Don't Forget to Apply to a "Safety" College

<p>Let’s keep in mind that SAT scores are no means a “slam dunk.” A girl I know was CONVINCED she would get into X U because as she put it, her SAT scores were way above the average. She was rejected. With so many qualified applicants for different spots, high SAT scores are by no means a guarantee of acceptance unless the school you’re looking at only looks at SAT scores and GPA or admit applicants under a numbers based formula.</p>

<p>^
I’ve heard of students being overqualified for a university, alerting the university your more than likely using it as a safety and more than likely not attend, so I’ve heard universities will reject to open spots for others. I guess if your overqualified applying as ED/EA thats binding will let them know it’s your top choice.</p>

<p>^ Yup, it’s called Tufts syndrome I believe!</p>

<p>For a good reason to apply to a safety school, consider this story: A guy went to a city and got sick from the food there. Later, he automatically rejected all of the applicants from the city because of that.</p>

<p>It’s a really, really arbitrary process.</p>

<p>Here’s the story that chaosakita is referring to…</p>

<p>“One night, I got food poisoning at a restaurant in Buffalo. The next day, I rejected all the Buffalo applications.”</p>

<p>[Dirty</a> Secrets of College Admissions - The Daily Beast](<a href=“http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-01-09/dirty-secrets-of-college-admissions/full/]Dirty”>The Daily Beast: The Latest in Politics, Media & Entertainment News)</p>

<p>Daily Beast is not a source with acceptable standards of journalism.</p>

<p>I see a lot of students are considering what colleges to put on their application list, so I’ll refresh this thread as a reminder to current applicants. Good luck to all of you applying this year.</p>

<p>Yes, good reminder…</p>

<p>And to those who don’t have full-pay parents…</p>

<p>Try to apply to at least 2-3 financial safeties (affordable schools that you can either pay for “out-of-pocket,” thru grants, thru merit scholarships, and/or MINIMAL loans).</p>

<p>I recommend more than one just in case your “top picks” don’t work out (acceptance-wise or money-wise), so you won’t just be left with one lone “consolation prize” in the spring.</p>

<p>Another reason is that any financial safety that you like in the fall, may not be liked in the spring. So, apply to more than one. :)</p>

<p>With 2-3 Financial Safeties, you’ll still have a choice if that’s all you have to choose from in the spring.</p>

<p>:)</p>

<p>And now I can report that this approach worked for our family. Our oldest son has been in at his safety for a while (it was the first of his acceptances that he learned about, because he applied in early October on a “rolling” basis). Getting that news takes the pressure off more speculative applications in the regular round, and indeed allows reducing the total number of applications filed. I hope all of you have lined up a suitable “safety” college for this year’s application season, and that you hear good news from it not too long from now.</p>

<p>I applied to a rolling admissions safety and it was one of the best choices I made. I was accepted in October with honors college, graduate school acceptance guarantee, full tuition scholarship, etc. It was the University of Pittsburgh. Knowing that I had a fairly affordable, amazing option behind me made me more comfortable AND more confident. If you can find a rolling admissions school you like, DO IT. It makes the college application so much calmer - and it can encourage you to take the right risks (for me, that risk was Stanford - see the left for more information).</p>

<p>A Parent Forum post asks about safety colleges for students who aim at very highly selective colleges. That’s a reminder that everyone should build a college application list that includes a reasonable choice for a safety college, fitting to that applicant.</p>

<p>The website “College Data” has a feature “See Who’s Getting In Where” which lists students’ vitals (GPA, SAts & EC’s) and the decsions of the schools to which they’ve applied. You can also view which other schools a specific student applied to, with the decisions of those others schools as well. Merit aid data is sometimes included as well.
It may help you determine where the break point is for acceptance/rejection.</p>

<p>To Bingle:
You should probably add Gettysburg to your list of schools. It’s very small (less than 2,000), rural and I believe “most competitive”. Perhaps Franklin & Marshall also.</p>

<p>Is everyone in high school class of 2010 in somewhere by now?</p>

<p>Yes…has everyone been accepted to at least one affordable school that is liked??? (one that doesn’t require big loans)</p>

<p>Token: yes, thankfully. But I noticed that some less-rigorous schools on my son’s list have April 1st announcement dates. They were his safeties, but he still hasn’t heard from those; he’s heard from top schools though. Go figure.</p>

<p>I’ve noticed one poster so far who hasn’t been accepted anywhere.( It would help if I could remember the posters name.) I think the poster aimed high, with modest grades. Hopefully there are some safeties in there yet to be heard from.</p>

<p>** Ahh, here ya go<br>
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/michigan-state-university/819505-someone-wanna-tell-me-why-i-got-rejected-im-pretty-mad.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/michigan-state-university/819505-someone-wanna-tell-me-why-i-got-rejected-im-pretty-mad.html&lt;/a&gt;
Take a peek at several of this posters threads. Hope she has a safety…</p>

<p>^^^</p>

<p>She says that she got into Indiana U, but her dad won’t let her go there. Don’t know what that means. She applied to a bunch of OOS flagships, but her GPA was sub 3.0.</p>

<p>Now that the high school class of 2010 (college class of 2014) admission season is largely over, how did the safety school strategy work for you? Financial aid is ample at the safety for our son, so it truly was safe in all respects. And he likes it and a lot of the people there. He is looking at another college that admitted him in the early action round and will probably avail himself of a chance to go on a regular decision round wait list as well. Is everyone else in somewhere affordable? Some colleges this year indeed had huge jumps in application numbers </p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/849181-applications-growth-class-2014-a.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/849181-applications-growth-class-2014-a.html&lt;/a&gt; </p>

<p>so I think several colleges became a lot less “safe” for admission this year than they were last year. Similarly, I think the financial crisis of a year and a half ago reduced financial aid availability at some colleges. But it should still be possible to find a good college destination for many different kinds of students. As speedo correctly pointed out soon after this thread was opened two years ago, the toughest case is for the low-income applicant who has few affordable choices.</p>

<p>It’s probably a good idea to revive this thread as students are finalizing their college application lists. Make sure to anchor your list with a truly worthwhile, truly safe “safety” college.</p>