@calmom: Except for USC, which gives half-tuition scholarships to National Merit Scholars it accepts but does reject them (I guess it wants to compete for the best ones or at least the ones it wants to reach a certain number but they are picky about which NMS they want).
Macalester, Barnard, Occidental, American, Rhodes would be potential further 'matches ’ for a student competitive for Ivy admission.
Agnes Scott, Goucher, Pitt, Temple, umn Twin Cities would be urban safeties for a high stats kid.
First, I want to echo what everyone else has said. A safety is only a safety if it is affordable. After identifying schools of potential interest, the very first thing we did with our daughter was to run the NPC and check the available merit scholarships. Only if that process told us the school would be affordable, or that our daughter would have a reasoable shot at significant merit, did the school go “on the list”. That has to be the first “cut” as it were. We saw it with friends of both of our kids. The kid gets excited because they get into this or that school, and only then do the parents look at how they can afford it. Never understood that.
Second, we struggled mightly with your question of what is a legitimate safety school from an admissions perspective for a kid with obviously good stats. Not to sound elitist, but the fact is that a for a kid with “Ivy” level stats, the selectivity of a school itself, and the assumed consequent strength of the student body, is part of the analysis of fit. When a kid also has criteria that take larger schools and their honors colleges off the list, it becomes difficult to find schools which fit the mantra of “affordable, sure of admittance and happy to attend”. We had that exact problem.
In our particular circumstance, we kind of split the baby and did not require our daughter to apply to any schools where the admit rate was over 50%. Instead, we asked her to apply to three schools where her stats were at or above the 75% line and the admissions rate (for females) was at least in the mid 30s. I think this gave her a more than reasonable chance at admittance to a school where she thought she would be happy to attend while still acknowledging that she was seeking a rigorouos academic experience.
@Ohiodad51 We had a similar issue with DD. She has “Ivy-ish” stats and has applied to a pretty good list of a few reaches (most of which are top 20 UWNWR schools) and some match schools a bit further down the list. We tried to vary the match school list a bit by looking at schools that do not seem popular with London kids which may (or may not) help her. We then struggled to find a couple of safeties that she liked but the schools she chose have c. 40% admit rates so you never know. She is aware that she might get shut out entirely and she is okay with that and has decided she can always take a gap year and reapply next year.
My kids were both high stats, although one had some Bs in her math courses. We were not particularly concerned with affordability, although at the safety level we were at least thinking about cost.
Both kids followed the sensible strategy devised by the first, which was to have at least one early application to a high -quality college with a good chance of admission, and when that acceptance came in the safety question was basically handled. Each of them had a further list of potential safeties to which they never applied. Many of their safeties had admission rates below 50%, but seemed safe for their stats levels based on Naviance data. (Their school didn’t have Naviance, but they had a number of friends at schools that did, and they were perfectly capable of figuring out what they looked like compared to kids from those schools.)
Kid #1, whose first choice was Columbia, did a fee-less online application to Pitt the second week in September, and got her offer of admission two days later, with an application for merit money. She knew a lot of people who were going to the Honors College at Pitt, and she knew she would be fine there. She also applied EA to the University of Chicago – this was back in a bygone day, when if you applied early to Chicago and you looked like a Chicago kind of person you were accepted – and was accepted there (and ultimately went there). Had she not been accepted at Chicago, she was going to apply to BU, and maybe to McGill. She did apply to NYU (as her New York safety) and Oberlin (as her LAC safety, in case she woke up one morning in April and didn’t want to be at a large urban research university). Neither of them would likely have qualified on any strict definition of safety, but she was confident that on paper she looked like someone they would accept, and she was right.
Kid #2 wanted to do an SCEA application, so he had more limited early options, but he applied rolling admissions to Michigan and was accepted in early December with a great scholarship offer. That pretty much nailed the safety question for him. Had that not come through, he would have applied either to Toronto or McGill, and maybe to BU as well.
“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.”
Sure it can be a safety – it depends on what your stats are. My reach school (28 ACT) is your safety school (34 ACT). Being overly conservative on admissions means you can waste a lot of time and money on schools (that while not 100% certain) the kid will get into and will not be all that interested in.
“In our particular circumstance, we kind of split the baby and did not require our daughter to apply to any schools where the admit rate was over 50%. Instead, we asked her to apply to three schools where her stats were at or above the 75% line and the admissions rate (for females) was at least in the mid 30s.”
This is the much better way to do it instead. Especially if you are using EA or rolling admissions.
As OhioDad suggests, we focused on applying EA to four schools where our kid (35 ACT) was at or above the 75% line. The admit rates were 18%, 25%, 30% and 49%. Realistically, all but the 18% school were safeties for this particular kid. Got into all four. Since we were doing this EA, we could obviously reassess if we got any surprises.
But this obviously can’t be done if you are playing ED/SCEA at the tippy tops.
“A safety is only a safety if it is affordable. After identifying schools of potential interest, the very first thing we did with our daughter was to run the NPC and check the available merit scholarships. Only if that process told us the school would be affordable, or that our daughter would have a reasoable shot at significant merit, did the school go “on the list”. That has to be the first “cut” as it were. We saw it with friends of both of our kids. The kid gets excited because they get into this or that school, and only then do the parents look at how they can afford it. Never understood that”
AMEN - I don’t get that either, financial was the first thing we looked at, no reason to even go down a road you cannot afford
Just a point of clarification of @northwesty’s post above, but our daughter applied to one school ED and two others EA - one reach and one with substantial merit available. As far as I know, there is no prohibition on applying ED and non restrictive EA at the same time.
Right, you may apply to one ED and as many EA (of the EA’s that don’t have a prohibition on you applying ED elsewhere) as you like. Or SCEA and EA to publics.
OD – that depends on the rules of the school.
MIT would let you apply EA even if you apply binding ED somewhere else.
ND, Gtown, BC (REA) will not allow you to apply early action if you are applying ED somewhere else. But you can apply to multiple other EA schools.
And HYPS (SCEA) will not let you apply anywhere else ED or even EA (subject to very limited exceptions).
So opting for ED puts you at risk of the situation the OP is in. And SCEA REALLY puts you at that risk.
^True. But my point was that EA is available at quite a few schools. From my own daughter’s college search, it seems obvious that non restrictive EA is more prevelant than restrictive particularly at non highly selective schools, but I never really looked at since it wasn’t an issue for her. She did briefly flirt with Georgetown, but that came off the list after a visit during junior summer. We did find non restrictive EA to be especially helpful for schools with significant competitive merit (Loyola Chicago in my daughter’s case).
SCEA does allow all public universities, universities abroad (McGill, St Andrews…) and any university with a rolling admissions system.
As far as I know, the SCEA colleges all let you apply non-binding early action or rolling admission to public universities. That’s a perfectly good early-safety strategy for SCEA candidates.
And right, there are only a handful of restrictive EA schools (and I wouldn’t call any of them safeties for anyone anyway). Most EA schools are not restrictive and many may be safeties.
I would add one more school in each category. What feels like a great fit in April of junior year doesn’t always feel like a great fit in April of senior year.
SCEA is not as bad as is made out. If accepted, there is no binding obligation like there is with ED. You can also apply EA at any public U or at any private U that has a scholarship deadline. My D applied SCEA to Yale. At the same time, she applied to UF (our state flagship), UVa and UMich as EA because they are public, and U Miami and USC to meet scholarship deadlines. She was accepted to Yale and UMich, so now we are waiting on potential scholarship offers before determining where she will eventually end up. Had she applied ED, there would not be an opportunity to compare offers. We are very pleased that Y has SCEA and not ED as it provided her the chance to gain that early acceptance yet still be able to compare other offers.
You just have to weave your way through the various restrictions.
ED plus a bunch of non-restrictive EA schools (OhioDad’s example) works pretty well. Since a number of those non-restrictive EA school’s will be safer-type private schools and also will be some good merit aid targets.
SCEA plus public/foreign is a lot more limiting. Since a kid aspiring to HYP is prohibited from applying early to most privates. Which is a pretty big thing to give up, especially if hunting for merit money.
35 18 Yr: Question.
The stated policies at HYP don’t seem to allow applying early action in order to meet schollie deadlines. But Stanford’s policy clearly does. So I assume you applied RD to USC (which has no early program) and Miami and have not yet heard back from them?
Those usually aren’t early/decision/action applications. As far as I have seen, those are just early deadlines for submitting applications. The last time I looked, the definition of “early” tended to be committing to provide a decision by January 15. That’s not what the scholarship-deadline colleges are doing.
JHS – I think that is right.
You could apply SCEA to Yale and EA to UVA and UM. But you can only apply RD to Miami, USC and other privates.
Although you can send your RD application into Miami and USC whenever you need to, you don’t hear back until the RD date in March. So those are just RD apps.
@northwesty College counseling at her school specifically stated that the SCEA schools allow applying EA for purposes of meeting scholarship deadlines. When a student applies ED or SCEA, the counseling department does not send their materials to schools that would be prohibited (i.e. no transcripts, recommendations or HS profile). She applied to USC by the priority deadline and applied EA to Miami. There are certain scholarships at Miami (e.g., Stamps and Singer) that you must apply EA in order to be in consideration. Still waiting to hear from both.
Also applied RD to several other schools that have competitive scholarship programs. She was not prevented from scholarship consideration at any school due to SCEA. The only potential fin aid we will receive is for her freshman year as she has two brothers that will graduate college next May, so the potential merit aid is important. There was way too much risk to apply anywhere ED, yet she still was able to get in early due to SCEA.