If your child’s stats fall into the top 1% of the accepted range then it’s safe to call it a safety but if acceptance rate of that school is less than 20%, that’s a dream, a realistic reach or a safety?
If you’re stats and gpa are well above 75th percentile, I would call that school a safety. By well above I mean at least 100 points on sat or 2 act points. This is only an estimate based on stats, bc that is what you asked for in the original post. Obviously there are other factors that come in play.
How would you answer current edited version of my post?
A college also needs to appear affordable to be considered a safety.
I wouldn’t consider a school with an acceptance rate of 20% as a safety. There are schools in that range that practice yield protection (ex. may not accept students who they think are applying solely as a safety). look for demonstrated interest etc.)
IMO the best idea is to find safety with rolling/EA so the applicant will know for sure that he/she is in by December.
Safety/Reach is independent of dream.
Safety or reach is based on stats of the schools compared to the stats of the applicant.
Some people with 4.0’s dream to go to their state school that has an acceptance rate of 70+%. Some with a 2.0 dream to go to Harvard.
As far as the scenario goes, I would consider a 20% acceptance rate school as a safety to be a gamble - i.e. not a true safety. There are too many variables that go into it and too much could go wrong. 80% is quite a lot of people getting rejected.
That’s not to say you can’t apply to that school as a “preferred safety” and another as a last resort safety though.
I looked at common data set of few top schools and all crossed off demonstrated interest as a factor.
If admit rate is < 30% i don’t think a school can be a safety, regardless of stats. At that level of selectivity, the selection is going to be unpredictable. Stats in top 25% for a school with a 65-75% admit rate would be a pretty solid safety, I think.
There are about 10-15 schools that basically are reaches for everyone, no matter how good your stats are. This means the Ivies, Stanford, UChicago, Duke, MIT, CalTech, Northwestern, Amherst, Williams, Pomona and maybe a couple more. Because of sheer percentages, those schools regularly turn down lots and lots of people who have incredible stats because they just don’t have room for them. I would call those the “dream” schools because of how unpredictable admissions is for them.
Outside of those few places, it gets a lot easier to predict admissions chances. Then you would say that a school is a reach if you are an unhooked applicant in the middle or lower end of the statistical range for admittees to that school, a match if you are in the top quarter or so of the range, and a safety if you are above the range.
This does not mean that there can be no surprises. Everyone knows someone who didn’t get in to a particular school they thought was a safety, and some schools have more quirky admissions processes than others. The University of California system, for example, emphasizes grades and class rigor, and doesn’t care as much about standardized test scores. People are endlessly surprised on CC when they don’t get into Berkeley even though they have a high ACT score.
But this rough rule of thumb works most of the time, especially for big schools.
IMO you have to dig deeper if the area of study is capped at the school and/or direct admit into a specific program (engineering and nursing come to mind). Then you need to find data on admittance to that particular University/program of study and consider the 25% / 50% / 75% benchmarks for GPA’s + test score.
Also look at Common Data Set to see what the school considers very important. If for instance they consider class rank a big deal and you’re down around midpoint of your class, it’s more problematic even if you have 75% GPA + test scores.
And if you’re OOS for a state U, that can another layer of variability …typically they are more selective for OOS than in state.
Agreed. However, my question was specific for students whoes stats does match top singular percentile admitted to these schools. We are not counting finance as a factor here. Let’s assume our test subject is full pay. Talking of full pay, what percentage of students are full pay? How many decline admission because they can’t afford and what happens to those seats. They go to deffered or wait listed?
Schools will accept more students than they have seats for. They already know approximately the percentage of students who will accept the offer and they scale up from there. For example, a school with 5000 seats and a yield rate of 30% (30% of admitted students will end up attending) will accept 16000+/- students.
Got it. Thank you.
A safety fits the following:
a. Student is assured of admission (including to the desired major, if some majors at the school are more selective than the school overall).
b. The school is assured to be affordable.
c. Student likes the school.
@ucbalumnus I like this explanation, you really covered all aspects.
There is a challenge with “safety” schools and very top students. They are academically qualified for every school, however, due to a certain self selection process (preferring more selective universities), a tendency for some universities to value students who want to attend their school not merely use it as a safety (Tufts Syndrome), and the fact that some majors within less selective universities are very selective and often have quotas (engineering is an example) they can occasionally find that a school deemed to be assured for acceptance doesn’t accept them.
Top students can also be prone to the idea that schools will be offering significant scholarships because they are top students. The more selective the school or the major the less likely they will offer significant scholarships and rely more on financial aid. This can be an even greater issue for top students applying to OOS flagships. State schools are designed to serve the students of that state. You may get some tuition break but the cost can still be significant.
Finally, is the liking the school part. This can be a challenge. I always recommend a bottom up approach to looking at colleges. Find your safety first. Learn to like your safety. Find out about Honors Colleges and see about what organizations are available to the university’s top students. If you can find your true safety then while you may still be disappointed at not getting accepted to Selective U. or discovering that Expensive U. won’t be affordable you still have a place to go that you’ll like. When you do get accepted to that top school or find the expensive university does make it affordable it’s all the more reason to celebrate.
You may also want to check your school’s naviance and speak with your gc. Sometimes a school can be a ‘safety’ or a ‘likely’ for kids coming from a specific high school, because of a relationship the schools have or a good track record.
Thank you
“I looked at common data set of few top schools and all crossed off demonstrated interest as a factor.”
Why? For top schools, regardless of what’s in the CDS, interest is part of match. You can’t expect them to choose you from thousands, if you just seem to be picking opportunistically, “I want a top school, which one doesn’t matter.” Interest is reflected in many ways, including how you sow your match, after stats, in the app an any supp. And in the choice of LoRs and what they convey.
Even if you somehow interpret stats reports to show your kid is in the top 1%, that’s still only the stats part, tip of the iceberg.
Any time you really don’t know what more a school values, it’s not a dream, nor a “realistic reach.” It’s a crapshoot. You just hope lightning will strike.
Demonstrated interest matters more at some schools than others.
People say it is a huge deal at WashU, Johns Hopkins, Notre Dame, Vanderbilt, Tufts, Emory, Case Western, Boston University, George Washington, many LACs…
but on the other hand HYPSMCC, Amherst, Williams, Carleton, CalTech, Cornell, Berkeley, Boston College and plenty of others just don’t care.
You can’t say they don’t care, no matter what the CDS says. No one polices the CDS. It isn’t about whether or not they track visits or who’s on a mailing list. Of course they care about who’s truly interested and how that shows in the app and supp. It’s not proclaiming, either.