My humanities-oriented DC is developing her list of colleges and planning tours during spring break. We have a little disagreement on where she should focus her attention.
She’s identified 2 Ivies as her top choices/reaches, where she also happens to be legacy. She plans to apply ED to one of them. Though her chances seem reasonable (based on her “rigorous” private school, teacher recs, grades, and SAT scores) she feels there’s nothing sure about schools with single digit acceptance rates.
She’s also identified two schools for her matches where her SAT scores put her in the top 25% of enrolled students. The driving factor for those choices is that they are in a big city. She would absolutely be happy there. They have acceptance rates around 25-30% and the students from her school that go there generally took easier classes and had lower grades. Her college counselor thought they were good matches and pretty much said it would be surprising if she did not get accepted at those schools.
DC’s lone safety is our state flagship with an in-state acceptance rate of 40%+. It’s in a small town and she does not like the Greek scene or D1 sports. But, it has a good reputation in the majors she’s interested in and she’ll have plenty of friends/acquaintances there. The college counselor suggested a number of other schools (mostly small liberal arts colleges in rural areas) to consider in this range of selectivity.
My preference is to go with the college counselor’s suggestion to identify a few more safeties for our visit list so she’ll have more places she’ll be happy to attend if her top choices don’t come through. DC would rather look at a few more schools that would mostly fall in the reach category. Her thinking is that her matches are pretty secure and our state flagship is a worst-case scenario.
My thinking is that she needs schools where she’ll be excited to go to that she’s absolutely going to get accepted. I’m thinking another school with 40% acceptance rates that might fit her better than our in-state public. Nothing worse for a parent than disappointment. On the other hand, if her matches are pretty safe, maybe she should find a few more reaches that would be super-exciting.
If you applied to the state flagship, then I think an application to a local city college in the state system is a good idea. they tend to have a higher acceptance rate than the flagship and more rigorous than a CC.
Money? You need to have the conversation about how much you guys can come up with for each of four years. If you are full pay and can afford to be- great. But if not- you aren’t done by a long shot.
A school is not a match or safety only if you can pay for it. In many cases, getting the money right is just as hard (or harder) than getting the admissibility right.
If the money side is taken care of, 2 reaches, 2 solid low matches and one true safety is a reasonable ratio.
I like the OP’s summary and characterization of the situation. Since first category is a difficult one even for legacies, I would focus on optimizing choices in the second and third. I would add 1-2 colleges to each of the second and third categories, focusing on identifying more colleges that DC would be very happy to attend. That’s pretty much how we handled things w/ our oldest. He had no Ivy ambitions, so category 1 was just a flyer – that didn’t pay off. He focused on 2nd (selective and excellent schools) and 3rd (state flagships). He got into all except the Ivy and wasn’t disappointed with the outcome. Attended UChicago.
Another parent agreeing that having some choice among safeties is a good thing come April, so that the student does not feel “stuck” with only 1 school, if that’s the way it turns out. It sounds like your school counselor is giving pretty sound advice, a school with 25-30% acceptance rate, even for a kid in top 25% of their stats, is still a match, not a safety.
My feeling is that students should have two safeties they don’t hate. I don’t think safeties have to be 100% safe - my youngest had American as a safety - it’s a school that cares about interest, and apparently it does occasionally reject high stat students. It had never rejected any one with my son’s grades or scores and I think being male helps there as well. Anyway, once you have 2 safeties, I think the rest of the list can take care of itself.
Since she’s applying ED to a reach, she can’t have my favorite type of safety - an EA school you get into early. (Even if it was originally a reach or a match once you’re in - it’s a safety.) She might look at other unis with rolling admissions, but her state flagship is likely to be a better deal.
I’d look for midsize to largish schools in more urban areas - Fordham, Syracuse, American all might fit the bill depending on potential majors.
“The college counselor suggested a number of other schools (mostly small liberal arts colleges in rural areas) to consider in this range of selectivity.”
I don’t think that this is a good strategy. She should go back to her GC and ask for some suggestions for more urban options. Most of the top US urban areas, particularly on the East Coast, should be able to provide a number of low match or safety school options.
I think you’re looking for a school at which, statistically, the applicant has a (ballpark) 90+% chance of getting in.
I’m not sure there’s a way to verify that, but I think the following could apply:
There are no true safeties when the admit % is under 40%.
For a school to approach or actually be a safety, admit rate should be 40%+ and the student should score at or above the 75th% among admits for both GPA and SAT/ACT. If the applicant accomplishes that, you can begin to consider the school a low match or a safety. Obviously, the higher the admission rate, the safer it is when you're at the 75th percentile for stats.
That’s the “admissions” part. To be a true safety, the school should also be affordable and the student should (at least) not mind attending.
A safety school must be affordable and your child must be happy to attend. I would try to line up a couple one or two more safety schools but there would be no need to apply until the ED school makes a decision. There are many fine urban schools that could fit the bill – a few offhand might be BU, Fordham, GW, American, Loyola-MD and I’m sure you can find many more.
“For a school to approach or actually be a safety, admit rate should be 40%+ and the student should score at or above the 75th% among admits for both GPA and SAT/ACT.”
But be careful about being TOO conservative to be useful. Shooting too low may not help much since a “safety” also has to be a place where the kid fits and would be happy to attend, shooting too low .
For my latest rodeo, our safest school had an admit rate of 49% and my kid’s ACT was 3 points above the 75th percentile mark. Admit with full tuition scholarship. While this would qualify as a true safety, we really didn’t feel it was useful to pile up a lot of schools at this level of safeness because there’d be more fit problems in this bucket.
Next safest was a 30% admit rate and the kid’s ACT range was two points above the 75th percentile. Admit with a 2/3rds tuition scholarship. This is the category we really tried to focus on. I’d still call it a safety; others would say low match or match.
Agree with MathMom on the helpfulness of using EA. Kid applied to four schools EA (safety, low match, match, medium reach); By December 15 all four were safeties!
So be informed/realistic about the chances for your kid’s Ivy legacy/ED (which precludes using most EA programs). If that is a Hail Mary (even when accounting for the legacy and ED boosts) it may not be the best strategy.
A school where the acceptance rate is over 50% AND the student’s GPA is at the high end of the previous freshman year class/ the student significantly exceeds the 25-75% SAT or ACT range might reasonably be considered a safety.
It should also be a school that does not engage in blatant yield protection. A school that tends to go exclusively by stats is obviously going to be safer than one where admission is holistic, or puts a lot of emphasis on how likely they think you are to attend.
“A school where the acceptance rate is over 50% AND the student’s GPA is at the high end of the previous freshman year class/ the student significantly exceeds the 25-75% SAT or ACT range might reasonably be considered a safety.”
This is so conservative that it may actually cause some risk (i.e. Tufts syndrome rejection or deferral). Also, admit rates can sometimes be misleading and manipulated. Test score ranges are harder to game and usually give a better indicator of safety-ness for a particular kid.
For example, USNWR #56 GWU has a 39.5% admit rate and a 27-31 ACT range. #74 American has a 26% admit rate and a 26-30 ACT range. Both would be pretty safe for a 33/34 ACT kid.
I don’t know…if your kiddo would be happy at the state flagship…then I don’t think she needs a lot of,other safety schools.
Any chance the flagship has rolling admissions??
I think every student should,have at least one rolling admissions and/or early action school on their application list…where their likelihood of acceptance is very high. That way…the student has an acceptance in the bag early in the admissions game. It really takes the edge off!
So…I personally would be looking for a probably sure thing, that is affordable, that the kid likes…that has either EA or rolling admissions.
If 60K-70K a year is too pricey for you but you can not expect fin aid, you could consider cheaper safeties overseas such as Edinburgh, St. Andrews, TCD, McGill, Toronto, etc.
They tend to be pretty straight-forward in admissions (meet their stated criteria and you’re in) and the UK unis love full-pay Americans. The only British & Irish unis where you face the possibility of rejection even if you meet their recommended criteria are Oxbridge and LSE (and those are tough for Americans to get in to).
I agree with @thumper1 If your DD can get into at least one safety by mid-December, then she can drop other potential safeties and focus instead on more reach and match schools as she finalises her applications. My son got in EA to Northeastern and it allowed us to drop other safeties (that my son was not too keen on) recommended by his GC. It saved us a bunch of time and application fees.
A safety is a school where (a) the student is certain to be admitted, and (b) the school is certain to be affordable.
A 40% or 50% admission rate is not a safety. It may be a likely, it may be a probably…but it is not a safety.
There are some schools which guarantee a certain level of aid based on test scores or NM status – and I feel that those schools are probably safeties for students who have those stats. If a school is willing to offer a half or full tuition scholarship to buy the test score record the student brings… it’s a fairly sure bet they will admit that student.
There are also some schools or state systems that guarantee admission to students based on GPA, test scores, class rank, or some combination. That was my daughter’s situation, and even though she wanted to go out of state, she was happy to aim high and rely on the state system for a safety.
But if there isn’t a guarantee of admission, then lower stat students can be admitted over high stat students for a variety of different reasons. Choice of major could make a difference. Or the schools efforts to achieve diversity goals could lead to a more holistic approach to admission. So without some sort of guarantee status, I wouldn’t consider a state flagship with a 40% admission rate a safety. Likely, yes. Safety, no.
I find the language in the opening post – “if her matches are pretty safe” – to be confusing – “if apples are pretty much the same as oranges”… anything labeled a “match” by definition is not a “safety”. Now sometimes it is hard to know which is which… but I think you will have greater peace of mind if you just convince your d. to at least apply to your concept of a safe match using EA or rolling admissions. A college that has already accepted a student is a safety no matter what it was labeled before.
I agree that visiting some potential safeties is a good idea. I would come up with a few possibilities that are near the matches and reaches you are going to visit any way and ask her to take a look at at least one. If she doesn’t get into the ED school, she can add a safety. While it seems likely she will get into her matches, you never know. There are occasional stories of kids that should have gotten into a school but didn’t.