<p>hey everyone. i was just wondering how exactly we're supposed to find good reaches/matches/safties for ourselves. i'm on college board right now, but are these sat ranges/etc. accurate?</p>
<p>for a little background, my SAT score is 2020 [hoping to get a 30 + on the ACT] but my grades pretty much suck [mostly Bs with a few scattered As in a competitive high-stress school environment, & taking a very difficult course-load (my gc told me she would make a point of emphasizing all of this for me :D)]. oh & i have a few ECs which show a passion, i believe.</p>
<p>but how how can u tell if a reach is too high of a reach to even bother applying??</p>
<p>If your SATs are aound a college’s 25th percentile, then a quarter of the entering class came in with scores at or below yours. If you can add to that a good reason why you’re a great match for the school and would add something of value to campus life, then you could be a good candidate at a reach school.</p>
<p>The acceptance percentage should also be reasonable (perhaps somewhere around 50%). A college with a 10% acceptance rate will probably never be a reasonable reach.</p>
<p>I agree with gadad, if you’re at the bottom of the 25th to 75th percentile in SAT/ACT score, that would be considered a reasonable reach, as long as your on that radar. I’d suggest that if it is a reasonable reach, apply ED. My #1’s act average was 28-32 with a 20% acceptance rate, I had a 28 but I knew that in all other aspects (grades, extracurriculars, class rank) I was a solid candidate. Applied ED and got in!</p>
<p>I disagree. IMO, if it’s a highly selective school that accepts under 15% which is pretty much all ivies other than Cornell and the top LAC’s, being at or below the bottom 25% makes the school all but impossible if you’re not a recruited athlete, URM, legacy or development candidate.</p>
<p>Those schools are reasonable reaches if you are at least in the middle of the 50th percentile as 40% of accepted students have one of the above hooks.</p>
<p>If a school takes 50% of applicants, it’s a totally different thing.</p>
<p>I think that you can make an estimate based on your class rank, if your school ranks, plus your SAT/ACT. Even if your school doesn’t officially rank, the likelihood is that their released profile will give the schools some idea of where you stand. SAT/ACT alone will not tell the story. (Also, your score breakdown on the SAT will give you more information than a total out of 2400.) </p>
<p>If you look at a college’s stats and see that 75% or more of accepted students are in the top 20%, and you are barely in the top 50%, and your SAT is in the middle of their range, then I’d say it is not a realistic reach.</p>
<p>With the grades you describe, the most selective schools are out of the picture. (But Hmom is correct: at those schools the bottom 25% in stats are mostly URMs, recruited athletes, and development admits.) The fact that you have taken a rigorous courseload helps.</p>
<p>hmom, UPENN is above that 15% acceptance rate too and Datmouth is not too far below it either, with Cornell planning to accept about 18% of students this year, call me crazy, I’d classify it as “highly selective” as well. People have this mirage that Cornell lets in 99% of applicants. I was at the 25th percentile for scores and I got into Cornell. Not a legacy, URM, or recruited athlete and still got in. Its possible Consolation, go for it!</p>
<p>Penn was 18% last year but that includes nursing and engineering schools. Dartmout was 13% and will be 11% this year. Brown was also 13% and will be 10-11% this year.</p>
<p>I am assuming you are a junior. First off, try to get your grades up. Your grades are weaker than your SAT score and will likely prove to be the limiting factor in admissions. There are still a few months left this year and half of your senior year to show improvement. With your current GPA, your SAT scores need to be closer to the 75% level than the 25% level. You can check the schools’ common datasets, section C, to see the distribution of GPAs for matriculating students. This might give you a better idea. You have to expect that being put on the wait list at your reach schools is a distinct possibility. Strong senior year performance can make a difference in getting off a wait list.</p>
<p>Looking for reach schools for the sake of applying to reach schools is going about it backward. Look for schools you like, then figure out whether they are reaches and whether it is reasonable to apply. </p>
<p>I think some posters are too pessimistic when they suggest it is unreasonable to apply if your stats put you in the bottom 25% of a class. The bottom quartile might be populated disproportionately by special categories, but not exclusively. </p>
<p>The point of a reach is to reach for what you want. The point of multiple reaches is to play the odds. But that strategy only pays off if you actually like your reaches.</p>
<p>Reasonableness-- that is between you, whoever pays your application fees, and whoever you pester for recommendations. </p>
<p>Of course, you should be prudent as well as reasonable. So make sure you have matches and safeties you like.</p>
<p>If you really want to get into the nitty gritty of who is in the bottom 25% group that isn’t in the hooked categories, let’s not pretend that luck is the key factor. While miracles can happen, I believe college admissions has many things we can predict.</p>
<p>The kid who gets in with low stats has something the college wants. Geography plays a role–if you’re the only decent candidate from N. Dakota you get ‘lucky.’ Low income, underperforming school, it’s going to be something. </p>
<p>So if you’re a private school kid from NYC or Boston with stats in the bottom 25% of the class at an ivy, you probably have a better chance of being struck by lightening than getting in.</p>
<p>sorry for the confusion; I didn’t think that OP was looking at Ivies with “mostly B’s” and a 2020, so I didn’t assume the 25 % was as hmom correctly stated, URM, developmental, etc…</p>
<p>I do now think, in this economic environment, that a tier down, a full paying ED student can consider the 25% a reasonable reach…if the school is not need blind…</p>
<p>aw well thanks for all the responses : ) if it clears things up, i wasn’t looking at ivies per se, but i would ideally like to go to the best-ranked place i could possibly get into [i don’t mean that rankings are everything, obviously. but well, u know what i mean…].
also, i would think it’s safe to say that perhaps BU & Northeastern would be the only matches/safties i need, maybe?
but the goal may be someplace like Wesleyan, as my stats are in their range.
plus, idk if this helps but i kind of am a URM. like, i would consider myself ‘other’ but anyone could do that, technically.</p>
<p>right, well would anyone be able to drop a few names of where i could look into? much appreciated.</p>
<p>yes, i definitely plan on doing much better grade-wise next year. too bad i didn’t think much of it all these years. i mean, who knew a language is counted as part of your core curriculum. i always assumed it was more of a filler class :/</p>
<p>The rankings place schools that are nothing alike in the experience they offer next to one another. The things that make a college not work out are fairly consistent: poor administrative services, massive Greek life with nothing but dorm parties as an alternative and super homogeneous schools that make you feel left out. Often overlooked is the fact that schools of medium size are big enough to support many majors, but small enough to be flexible in how they respond to your needs. That would be 2000-5000 undergraduate with a graduate student body smaller than that. You would be surprised how many schools that cuts out. You want diversity of outlook but uniformity of talent in other students so your experience will rock! If a college is selective enough, there are no merit scholarships and admission tends to be need blind with good financial support. There are colleges which function like selective schools but which are not safeties for Ivy League applicants and therefore can be somewhat selective but with a lower level of scores. Find them and get happy.</p>