How to Select the Perfect Safety Schools for College Admissions

College Search & Selection
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"WHEN RESEARCHING AND applying to potential alma maters, high school juniors and seniors are often advised to divide their selections into three categories: safety schools, match schools and reach schools.

In this column, we discuss reach schools, but what of safety schools? A safety school is a college or university that a student is likely to receive an acceptance to based on their academic profile. How can high school students confidently select the right fall-back options for them? Below, two high school graduates discuss their suggestions for selecting the perfect safety schools." …

https://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/college-admissions-playbook/articles/2019-08-12/how-to-select-the-perfect-safety-schools-for-college-admissions

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Whoops, the article forgot two absolutely critical factors, acceptance rate and affordability. Favorable stats comparison and desire to actually attend are NOT nearly enough. (It annoys me when authors who hold themselves out as experts, who should know better, pretend to be helpful and get published for it.)

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Wouldn’t a safety have 100% chance of admission (not merely “likely to get accepted”) and 100% chance of affordability, for the specific student?

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True Safeties meet these crteria:

  1. The student is flat-out guaranteed admissions. This could be because the place is open admission, or it could be because the institution publishes GPA and/ or test score requirements that guarantee automatic admission. In rare instances, the student might have some other specifc talent or quality that guarantees admission.
  2. The student and their family can absolutely afford it without any aid other than guaranteed federal aid and/or guaranteed state aid and/or automatic aid guaranteed by the college/university itself for merit or some specific talent or quality.
  3. The prospective major is offered, or if this true safety is a community college, the first two years of the major are offered with at least one formal articulation agreement that automates transfer to a four year institution.
  4. The student will be more than happy to attend if all else goes wrong in the admission and aid cycle.

Any institution that doesn’t meet those four criteria, is at best a Reasonably Safe option. Every year there are some horrible surprises when what had looked to be safe for admission and affordability turns out to not be.