<p>Last year S found the EA option worked well for him – mega SATs and APs, national awards, but a sub-3.8 GPA. We hoped it would give us an idea of where he stood in the pool so he could adjust in December if needed. He was very, very fortunate to have gotten EAs to two of his favorites.</p>
<p>S2 is going to be more lopsided than S1, without some the big hardware but with other goodies. I’m mentally rethinking the list as this week progresses. It is so very, very tough this year and my heart is breaking for all of your wonderful kids and you amazing, supportive parents. I see good news peeking through the clouds for many, but realigning expectations is going to be a big job at our house. More challenging for my H than S2, I suspect.</p>
<p>I completely agree with shesonherway. We thought “oh, HYP are reach/match, therefore U Chicago, Brown, and Columbia are safeties because they are a few ranks lower in USNWR, AND Northwestern and Cornell are super, super safeties and he should be able to go there with both hands tied”</p>
<p>We completely miscalibrated what “safety” means. “Safety” is not a few ranks lower in the list of top 20 schools. Safety means next twenty schools (ranked 21-40) in our case. </p>
<p>I completely neglected to employ Statistical reasoning (I minored in statistics in my graduate school: shame on me). Forecasting tools (in this case SAT, GPA, etc) are reasonably accurate in predicting whether the outcome will fall within in one group or the other (like first 20 schools vs. next 20 schools). However, WITHIN each group, where exactly the outcome will fall among very similar entities is almost random. AND, this is the kicker, given that there are thousands of schools in USA, top 20 schools out of thousands should be considered virtually indistinguishable for statistical forecasting purpose. </p>
<p>I think this is a trap a lot of very bright students fall into. We certainly fell into this trap, but, as I and shesonherway pointed out, we lucked out: beginner’s luck. We may not be as lucky with S2, so we will be much more guarded and realistic two years later.</p>
<p>^^^ In all honsety, its probably not reasonable to consider any of the top 40 schools as a “safety” no matter how stellar a student is. Some of these schools may be a match for top students, but it is not wise to consider any of them a safety.</p>
<p>This is one reason why CC is so valuable–when you want to believe all good things will happen for your child, and others around you say your child’s a shoo-in for this or that exclusive school, CC is here to keep us grounded. You have to block out those other voices and make sure your kid knows that once you’re over a certain threshold, the top ones are a total crapshoot (unless you’ve got a hook of course).</p>
<p>True again!! If it isn’t the parents giving advice (sometimes gained from personal experience), it’s the experiences of the kids who apply with fabulous stats, EC, etc. who are rejected. You don’t realize what a 93% rejection rate means till you see post after post of rejections…</p>
<p>We will watch DS2 approach the process in two years time. He’s a different kid - higher grades, higher sats likely based on PSATs - but I will sure be circumspect. Reach will be the “win the lottery” category, a new one in my vocabulary. Reach will be the match school - with the 75% stats met, not the 50% stats met, and any overall acceptance rate less than 35%. Matches will be only schools that accept more than 35% of the applicants, and safety - well I think that’s easier to predict… I am convinced that the line between the match schools and the reach schools is awfully blurry this year…</p>
<p>When S1 was applying he was either waitlisted or denied at every one of his match schools, accepted at two safeties, and most perplexing accepted at two reaches. College admissions is very difficult to understand or predict. The reaches were among the last to send their decisions, so it was assumed they were out of the picture as well. Though not outwardly crushed, I could tell he was disappointed during that period. We still can’t figure it all out. S2 (current junior) saw all this happen and is facing it all very realistically. He does not have his heart set on any single school, nor even type of school, even though he has better numbers than his brother. He considers all but a couple of the schools in which he is interested to be reaches (even though statistically some are matches). I must admit, this approach makes it easier on the parents.</p>
<p>That’s probably the best advice I’ve gotten here.</p>
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<p>Very, very difficult but not impossible and absolutely essential to do. For us, the obvious choice was one that my son was not happy with. We found an OOS flagship with an honors college and it is the only school we’ve visited thus far, to make sure it was a good fit. </p>
<p>If I’d not come here, I think we would have done the list differently and thrown the saftey on at the last minute. Choosing his safety also forced my son to figure out what was really important to him and so has made the rest of the list easier to do.</p>
<p>I’m going to repeat what Jym said – not only should no one consider a top-40 ranked school a safety, but any school with an acceptance rate lower than 50% is not a safety. It is a safety for no one (with the exception of Bill Gates’ kids and the like), even if you’re a valedictorian with 2400 SATs. </p>
<p>hyeonjlee, you were exceptionally lucky. </p>
<p>I feel particularly for international students who need financial aid. I think they are going to be rejected at very high rates this year – I already see them posting dismal results, and the Ivy decisions aren’t out yet.</p>
<p>Ditto to finding a safety they’d be happy to attend.
And when you factor in cost, it gets even more difficult.
There are some nice LAC’s that would make good safety choices for S2, and that he’d probably be glad to attend. But will we be willing or able to afford them? Not so safe after all…</p>
<p>I agree that applying to a school with rolling admissions, some sort of priority application (son heard from RPI before Thanksgiving), or EA (two deferrels a definite heads up) is the best kind of safety. Finding safeties for engineering type kids is really easy. There are some excellent schools that get the leftovers from MIT and Caltech. If your school has Naviance - use it! It’s clear from our Naviance that admissions to Brown and Columbia are still very iffy for everyone even the top students. In fact, Brown seems to be harder to get into that Harvard from our school!</p>
<p>CAS75 - My son has a similar profile - awesome on standardize tests - national merit -5’s on AP but grades a bit inconsistent. It worked out for him as he did get accepted at two of his top choices plus 3 others. Those acceptances came after 3 waitlist letters at schools he was pretty sure he would get into plus 2 rejections so I think it really shook him up and maybe he learn being bright is not enough. It was hard for me not to say “I told you so”.</p>
<p>You can call the schools where he was rejected and they may share with you why. I did this at one school (my son was a legacy) and the dean of admissions called me back after he had reviewed the file and he said it was because of his grades. He was extremely nice.</p>
<p>On the waitlist side- your son may want to set up interviews if he has not already interviewed and provide any information that is showing that he is on the upswing- grades increasing - backup or contact from the guidance counselor.</p>
<p>I also think that the post that talks about taking a gap year makes some excellent points.
Bless you and I hope that everything works out</p>
<p>My friend’s son was like OP’s. After applying himself at his safety for a year, he transferred to one of the schools that had rejected him (UMich). He is doing extremely well there & is very happy. While this is understandably a time of sadness, it is definitely not the end of the world. Your son will get through this & he will be just fine when all is said & done. For now, though, you both get to feel bad about the situation - that’s normal. Just know that it will work out.</p>
<p>Forgot to mention: S did apply to one school on his original safety list: Berkeley - that’s because their deadline was before the Chicago EA decision came out. A couple of days ago, he got an offer of admission from Berkeley. He will decline the offer: they offered no money and as an OOS, the tuition is not much cheaper than Chicago. (he also applied to U of MD College Park to test the full ride scholarship option. He got it but will decline it).</p>
<p>That said, I still think we were very reckless, clueless, and yes, downright stupid, to think Berkeley was a safety. Both Berkeley and Chicago decisions could have gone the other way. As I and a couple of other posters pointed out, we just had a crazy dumb luck this time around.</p>
<p>I don’t think lightening strikes twice, so with S2, we will be far more careful in crafting the roster of safeties.</p>
<p>CAS75: My sympathies. Tell him not to despair. Visit the safety and see if he can like it enough to attend, at least for a year. If not, don’t force him. Let him take a gap year and try again next year.</p>
<p>As I said above, you are absolutely right. We were just plain clueless. We REALLY REALLY REALLY lucked out this time around… The spirit of our ancestors took mercy on us :-)</p>