What steps should you take to determine if a school is a safety school? How many should you apply to?
A true safety school is one that is auto admit based on stats, and is affordable.
If you would be happy to attend your safety school, you really only need to apply to one.
Some people might call a school a safety if it has a high acceptance rate (80%+ acceptance rate), your GPA and test scores are at the 75%+ mark, and it is affordable. Others might call that a highly likely.
A safety is not a safety unless it’s affordable.
Look at the school’s overall acceptance rate and their average scores. Be sure that if it’s a school that admits by major that you are digging deeper into that acceptance rate and the same if it’s an out of state public. For a school to really be a safety, the acceptance rate should be 70%+.
My D had two safety schools on her list (out of 8 total).
Be sure that the school is one that you would be able to afford and happy to attend, otherwise it really isn’t a safety school.
Bonus points if one of your safeties has rolling admission. Super nice psychologically to have an early acceptance in hand.
What if the school meets two of these criteria but the acceptance rate is around 60%, could the school still be considered a safety?
I would not call that a safety, it’s a match/target.
But there are so many nuances…does your HS have a good relationship with that school, do you fill some type of institutional priority…such as having a hook, or are from a state that is underrepresented at that school, or applying to a major that could use more students, or being full pay…those types of factors.
Your HS GC should be able to help understand the nuance.
One minor addendum: if everybody (actually, per your GC, not ‘it seems like’) at your HS with your stats is admitted to a given university, it can function as a safety.
I agree with all the above. In terms of how many you should apply to, I recommend two. Mainly because it’s nice to have choices, should no other schools come through.
A school with a 60% acceptance rate might be a safety, but consider all the above. And also consider if the school tracks interest. My high stats D applied to a school with a 70% acceptance rate, but she also expressed interest. She was accepted, but there were higher stats applicants who were denied, likely because they didn’t show interest.
My S attends a college with an acceptance rate at around 40%. Our school’s Naviance showed that it was a safety for him, though I would not usually consider 40% acceptance rate a safety. He applied EA to his college, and also applied to another true safety, just to be sure. In the end, his two safeties became his top contenders.
Our state flagship has around a 50% acceptance rate. We considered it a safety because looking at Navance, the first rejection was nowhere near his GPA/test scores. We also had lots of data since about 200 students apply each year.
If your test scores and gpa are among the top 25% of applicants and it’s affordable, then it probably is.
But you should have more than one safety. Regardless of what the stats have been in the past, that is no guarantee that it will be the year you apply because the numbers vary every year. There are also schools that suddenly get hot and start attracting a lot of applications. You don’t want to get caught applying in the wrong year. It happens to lots of kids who thought they were safe.
Just a warning - these things change quickly. There was an out of state public that S20 really wanted to go. Naviance was all green dots. Lots of kids from his high school went every year. His stats were above the 75%, we visited, loved it, would be full pay and applied EA. The school has a 50% acceptance rate, so we considered it a match, not a safety. Everyone from his school got deferred EA. Some got in RD, but not S20. He was eventually accepted off the waitlist, but again, this was very unexpected. The school guidance counselor was shocked as well.
I guess my point is, have more than one safety. Things don’t always go the way the data suggests, and things change year to year.
Remember, too, that a safety should still be a place that you would be happy to go! Too often students look down on their safeties- as a formality / just in case- and then that is their only choice and it feels like a failure. That’s why so many CC posters suggest starting with finding a couple of safeties that irl you would be happy to attend.
“What if the school meets two of these criteria but the acceptance rate is around 60%”
We had schools that we considered safeties that had admissions rates between 50% and 60%. They were schools where admissions is largely stats based and our kids stats (or my stats way back in time) were well over the stats needed for acceptance. In most cases these were also schools with rolling admissions or schools where we applied EA so we were able to have an acceptance on hand early in the process.
As others have said you should try to find a safety that you know you can afford and you would be happy to attend.
Be careful! Some students apply to all the top 10 universities and one safety, often their local state directional school. They ignore the many matches where admission is likely but not guaranteed.
Some safety schools reject overqualified students to protect the yield rate.
@Dream20school Then they were never safety schools.
If the college lists automatic admission criteria that you meet (including for your major if it admits by major), and it is affordable, then you can consider it a safety regardless of its overall admission rate.
For example, UT Austin has an admission rate of about 32%, but Texas resident applicants in the top 6% of their high school classes had a 100% admission rate. Any such applicants who were not applying for a more competitive major like CS, business, or engineering majors and who could afford to attend were able to consider it a safety. However, those not meeting the automatic admission criteria had to consider it a reach (20% admission rate for non-automatic-admission Texas residents, 26% for non-Texas residents).
When my son applied to US Universities, I told him there are no safety schools. Schools use holistic method which is so unpredictable. We used Canadian universities for safety.
The vast majority of public universities do not use holistic methods. These represent the colleges and universities attended by 3/4 of all students attending colleges, and about 2/3 of all students attending 4 year colleges. Only a handful of public universities have any level of holistic review. The vast majority accept based almost entirely on GPA and SAT.
Even many public universities that do use holistic methods drop them for the high stats applicants, especially for in-state applicants.
Not all schools are holistic, some admit based only on stats.