<p>So what will then be the “best” (most prestigeous) school with rolling admissions???</p>
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<p>That’s quite a range of schools on your list. From top-ranked LACs (Bowdoin and Middlebury) to a large, middle-of-the-road state u (UVM). With acceptance rates between 18 and 20 percent, Midd and Bowdoin aren’t safeties for anyone.</p>
<p>standrews, what about the kids who are 50 points above the 75% at places like Williams, Amherst and Swarthmore? Still not safeties because of the low rate of admission. My second daughter is definitely a small school kind of girl and she’s feeling a bit lost on the search for safeties. Our state U would most likely offer full-tuition but it would be a last resort financial decision. So we’re still looking for a small school with good need-based aid and smart kids. The latter can be a bit easier to find at the big State U’s which offer honors programs.</p>
<p>Middlebury and Bowdoin aren’t safeties for anyone, I think. Bates and Colgate, maybe, for really strong students. The qualities that make someone want to go to Harvard or Yale don’t necessarily match up with appreciating Bates or Colgate. But, yes, schools like that would work in the right case. A friend of my kids applied to Yale, Penn, and eight LACs, including Middlebury. But she probably didn’t think of Middlebury as her safety.</p>
<p>Vermont gets used as a safety a lot, but not so much by kids who are legitimate Ivy applicants.</p>
<p>Boys, especially, should consider LACs, especially former women’s colleges that struggle to maintain at least 40% males. For an academically strong male, Vassar and Connecticut College, both terrific schools, are probably pretty darn close to safeties. Also I suspect that at many LACs being an ethnic Asian with a strong math/science bias is actually a plus in one’s favor. They are not looking at thousands of applications from Chinese and South Asian pre-meds; they are wondering how they can get their Asian student percentage above 4%, and how they can get more students into science majors.</p>
<p>Our college counselor mentioned Skidmore as possible safety</p>
<p>I’m with those who say an early submission to a couple of EA or rolling admissions schools (that your child would gladly attend and that you can afford) are the BEST safeties. </p>
<p>Even for non-ivy caliber students.</p>
<p>Some of the following is summary/commentary on ideas previously mentioned upthread:</p>
<p>If you don’t need financial aid and don’t mind the size, Michigan makes an excellent top-tier safety. Of course, if it’s no longer rolling, that becomes outdated. Pittsburgh is another rolling public with strong academics and merit aid. It is better than Penn State as a safety, especially OOS, because PSU Schreyers is a much more difficult (and idiosyncratic) admit than Pitt’s Honors College. I disagree that public Us like UVA and UNC can be safeties.</p>
<p>URochester gives a 17k guaranteed National Merit scholarship, and also claims to meet full need (though there’s no loan cap); it was my “high safety.” It’s considered a small university and known for the sciences but with some surprising humanities programs, and the curriculum is extremely flexible–a LOT of students double or even triple major, which can be appealing to top students with multiple interests.</p>
<p>I wanted an LAC, so I looked closely at the CTCL schools; I was very close to applying to Knox (did not due to parental opposition) as it is close to meeting full need and also has generous merit scholarships. There are other overlooked LACs that would be true safeties (e.g. I considered Macalester a low match, and it meets full need): Beloit or Earlham, for instance, both have historical commitments to need-based financial aid.</p>
<p>I’ve heard that for NMFs with good grades, USC can be a safety. Certainly a lot of top students from my school applied and were accepted.</p>
<p>A lot of people will apply to UChicago, Georgetown, etc. EA and hope for an early acceptance, which would turn a match/high match into a safety.</p>
<p>As mythmom mentioned, Bard can be a really good safety if you like it; they even have instant decision days where you visit and interview and come home to await a decision in the mail.</p>
<p>For high-stat women, the women’s colleges–all save for Wellesley–can be considered low matches if you demonstrate appropriate interest. They can be prone to Tufts-Syndrome-esque behavior, though, if they sense that you aren’t interested in attending (perhaps due to the gender factor). My GC told me that Bryn Mawr would be close to safe for me, as it has a good relationship with my school, but ONLY if I interviewed there.</p>
<p>I would warn against choosing your in-state flagship w/ honors without THINKING about it. Too many students pick their home flagship as a safety and then apply to a clutch of reaches; if they end up rejected from those reaches, they are really unhappy to attend their safety. **A safety should be affordable, safe for admission, and LIKED.<a href=“Note%20that%20a%20school%20meeting%20full%20need%20with%20a%20clear%20track%20record%20might%20be%20%22affordable%22%20for%20FA%20applicants%20who%20have%20run%20the%20numbers,%20though%20such%20students%20should%20still%20have%20a%20%22financial%20safety%22%20as%20well.”>/b</a></p>
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I’m not an HYP-level student, but I do have the “stats” for a legitimate shot, with decent ECs and essays including one possible “tip.” I had no problem finding safeties; in fact, I had more of a problem persuading my (Asian) parents to accept those safeties.</p>
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Be careful when considering very selective honors programs within schools. The two honors programs mentioned are clearly not safeties–thus they should be disregarded in considering desirability. The question becomes: is Alabama attractive with just “regular” honors, not super-selective honors? (For r6l the answer is yes, but I am generalizing the point.)</p>
<p>Safety != guarantee. (As someone else said, that would make the point of the word “safety” irrelevant, because you could just as easily say “gaurantee” without confusing people.) Simultaneously, T20 != safety.</p>
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Being encouraged to apply is NOT a positive indicator for acceptance. Legacy is, marginally, but only as much as any other legacy factor.</p>
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Agreed. Asian ethnicity, by itself, is also a plus at many LACs (especially rural or Midwest/South). I’ll throw out one notable example: if you’re Asian and interested in Middlebury, get on their mailing list before senior year. Participants in their diversity visit program (which requires stats and essay, and is in fact majority Asian) were given a verbal wink to not worry about being admitted as long as you kept your grades up. Many of these programs act as a pre-screen for the unpredictable holistic factor. I did not treat Midd as a safety, but I would have been surprised not to be admitted.</p>
<p>Whew, that was a long post.</p>
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<p>University of Wisconsin-Madison is probably the most prestigious school with rolling admissions that is a safety for kids aiming at the elites. D applied in September and was admitted in October. </p>
<p>Some would argue that Michigan is a safety for these kids. I’ve seen very high stats kids from our school not get admitted.</p>
<p>[Cross posted with Keilexandra - Congrats on getting into Swarthmore btw]</p>
<p>A long post, and a really good one.</p>
<p>You are right about USC, but I’m surprised that lots of kids at your school in Delaware used it. I haven’t seen anyone here (50 miles away) do that. In California, of course, it’s really common.</p>
<p>I suspect that for a student with rocket6louise’s qualities – statistical, gender, geographical – the super-selective programs at Alabama are safeties. She may not be the only high-stat computer-science girl there, but I’ll bet it’s not a huge crowd, and that being a Northerner adds some cachet. (Although perhaps she should qualify as in-state, based on James Carville’s famous aphorism that Pennsylvania is “Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Alabama in between”.)</p>
<p>I appreciate confirmation of my guess about LACs. My kids only knew a couple of Asian kids who applied to LACs, and they did really well.</p>
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<p>You have me LOLing over that one. It’s very true though :D</p>
<p>S applied mainly to top Northeast LACs and 1 Ivy. Had to apply to many more schools than most would recommmend because he was a recruited athlete (D III) and financial aid would also be a factor, so the overall package of academics,varsity athletics and cost likely would be determinative. </p>
<p>With athletics and either merit aid or good need-based aid in the mix, his safeties included Gettysburg, Hamilton, Skidmore ($ probably wouldn’t be good), Union. He didn’t want to apply to any of our state schools, so he applied to UVM and Ohio State because they had honors programs and they sought him out with short-form applications. UVM is quite popular at his HS.</p>
<p>JHS - r6l is majoring in neuro, IIRC. The computer-based honors program is just computer-based research, not necessarily CS. And as I remember at least one CC’er who got into Yale EA and didn’t make finalist for UA Fellows, I don’t think either program is a safety for anyone. Alabama does have less selective honors programs, which would be safeties for high-stat applicants/NMFs.</p>
<p>^^^</p>
<p>True…the CBH program has students majoring in a wide variety of areas…they once had a dance major in it. (If I remember correctly, she programmed lighting and special effects for choreographed dances or something like that.) The majors can range from English to Engineering to Library Science to pre-med…etc.</p>
<p>Keil is right. There is a CCer who got into Yale SCEA and did not even get semi finalist status for Fellows…
Just shows what a crapshoot this whole process is :D</p>
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<p>You’re right. There are about 2 dozen schools that I think even the perfect student (2400/4.0/great ECs) cannot consider to be safeties.</p>
<p>The approach that most all students use for matches is the safety-in-numbers method. They apply to multiple match schools and if they judged correctly the will be admitted to one or more. But I don’t think 3 matches = 1 safety.</p>
<p>Ultimately a safety comes down to what the student is comfortable with. If the student has an unrealistic outlook or has not done enough research the results can be disastrous. If they are wrong about judging what is a safety for them, then there’s a high probability that their matches and reaches are wrong as well. For instance, at MIT the overall admit rate is 13%. However, the admit rates for men and women are 9% and 19%. For men and women with identical stats, MIT may be a reach for the men but a match for the women. For an even greater differential, in-state men applying to Wm&Mary have a much greater acceptance rate than out-of-state women.</p>
<p>First Tier: Princeton, Duke, UVA
Second Tier (safety): Georgia Tech
Third Tier Safety: Penn State, Virginia Tech, </p>
<p>Choice: UVA</p>
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<p>me. although as i said before i found out i wasn’t even semifinalist and continue to say, my essay for fellows SUCKED. like, i knew it was really bad in comparison to my common app essays, but i did it really last-minute and thus didn’t have a lot of time for revision. my fault 100%… the same “what do you want to do with your life” essay also got me rejected from a local round of a scholarship which sends 50% of applicants on (keep in mind, i don’t live in a competitive area at all). but i really think (based on my results so far) i’m a hit-or-miss applicant anyway.</p>
<p>moral of the story: fellows is not a safety for anyone. except maybe the likes of philip streich.</p>
<p>mom2collegekids - Library Science is an undergrad major at UAlabama? Every librarian I’ve ever asked has said to major in anything EXCEPT library/information science before doing the master’s.</p>
<p>Now that you mention it…the young lady may have been an English or history major while pursuing her masters at the same time. Bama lets students use their scholarships towards getting a masters at the same time if a student comes in with lots of AP/IB or dual enrollment Credits… I met this young lady 2 years ago, so my memory may be hazy. Her CBH project had some kind of historian aspect to it.</p>
<p>Quote:
Originally Posted by SWHarborfan
Ironically, she was more of a “shoe-in” at Stanford (in which she wasn’t interested), where she had an impressive transcript from their High School Summer College and had been approached by Stanford (her professors and the high school summer college people) to apply because she had done very well in the summer program, had very high data […]
Being encouraged to apply is NOT a positive indicator for acceptance. Legacy is, marginally, but only as much as any other legacy factor.</p>
<p>Well, yes, Keilex…, it was, actually, in this scenario; of the kids who were approached from my daughter’s Stanford program, and who applied EA, (my daughter did not apply), they were admitted. So, YES, some type of positive indicator of one’s potential acceptance, and, YES!, agreed, legacy factor was worthless, just naming some of the objective attributes.</p>