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

<p>OP: given your 238 PSAT, and assuming your Charter sub-school grades you in comparison to the rest of the students in your shared campus (not just the genius cohort), which would mean most of your cohort graduate with 3.95-4.0 unweighted GPA, and top 2% of the school,</p>

<p>then:</p>

<p>your Safeties would be the USNWR schools approx. ranked 17-30 and LACs ranked 8-15.
your Matches would the the USNWR schools approx 5-16. so I guess you get to pick 2 of these. This group includes LACs ranked 1-7
your Reaches would be HYPS + Penn-Wharton. so I guess you get to pick one of these</p>

<p>Your Counselor has Georgetown as a match, whereas I would put a near perfect SAT/GPA with strong ECs as a Safety for Georgetown (and Vandy, and Notre Dame, and Rice, and Emory) … unless you’re applying Georgetown-SFS (which would be a match).</p>

<p>This of course will get ammended if your actual SATs fall outside the top 0.5%.</p>