<p>If there is a safety with 100% chance of admission and affordability, only one is needed. Of course, the safety must be a school that the student likes and offers the desired academics.</p>
<p>But many here use “safety” to refer to schools that are not truly 100%, since they consider subjective criteria and do not have explicit automatic admission or scholarship criteria. These are better categorized as almost-safeties, if the chance of admission and affordability is 95-99% or so. But then there should be three or more such schools if there is no true 100% safety in the list, in order to minimize the chance of a shutout.</p>
<p>Beyond that, any number of matches or reaches may be included. There is no need to have a strict ratio.</p>
<p>“If there is a safety with 100% chance of admission and affordability, only one is needed. Of course, the safety must be a school that the student likes and offers the desired academics.”</p>
<p>I will have my kid apply to 2 safeties. First, if she is shut out of matches/reaches either from admission altogether, or because merit doesn’t come in and they aren’t affordable, then she still has a choice to make and won’t feel “stuck.”. Second, kids change. What might feel like a good fit for a safety in the fall may not feel that way in the spring. My .02. </p>
<p>I think that my algorithm will yield the optimal number of reaches. </p>
<p>Suppose your top choices all have a 10% chance for you to be admitted, conditioned on Naviance data (SAT and GPA). Then even with 7 reaches, you have 0.1 * 0.9 ^(N-1) chance, which is between 5% and 10%, of attending the school you ranked N , but you would still have a (0.9^7 ~= 48%) chance of getting rejected by all of them! However, your probability of attending your 8th reach (still assuming a probability of admission of 10%), will be less than 5%. I would move on to a school with a higher probability of acceptance before I wasted time on an application for a school with less than 5% chance of attending. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, this analysis demonstrates that there is some logic in applying to many reaches if you really want to go to a “lottery” school. </p>
<p>I would also argue that most of the people who get admitted to a reach have an a priori probability of being admitted that exceeds the school’s admit rate, though that probability might still be rather low. </p>
<p>For both of my kids, the probabilities were higher and there weren’t a whole lot of applications filed. If you look based on your own needs, you will invariably find schools that you like better and are more likely to get into than some of your less preferable reaches. </p>
<p>Forgive me for jumping into this thread, but does any of this analysis change if you are hunting for the best merit aid package possible? If you have, say, up to 10 schools where an applicant has a shot at good merit aid, and all 10 are good schools that are strong in the departments that interest the applicant, wouldn’t it make sense to try for a larger number to increase one’s odds at getting the best offer?</p>
<p>Obviously there is a point of diminishing returns/excessive effort for all these applications and supplements, but does this change the analysis at all?</p>
<p>The analysis changes drastically because your preferences cannot be predetermined. </p>
<p>You are less concerned with fit or the quality (real or perceived), and more with the financial arrangements. </p>
<p>For merit aid, you are generally applying to schools with a high probability of acceptance, but with uncertain financial packages. This is one place where a school like Alabama with a known large merit scholarship is a great place to apply, if you know you can afford the room & board after getting the free tuition. </p>
<p>For more competitive merit scholarships though, it’s hard to get data to estimate your costs probability distrubution so it makes sense to cast a wide net. </p>
<p>Yes, it does, There are a few scenarios where I believe applying to a limited number of schools is the strategy the MINIMIZES the students chance of reaching their objective. In these situation more well targeted applications can only increase the odds of a better outcome for the applicant. The situations include …</p>
<ul>
<li>Applicants searching for merit aid including merit aid that is not awarded automatically</li>
<li>Applicants searching for the best financial aid deal … (this only really matters at pretty selective school because those are the ones with the best financial aid)</li>
<li>Applicants applying for programs with tryouts like many musical theater programs</li>
<li>Very highly qualified applicants who want to go to a school where they will be an average student.</li>
</ul>
<p>In any of these cases more application will likely increase the students positive options.</p>
<p>PS - I also have an issue with the 2-3-2 ration that was recommended.</p>
<p>I believe this poster’s child ended up submitting 14 applications … so apparently submitting a lot of applications is OK … the objection the 2-3-2 strategy is supposed to address is an applicant applying to too many reaches. If this student submitted 14 applications and followed the advice then they had 4 safeties, 6 matched, and 4 reaches. There is nothing inherently wrong with that split but there is nothing inherently right about it either IMO, If the student had to chuck a bunch of reaches in which they had a lot of interest to add safeties and matches in which they had less interest to meet this split than I find that unfortunate … the strategy increased the odds the student ended up at a school in which they had less interest. </p>
<p>I’m not a huge fan of the safety-match-reach (s-m-r) mindset especially with a pre-determined mix … it seems to me that people often get hung up on filling the buckets rather than figuring out what attributes define fit for the student. My sample size is only two but in both cases a well thought out attribute list naturally creates a pretty manageable list of schools and tends to have an OK mix of safeties, matches, and reaches without even worrying about it. As long as there are a couple safeties with which the student is OK than I’m a fan of the rest of the list being whatever schools the student likes best. EA can help this strategy a lot … if an applicant gets into a choice they like in the EA round they can ignore the s-m-r and apply to schools they like the most.</p>
<p>I think that the supelatively-qualified students will have some low-match or safe schools that would be reaches for the majority of applicants. It makes sense for them to apply to a lot of reaches, if they are so inclined, while identifying which colleges might be a little more realistic than others. WUSTL and Vanderbilt are famously kind to students with very high test scores (ie. >35 ACT/2350 SAT). They are reaches for everyone else, but are probably solid matches for applicants with those scores (albeit not absolute safeties). I’d say that a student with a 2380 SAT who applied to them, to a state flagship, and perhaps one other college like Tulane, should then apply to as many “lottery” colleges as he or she feels like. I, personally, don’t know why someone would apply to both Dartmouth and CalTech, but we all have our reasons. I think the students to be more concerned with are the ones who have an honest shot at the “brass-ring” schools, but aren’t certain to get into any: let’s say, hypothetically, the student with the 2150-2250/33-34 scores, a 3.5-4.0 unweighted/4.0-4.5 weighted GPA, and solid ECs. That kid needs to cast a pretty wide net, especially if finances are a concern, or he/she is interested in ultra-competitive STEM fields. Limiting reach schools can be a matter of managing expectations: it’s fine to apply to a few, as long as the student understands that a reach is just that, and does not have his or her heart set on one of them. That applies to parents, also.</p>
<p>So if our situation is that we will not qualify for FA, and we are searching for the best Merit Scholarships, it might make sense to apply to a larger number of schools where our son is above the 75th percentile for SAT’s and GPA’s, and hope for the best package possible?</p>
<p>Under that scenario, we have 2 safeties/should be locks, and then we have scoped out 8 potential Merit Scholarship targets that fit the above criteria.3 of those targets are pending campus visits in October to make sure they are viable candidates for our son.</p>
<p>If the safeties are 100% certain for admission and affordability, the minimum is one. If they are “almost safeties” with very high but not certain chance of admission and affordability, you probably need more than two to minimize the chance of a shutout.</p>
<p>When searching for non-automatic merit scholarships, it helps to take the mindset that acceptance without sufficient merit scholarships = rejection. Then base the reach/match assessment on the chance of getting the large enough merit scholarship (although this may be more difficult to assess than the chance of just getting accepted).</p>
But as explained above, this basic rule is not very good advice for people interested in highly selective reaches, or who are looking for merit aid. As I noted earlier, if you look at the results threads for the most selective colleges, you will find many examples of people admitted only to one or two out of six, eight, or more reaches. You can’t know in advance which one or two out of that group will admit you.</p>
<p>I applied to about 14 reaches (using schools like vanderbilt and washu included in that category) and 2 safeties. I Got into 3 reaches. Had I applied to only 11 reaches there would have been the possibility of getting into none of them. Moral of the story: apply to as many schools as humanly possible. Its a numbers game</p>