GPA and Safety Schools

Applying to College
1

<p>A good friend's senior just received rejection letters from nearly every school on their list with a 3.4 GPA and many strong extracurriculars. These were from a few reach schools but most are considered safety schools or have less stringent requirements than the top universities, with average freshman class admission GPAs ranging from 3.5-3.6 I've got a younger child so we are just starting to look at colleges. This student is only getting into schools with a 3.2-3.3 average GPA. Don't the schools always take some students whose GPAs are higher than average and some whose are lower?</p>

<p>-What is considered a safety school? How do you determine that?
-Are colleges, private schools especially, raising their requirements each year?
-Does the major one chooses affect admissions?
-What would a student with strong talent extracurriculars and a 3.5-3.6 GPA from an extremely difficult high school look for in choosing a college to get a good match with few rejections? Either public or private schools are fine.
-Does it help if the student has all A's in high school courses related to the major field of choice? (either math, science, or engineering?)
-Are students at a disadvantage if their schools do not rank students?</p>

<p>I'm discouraged in reading the student forums as it seems everyone there has above a 3.95 GPA and nearly perfect SAT scores.</p>

2

<p>A safety school is one that you are pretty much sure you will get into. However, safety schools are relative to the applicant. For instance my partner had a 3.8 GPA, a 1210/1600 on her SAT, and a few EC's including one that she trully poured her heart out for. Her safeties were Wesleyan and New York University. My high school GPA is 1.5--1.7. In my case, NYU and Wesleyan would be reaches. Hope this helps a bit.</p>

3

<p>What qualifies as a safety school depends entirely on the applicant, so the fact that "most are considered safety schools" by other students doesn't mean that they are safeties for this student.</p>

<p>GPA is not the only gauge of a student's achievement and potential, but for the sake of argument let's treat it as though it were. According to your post the student has a 3.4 GPA and has selected safety schools in which the average GPA is 3.5-3.6. These are not safety schools for this student. The definition of safety is a school almost guaranteed to admit the student in question - that is, in which the school average is well below that of the applicant.</p>

<p>There are other factors to consider when determining whether a school qualifies as a safety. First of all, if these are out-of-state public universities then the average GPA can be misleading, since out of state applicants often need qualifications well above the school average. </p>

<p>Average GPAs can be misleading in another way, too, because they could mask differences between separate categories of admitted students, each admitted for different reasons. Suppose a college is very interested in finding high-quality athletes or artists, for example, and is willing to admit a significant number of great athletes and artists even if they have low grades. In this case the university's relatively low average GPA would not be a guarantee that non-athlete, non-artist applicants with low grades can consider the school a safety. The more you are able to learn about what the school wants, the better you will be able to evaluate the student's chances.</p>

4

<p>Figure at any college, the kids who get accepted with below the school's averages are hooked: recruited athletes, urms, legacies, development candidates. Then low income gets a small nudge as does first generation. That leaves the unhooked applicant close to the 75% to make the school a safety, and that's only if it's not a top schoool. And yes, it's getting harder to get into most colleges as number of applicants keeps going up because of the baby boomlet.</p>

5

<p>Suze, would you care to elaborate on the above? Thank you.</p>

6

<p>As a rule of thumb, I would consider stats above the 75th percentile of admitted students would render that school a safety. I also wouldn't just look at GPA; the SAT/ACT would be important, probably more important because schools vary in their grading. I would think that a GPA at a school that doesn't rank might be somewhat less meaningful because colleges wouldn't know what it meant. </p>

<p>I don't see how anyone could consider places with average GPA's of 3.5-3.6 to have been safeties for someone who had a 3.4! </p>

<p>Also a "good match with few rejections" is somewhat contradictory. A match school is one whose average admitted student is close to the particular applicant. A safety school is the one where a student is better than average and thus very likely to get in.</p>

<p>A particularly safe safety would be a place that admits students that score a certain level on a test. For instance, U Missouri - Columbia admits those who have at least a 24 on the ACT. With that one in the bag, my daughter didn't find it necessary to have any other safety applications.</p>

<p>My son's safety was the general college of U Illinois UC. His stats were way above their average, so he didn't think there was any way he would be rejected.</p>

<p>Majors may affect admissions. For instance, if someone wants to go into the engineering college at a school, that may be more difficult that admission into the general college. If someone has an unusual major -- and demonstrated real interest in it in some way -- this may be a plus. But generally, colleges know that many students change their majors.</p>

<p>I think good stats relevant to the proposed field will help.</p>

<p>Most kids don't have nearly perfect SAT's. This would be statistically impossible; the SAT is a normed test. The average score on each section will always be around 500, 3 percent of test takers will get 700 or above, etc.</p>

<p>The vast majority of colleges take essentially everyone who applies. It is only those few places that get obsessed about on CC that are so selective.</p>

<p>Not Suze, but ... as I understand it, a development candidate is one whose family has money that the college would like.</p>

<p>Finally, I'm not sure about lack of ranking. I don't know if any college admits to having more interest in students who have been ranked, but I suspect that some schools do this. My son had one application denied that really surprised us -- but then he saw that in its stats it showed very few admittees were unranked. So he thinks it was his lack of a class rank; but we have no way of knowing for sure. But he got in nearly everywhere else he applied, so it is hardly an insurmountable barrier. It is the rare student that will get in everywhere!</p>

7

<p>What are URMS? What are Development Candidates? What is unhooked? If you've got a particular skill, like you play an instrument at a school that doesn't attract many musicians or you play a sport at a school that doesn't attract many athletes, do you have a better chance? If the school has 59% girls and you are a boy, do you have a better chance?</p>

8

<p>"As a rule of thumb, I would consider stats above the 75th percentile of admitted students would render that school a safety."</p>

<p>What does this mean? How do you determine if you are above the 75th percentile? Does that mean you are in the top 25%?</p>

9

<p>URM's are Under Represented Minorities (African-Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans).</p>

<p>The most standard method of determining safeties, matches, and reaches is using the SAT 50% Ranges. These are available for nearly every college either in college guides or on their websites. The 50% SAT Range for Ohio State University is 1060-1290. This means that 50% of the accepted applicants scored between 1060-1290. 25% scored over 1290. 25% scored below 1060. The average is about 1175. An applicant should be above the 75% mark (1290) for OSU to be a match, a little above the 50% mark (1175) for the school to be a match, and a little above the 25% mark (1060) for the school to be a reach. (I prefer to use marks approximately at the 80%, 60% and 40% marks.) </p>

<p>Predicting this type of thing is every hard. The main factors are whether the applicant took the most challenging curriculum available at their high school, gpa/rank, and standardized test scores. At colleges that look beyond these measures, they also consider extracurriculars (EC's), essays and recs. Overlaying it is whether the applicant has a hook (URM, legacy, recruited athlete, etc.).</p>

10

<p>A safety is a simple concept. It is a school that you are gaurenteed to get into. You should be above the average stats by a good margin. </p>

<p>Another thing, Kids should love their safety school. It is quite possible to be rejected from every single school except (if you choose correctly) your safety. Make sure your kids (or you!) love your safety school-you'll likely end up going there. You might as well choose one you would like attending for 4 years.</p>

11

<p>willto power, she calls NYU her safety?? I thought NYU was a pretty good and competitive school...</p>

12

<p>according to all the 75% theory, i should've cut down my safety list. i thought a lot of my safeties were my match...i still can't consider nyu or tufts or bc as my safety...i think they're my match.</p>

13

<p>umm...
if ur GPA is top notch, and ur class 1st and have perfect SAT's... NYU will probably be a safety</p>

14

<p>I don't know that hooks are an all or nothing thing. It makes more sense to think in terms of a continuum, at least for some hooks. </p>

<p>Say you are looking at athletic talent. If the school "doesn't attract many athletes," are you talking about recruited athletes who decide not to come, a school that really does no athletic recruitment at all, or a school that kids who are athletes (but unrecruited) don't come to because there isn't much a program in their sport?</p>

<p>My daughter fences, but not at a level (well, not consistently) to be recruited. Many schools lack fencing altogether; other schools only have a club, rather than a team. At the school she is currently attending, I don't know that the coach does much recruiting (only a few schools with teams have scholarships available for this sport) or gets involved in the admission process. My daughter had been to this school's fencing camp before and had run into the coach periodically thereafter at competitions; he knew she was going to apply.</p>

<p>Now did the admission's office contact him when my daughter applied and ask, "How about it?" Did the coach happen to tell the admission's office generally that he needed more fencers? I don't really know. </p>

<p>So, it may have been a mild hook. Or it may simply have been that the fencing was just an EC that showed a regular, substantial time commitment to a particular passion, and something else could have fit that bill equally well.</p>

<p>The same sort of analysis would probably work for other areas as well. Playing an instrument? Well, how good is the applicant, is there an unmet need for that particular instrument, has the conductor listened to the applicant and encouraged him/her to apply or told the admission's office to be on the lookout for a good X player, etc.? Does the school even put much emphasis on its instrumental music program, is it trying to attract music majors, etc.</p>

15

<p>If this helps my safety school was one I not only knew I could get in, but one i was guaranteed admittance.</p>

<p>My safety was University of Arizona, which accepts all az residents in the top twenty five percent of their class and when I applied last fall I already knew what scholarships I would win/was eligible for. </p>

<p>I would recommend looking your state school for a safety, because most states want their qualified students to stay instate. </p>

<p>As far as GPA, from talking to admissions, applying, etc. I think the GPA is important, perhaps more important than test scores, because it shows a cumulative effort in high school. If you are worried your child's is lower than a lot of schools, have your son talk to his counselor and teachers to make note of the hard work he put in to the classes, or if he is taking upper level (AP, IB, etc) classes in their recommendations.</p>