<p>And also, quick clarification - </p>
<p>No, I don’t go to UWC. I attend a charter school that is an extension of a large, suburban public school. We share the campus with the rest of the school, but we neither overlap in classes nor in class rank calculations. </p>
<p>However, our school’s profile (the description sent along with your transcript) is considered the overall school and the charter is only mentioned in course listing specifications.</p>
<p>I agree with the idea of applying EA to Georgetown (and maybe U Chicago as well?). That way you will know if you are in before the deadline for your other schools. If you get deferred you can alter your list accordingly. However this will only work if you do not apply ED or SCEA elsewhere.</p>
<p>All these posts have made me wonder if there is some straight-forward formula that might define Safety in terms of admissions —</p>
<p>How about this:</p>
<p>-Selectivity 10% or less (Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Princeton, maybe Penn-Wharton: By definition not a safety for anyone other than 2400 with perfect academic record and non-objectionable personal traits</p>
<p>-Selectvity 11%-20%: Safety if both GPA and SAT are above 90% of enrolled students</p>
<p>-Selectivity 21%-30%: Safety if both GPA and SAT are above 85% of enrolled students</p>
<p>-Selectivity 31%-40%: Safety if both GPA and SAT are above 80% of enrolled students</p>
<p>-Selectivity 41%-50%: Safety if both GPA and SAT are above 75% of enrolled students</p>
<p>anyway, something like that. Of course people mean different things by the word Safety. That’s why we have the fields of Statistics and Probability, with confidence intervals and all that.</p>
<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>
<p>I don’t think that you can consider schools with 10% or lower acceptance rates as safeties for anyone, including students with 2400 SAT scores and perfect GPAs.</p>
<p>DunninLA - thank you for the extremely detailed analysis. How did you establish the selectivity percentage subdivisions though? The formulaic approach sounds ideal, as it rids of all the unecessary extra considerations/hassles of over- and under-evaluating onself.</p>
<p>do you mean how did I decide on the arbitrary 1-10, 11-20, categories of ten, or do you mean where do I get the selectivity data?</p>
<p>
that might be true, however I’m not sure people realize what a small group this is… I think something under 500 per year has a 2400, and I’m guessing that only half of those have a perfect academic record, which brings this group to 250.</p>
<p>I should have qualified what I mean by perfect academic record as well… by that I mean that an applicant has straight As in the most demanding curriculum the high school has to offer. That generally means As in 8-12 AP classes (or similarly rigorous classes is private schools that are not AP), but not at schools that don’t offer them of course.</p>
<p>If there are those with Stats like that that are denied anywhere, I would be confident the denial would revolve around reservations about the person’s character revealed in leters of rec. That’s why I qualified it with “unobjectionable personal traits”. Such traits woud include a reputation for cheating/dishonesty, having been convicted of a crime, for grade grubbing, or for being mean spirited or otherwise anti-social.</p>
<p>Actually DunninLA, people exactly like you have mentioned (i.e. 2400 SAT, unobjectionable traits, etc.) can’t consider schools like ivys+MIT+Stanford and others of that caliber safeties, or even matches. Believe it or not, schools like HYP are reaches to EVERYONE and admissions at that level are a crapshoot (as you have probably heard before). Wan’t evidence/data to back this claim up? Head on over to threads such as Yale’s SCEA results thread where candidates which are exceptional in almost, if not, every area are denied/deferred admission- People with perfect test scores, perfect gpas, outstanding ECs, glowing LORs, and what not. Look at silverturtle for example, who everyone thought would have been the 1st to get accepted (and really should have been), he was deferred to the RD round for who knows what. No one understands what the reasoning behind the deferral is. At some point certain schools just can’t be called safeties (or even matches), even if the applicant had a flawless application.</p>
<p>One big difference applies to the OP- he/she apparently has superb college counseling. The GCs apparently take the long and broad view that a fine application for a top school can be carefully crafted, begnning early. Clearly, results prove out. I believe this means OP is not in a standard pool of highly qualified applicants. Statistical probability may take on a unique form. One would have to factor in the particular rep of the hs (which adcoms will know, in detail) and the success of prior admits at the specific colleges they matriculated at. Plus, GC pull (which is partly based in how well the GC matches certain kids to certain colleges.)
I’ve seen it. Despite any protestations, a good GC can not only make the adcom’s work easier, he/she knows how to write the right recommendation.
This doesn’t answer the thread question- we don’t know secifics.</p>
<p>I guess so. I wish my school had things like that in place. Despite the fact that we are in the Caribbean most of our grads go to US universities anyway.</p>
<p>I have a very different take on the whole thing. </p>
<p>Cornell CAN be definitely be a match for some tippy top students. To me match means that there is a probability of 40-90% of getting in. It is certainly reasonable that there are applicants for which the probability of getting into Cornell is 50%. </p>
<p>I also think that for the same tippy top student, Northwestern can have a probability of getting in at 90%. That is one school that doesn’t play a lot of games. For my D who had tippy top stats, according to our Naviance that would have been a safety. She didn’t want to apply, and I wouldn’t have allowed her to consider it a safety, but the data suggested that it was. That doesn’t make it a true safety. However, in a world where the applicant is only allowed to apply to 5 schools (which is unconscionable btw) , maybe it’s worth taking the gamble. Do you feel lucky? </p>
<p>I assume that come April 1, if you get in nowhere, they would allow you to fill out more applications. There are always some decent schools that still have openings. Clemson’s actual application deadline is May 1. </p>
<p>If it were me, I’d probably use one of the 5 for a definite safety, but I don’t think your GC’s advice is as unreasonable as people are making it out to be,.</p>
<p>^^^ The school GC is almost always the best source for information about reach/match/safety for students at that particular school. Most of them have years worth of admissions results stored in their brains, if not in a non-biological filing system. They know where students like you have been admitted in previous years.</p>
<p>That said, while your GC can give you this kind of information, they aren’t the ones who have to pay for your education. Be sure that you and your parents have a solid understanding of who can and will pay how much for what.</p>
<p>I totally agree with the folks who have stated that no Ivy or very selective school can ever be considered a safety or even a match because the acceptance rates are so ridiculously low. My S is one of those outstanding students (1st in his class, top scores, all 5’s on AP, great EC, etc., etc.) who just got deferred SCEA from Yale. These schools deny thousands of top students every year. The only caveat I would add to this discussion- if a student has all these credentials plus is a recruited athlete or big time legacy student (which my son is neither), then and probably only then could they think of one of these schools as a match if not a safety. </p>
<p>And I think the advice on picking a true safety that the student wants to go to and the family can afford is crucial. For my S, he has two of these schools on his list - Stony Brook and U. of Rochester (who already offered him scholarship money in his Junior year if he gets accepted). Happily, he likes them both so if the top schools turn him down or accept him and don’t offer enough aid, then he can be happy accepting from one of his safety schools. (After he got deferred last week, I started panicking that he needed more safeties. By this week, I realize two safeties that he likes are sufficient). </p>
<p>In today’s world of college applications, even if a student’s credentials are far above what the school says they require, you never know in the end how they are putting that class together. One of his friends - perfect SATs, sport champion, tops in his class, etc. - was turned down by every school on his list a year ago except his safety. Luckily, he was happy to go there. The same thing happened to the girlfriend of a friend of his. It really gives you pause.</p>
<p>One of the most important things to remember in this instance is the difference between the vast majority of schools and the elite feeder schools. </p>
<p>Now, in terms of magnet schools, I have actually noticed that magnet school matriculation lists fall far below elite boarding/day school lists. This could be for a number of reasons including lower affluence, fewer legacies, less athleticism, and a general homogeneity among students; however, the main point is that magnet schools seem to lack the placement that the top prep schools possess.</p>
<p>So, IMO, I do not believe that any magnet school can claim for its students a safety of cornell or georgetown, unless you are the absolute top student among the elevated intellectual span of a magnet. </p>
<p>On the other hand, it is not too difficult to believe that you may be able to consider cornell or georgetown a match, albeit a mid-upper one.</p>
<p>
^agreed
@OP, do you know what you want to major in? I know your young but do you have a hunch yet?</p>