU? Should I consider applying to another safety?</p>
<p>Thank you to everyone for responding!</p>
<p>Natalle, your SAT scores are very impressive. Your SAT II scores are in the stratosphere. Those scattergrams have both GPA and SAT. From the data from our school, and there is a lot of data, nobody was rejected at Rochester with your SATs and only one person out of hundreds was rejected at BU with an SAT score at or above yours and that person had a GPA just below 3.0 on a 4.0 scale. I don’t know how grading works in Australia, but if your grades are anything like your SAT IIs, then I think that those two schools are safeties, and I think you’ll get into more competitive schools.</p>
<p>Natalle,</p>
<p>Since your dad is no longer in the picture, if you concentrate on institutions that only use the FAFSA to determine financial aid need, you are OK. The FAFSA doesn’t require information about income and assets of the Non-Custodial Parent (NCP). Many of the institutions that use the CSS Profile to determine need do ask for information about the NCP. However, even they will normally allow you to exclude that information provided you can produce proper documentation that the NCP has been absent for a long time. The financial aid experts over in the Financial Aid forum can help you with that issue.</p>
<p>If your college list hasn’t been finalized, you might benefit from reading through <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/848226-important-links-automatic-guaranteed-merit-scholarships.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/848226-important-links-automatic-guaranteed-merit-scholarships.html</a></p>