<p>If, and that's hopefully a big if, we get rejected, what are your "safety" schools? Also, are these actually "safeties" for someone who is a qualified Stanford applicant?</p>
<p>Macalester
George Washington
Whitman
Colgate</p>
<p>Any other suggestions? I also applied to Duke, Pomona, Penn, Columbia, and Harvard, and given my Poli. Sci./International Affairs major, I think I'm probably obligated to apply to Georgetown, and probably to WUSTL.</p>
<p>My other ideas, not sure if safeties:
Wesleyan, USC, Claremont-McKenna, Miami, etc. If, given these schools, you have some hidden gem for me based on the qualities I'm obviously looking for, I'd love to hear it, as well as your safety schools.</p>
<p>RPI and U Chicago
U Chicago IS a safety... no one in the past 4 years who applied from my school with a 3.8+ W GPA got rejected.
As for non-safeties, I'm also applying to Yale/Swarthmore no matter what, and not sure about U Chicago and Williams... may consider Amherst as well</p>
<p>Safeties: UC Davis, UCSD, and UC Santa Cruz
Also applying to UCLA and UC Berkeley, which I'll probably get into (-knocks on wood!-), and Harvard and Princeton, which I probably won't.</p>
<p>safeties: Berkeley (met admissions officer. said i was in... and they want me to go there.. i have lots of different hookups for berkeley), Davis, San Diego
Theres also UCLA...
I'm also applying to HYPM,Columbia,Penn. Depends on which ones i get in...</p>
<p>How "safe" is USC? Seven years ago, they had something like 70% acceptance rate, and now it's about 30%. Can you really consider it a safety school? I'm applying to two "safety" schools: USC and Rensselaer, but I think USC alone would be kind of risky.</p>
<p>turtle, I think USC can be a safety depending on what high school you go to... like it might be a safety for some top students from my school, and I know barnard could be a safety for most students at my school</p>
<p>Yeah, USC isn't an EXTREMELY safe school since it is 30%, but I feel good enough about my chances to take the risk. I feel lucky, I suppose? ;) When it comes down to it, there's nowhere else I want to go. :-/ I'm an exchange student fulfilling my senior year requirements, so if I got rejected EVERYWHERE I'd grudgingly go back to my home town for another year and try again with my sights set broader. That's the ultimate (and possibly worst) safety, I suppose.</p>
<p>If you look at their admissions statistics (<a href="http://afaweb.esd.usc.edu/USC-AFA/upload_images/ACF5F.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://afaweb.esd.usc.edu/USC-AFA/upload_images/ACF5F.pdf</a>), it appears that they do not reject an extremely high number of people with good SAT's (look at the big difference between applicants' and admits' scores), which, in their applicant pool, I have (1510). I figure that with most of those people there was a pretty strong reason to reject them (awful grades, crappy EC's). USC is a big school, and big schools tend to like numbers, when it comes down to it.</p>
<p>I don't want to come off as arrogant. I don't want to offend anyone. But then again, I suppose calling anywhere a "safety" will offend someone who went/wants to go there.</p>
<p>I originally had a safer school on my list but decided I didn't really want to go there, so I'm not applying. Again, if I wanted to go somewhere else, I would definitely apply.</p>
<p>safeties: berkeley, ucsd. it's mostly a numbers game with them...</p>
<p>they convert your gpa to a 5.0 scale using fairly standard weighting, then multiply that by 1000
then they take your sat I and 3 sat II scores and add that to the total</p>
<p>from what I hear, if you have above a 7900 using that system, you have a high chance of getting in to berkeley</p>
<p>of <em>course</em>, essays and ecs make a difference too...but they're far more numbers-oriented than most colleges, I believe..</p>
<p>were any of you guys ELC (eligibility in the local context) applicants?</p>
<p>That's outdated information. The UCs use a "complete review" or something of the other now. They essentially follow the same procedures as privates.</p>
<p>But yes, you're right - the UCs are still pretty number driven so even though they take things such as ECs/essays into account, they're not nearly as important as GPA/SATs.</p>
<p>As a sidenote, every year the counselors make a data plot of the SAT vs GPA of student's who got accepted to certain schools. For the UCB/UCLA plot, everyone (except for 3 people) got in with a 3.7+ UW GPA and 1400+ SAT.</p>
<p>That's roughly 39 out of 42 people got accepted with the above stats.</p>
<p>I'm ELC for UCs but they'd reject me because I don't have enough semesters of fine arts. (They don't count music ensemble, the class I took EVERY semester, because it's open to 7-12th grade... and since I only did 1 semester each of drama, visual arts, vocal, that doesn't count either)</p>
<p>That's too bad marlgirl. Heh, wish I could give you some of mine -- I think I have some crazy number like 19 semesters of fine arts or something. </p>
<p>Well I have like like 11, just 8 of them don't count. UCs are too big for me anyway. I want to be able to actually get to know my profs. I still think it's pretty funny how while I have a good chance at HYPS, I have no chance at all at UC Riverside.</p>