How do you know when a school is "safety" enough?

Applying to College
1

<p>My school limits college applications to five schools per person. This rule was created to ensure that applicants to schools wouldn't overlap (thereby increasing competition within same school, which lowers our school's "feeder" stats).</p>

<p>Unfortunately, this rule forces us to have 1 reach, 1 match, and 2 safeties. However, I'm not a great evaluator of my own strengths, and my counselor is new this year. </p>

<p>How can I determine when a school is "safe" enough?</p>

<p>For context, my match is likely Cornell AEM or Dartmouth, and my safeties are tentatively Georgetown and Northwestern. Is this reasonable?</p>

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<p>Georgetown and Northwestern are no one’s safeties, period. Try state schools.</p>

3

<p>Cornell/Dartmouth are not matches. Georgetown and NU are not safeties. You have been poorly advised.</p>

4

<p>Wow! Thanks for answering my main question and offering so much insight!</p>

<p>/jk </p>

<p>But in all seriousness, while it is certainly unlikely for those schools to be matches/safeties, you cannot completely eliminate that possibility without knowing any personal qualifications.</p>

5

<p>How about you give us some stats then? It’s unfortunate that your school limits your applications by this much, but in nearly any one’s case, it is unlikely for Northwestern or Georgetown to be a down-right safety. One of your safeties should probably be a state school, as suggested above.</p>

6

<p>What are your stats?</p>

<p>Anyway…a safety school is a school that you are SURE that you’ll get accepted to and you’re SURE that you have all costs covered…either by assured grants/scholarships, small federal loans, and/or family funds.</p>

<p>5 school limit? is this an exclusive private school?</p>

<p>this rule forces us to have 1 reach, 1 match, and 2 safeties </p>

<p>That equals 4.</p>

<p>Ivies aren’t matches for anyone.</p>

7

<p>A student with a 4.0 GPA and 2400 SAT + International awards + Amazing recommendations is not a match for Cornell/Dartmouth. What world are you living in?</p>

8

<p>^This. The schools you’ve listed are not matches or safeties for any student, regardless of stats. Their selectivity makes them reaches, which is why we can confidently say that they aren’t matches/safeties regardless of your stats.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Your main question is “How do you know when a school is safety enough?” We’re telling you that schools with low acceptance rates are not safeties regardless of your qualifications.</p>

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<p>Yeah, agreed with the rest, I would REALLY reconsider your definition of a safety. Just look at the results threads for Georgetown and Northwestern to see all the incredibly qualified applicants who don’t get in. A safety is somewhere that, unless an admissions officer has a seizure and accidentally hits the ‘reject’ button, you WILL get into beyond a shadow of a doubt.</p>

<p>For example, according to CB, UMass Amherst’s average ACT is 23 - 28. I have a 34, both my parents went there, and so I can therefore conclude that it is a safety for me.</p>

10

<p>One more addition to the safety criteria: If it is the only school you get into or can afford, it needs to be one that you would be willing to go to. Don’t pick a school that you can get into because everybody does if you believe you would rather die than go to that school with those kids.</p>

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<p>Sorry but Cornell & Dartmouth are not matches for anyone, and Northwestern & Georgetown aren’t safeties either. Students with perfect scores, states, glowing recs and outstanding ECs get rejected from these schools as if its nothing. Head over to there ED/EA result threads or even RD from earlier this year and you will see what we are talking about. As much as we would like to give you reasonable safeties we would need to see what your stats are like first. However as stated before, remember for safeties make sure that:</p>

<ol>
<li>They are financial safeties</li>
<li>You can gain admission to the schools with ease (e.g. your stats should be a reasonable level above their 75th percentile scores)</li>
<li>Possibly the most important- You wouldn’t mind (preferably you would like) attending that school. Which would include aspects of the school such as location, weather and climate, social atmosphere, etc.</li>
</ol>

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</p>

<p>rebeccar, this is my favourite definition of the word “safety”.</p>

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</p>

<p>This gave me a chuckle</p>

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<p>Academic Safety: You are guaranteed admission based on your Stats. Many public Us publish this info. right on their websites for in-state admission.</p>

<p>Financial Safety: You can afford to pay for it out-of-pocket without any aid other than federally determined (FAFSA) aid.</p>

<p>Please note that an Academic Safety might not be a Financial Safety and vice versa.</p>

<p>True Safety: Meets the criteria for both an Academic and a Financial Safety, and in addition offers your major (or the first two years if it is a community college) and is a place that you would be happy to attend if all else goes wrong in the admissions process.</p>

<p>Plan B: Your plan for next year if you can’t identify a True Safety, and you aren’t admitted anywhere that you can afford.</p>

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<p>FYI, this thread may be helpful:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/881237-ivy-caliber-safeties-matches-condensed-advice.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/881237-ivy-caliber-safeties-matches-condensed-advice.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Agree with others upthread that Georgetown and Northwestern can’t be considered safeties for anyone. Matches perhaps, depending on the stats. If you doubt that, look at some scattergrams. Many students with very high stats are rejected, while others with similar or worse stats are accepted. </p>

<p>If you are a senior, it is too late for you, but otherwise Georgetown has EA, so maybe a good choice to apply to. If you are accepted early, than it would be a safety, and you could apply to only reach schools. If you aren’t accepted early, you will have to find some less selective schools to apply to.</p>

16

<p>You need to talk to your college counselor because limiting applications to 5 per student is bull-f<strong><em>ing-</em></strong>*. It’s just lazy counselors who don’t want to put in the extra work for SSRs. I’ve heard of schools capping at 9, but 5 is just ridiculous. That gets me mad. Anyways, like everyone else said, those schools aren’t safeties or matches for anyone. </p>

<p>A safety is a school that accepts at LEAST 50% of its applicants and the student has grades/test scores that are above the “average” applicant. Such schools include state universities, liberal art schools with high admission rates, lover UC schools like UCSC, etc.</p>

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<p>OP, just out of cusiousity, do you go to United World Colleges???
Guys, if this is the case then Northwestern would indeed be considered a safety. UWC is an internationally known boarding school. If the OP is a top student there, then acceptence to Northwestern is basically set…no so much with Dartmouth though</p>

18

<p>I also agree that a 5 application limit is unfair</p>

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<p>OP,</p>

<p>According to other posts you are only a Sophomore. Lots of time.</p>

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<p>Thanks for all the replies. Just want to clarify -</p>

<p>Yes, I’m currenty a sophomore at a competitive school known for being an “admissions powerhouse” and “academic pressure cooker”. Since class sizes are fairly small (and counselors are extremely OCD about keeping annual acceptance rates high), students are required to meet with their counselors every quarter to discuss academic plans. But that’s an awful understatement.</p>

<p>For instance, as freshmen, our counselors “helped” (pushed and prodded) us establish a four-year academic matrix. We were basically forced to choose our courses for all of high school as freshmen, based on our performance in middle school and on entrance exams.</p>

<p>We were also suggested (forced) to create an extracurricular map with all leadership/award/competition/summer opportunities listed out down to the very month. No lie.</p>

<p>The summer before sophomore year, our counselors met with parents to formulate a tentative college list…based merely on academic and extracurricular achievement from freshman year. This may sound ridiculous, and I would absolutely agree with you, but the school still encourages (enforces) this tradition because it helps us focus on meeting admissions criteria and exceeding in areas that would particularly stand out to specific schools (i.e. professional work experience for Wharton, student advocacy/activist campaigns for Columbia). Now, this might sound like a load of BS–after all, how can we tailor our profile to cater to certain schools?–but this whole process has created extremely high turn-out rates for the past ten years. However, I would agree that gaming the admissions process isn’t the fairest thing to do, especially when most students don’t receive the assistance we get. But then again, that’s what private college counseling is for.</p>

<p>We recieved our PSAT scores on Thursday, and proceeded to “solidify” our tentative college list with our counselors. For the record, I scored 238. But to be fair, that was after a summer of SAT boot camp and weekly peer seminars.</p>

<p>So, coming back to my original topic, my counselor created a list that considered Cornell and Gtown as my two match schools (typo on original post–breakdown is 1 reach, 2 match, 2 safety). But, again, my college search-specific counselor is new this year, so I was unsure of his ability to accurately gauge my admit chances…specially since I’m only a sophomore.</p>

<p>So, after this long, winding explanation, I hope you’ll be able to understand where my concern was coming from. </p>

<p>If you can provide some more targeted feedback after you’ve read about my situation, I would appreciate any help. Thanks!</p>