<p>People should definitely make use of SCEA at Yale. The difference is stark: 13.1% compared to 5.4%. Yale fills most of its class early and then just adds a few more RD.</p>
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<p>Haha this was me :)</p>
<p>JHS - Ah, and now you’ve hit upon the eternal debate of TASPers! I do think it’s a mix of both correlation and causation, but being conservative, I would lean toward correlation in judging admission chances. If I were less conservative, I might say, e.g. Cornell is a safety for any TASPer with strong stats… but I wouldn’t want to make that bet.</p>
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<p>No. This year Yale accepted 730 during the SCEA round. Last year Yale accepted a total of 1958 students (SCEA+RD). Assuming that number holds this year, it means that Yale will accept an additional 1228 students – roughly 63% of admitted students – during the RD round. It’s true that the yield rate from the early pool is higher than the yield rate from the RD pool. But to say that that the pool of accepted students is largely filled during the SCEA round is inaccurate. </p>
<p>[Yale</a> Daily News - Early admit rate rises slightly - Comments](<a href=“http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/university-news/2009/12/15/early-admits/comments/]Yale”>http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/university-news/2009/12/15/early-admits/comments/)
<a href=“http://www.yale.edu/oir/open/pdf_public/W033_Fresh_Admissions.pdf[/url]”>http://www.yale.edu/oir/open/pdf_public/W033_Fresh_Admissions.pdf</a></p>
<p>While I’m not quite an Ivy-Level Applicant (2180, 3.81 UW, very good ECs) my safeties are in the form of a lot of low match schools. </p>
<p>Hendrix College, Furman University, Trinity University (TX), Centre College, Rhodes College, American University, University of Richmond, Rollins College, University of Miami, University of Central Florida, Tulsa University, Elon University. The Elite schools I’m applying to are Davidson College, Rice University, and Claremont McKenna College. </p>
<p>I think its generally a good strategy to have many low-mid match schools, especially ones that are gracious with money like many of the southeastern LACs I applied to are.</p>
<p>Mine were Boston College and George Washington</p>
<p>^Edit: I just realized that since I’m going to Chicago I am not a true “Ivy-Applicant.” Oh well.</p>
<p>Please, ABC, UChicago is top notch. You’ve done well.</p>
<p>People use term Ivy loosely here. Some of us include the service academies, MIT & Caltech, Williams, Amherst, & Swathmore, plus some others that I’m not thinking of at the moment, when talking of Ivy-calibre</p>
<p>^^Note that the OP refers to “Ivies/other elites.”</p>
<p>For my D her safeties were: UMich Ann Arbor (rolling) and Macalester.<br>
She is already admitted to both, so they did work as safeties.</p>
<p>Important criteria of safety include that it is affordable, the student is willing to attend and would do okay there. I am confident that my D would flourish at UMich Ann Arbor, which is what makes it such a great safety school. However, with their adoption of the Common App, it may soon become a less safe school in future years.</p>
<p>My D considered EA to Georgetown as another way to acheive safety, but she really wanted to do SCEA at Yale so that was not an option. Besides, I personally believe that UMich is at least as good or possibly a better school for her than Georgetown.</p>
<p>no safeties, made for an interesting fall…a bit nerve racking
(disclaimer: d is a recruited athlete)
1 school, 1 application. but even athletes are suppose to have safeties. so it was dicey for about 4 weeks. there was zero back-up.</p>
<p>D used the UCs as safeties. Also applied to a couple of rolling admission schools so she knew in Nov that she was going somewhere. Was an interesting process as acceptances came in and she dismissed one school or another in favor of the latest.</p>
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<p>But the higher early yield means that when the final class is set up most of them are from the early round. I said Yale FILLS its freshman class with mostly EA admits, I did not say that the majority of admits are early people. And filling a third of the class out of about 5,000 people is a huge advantage to those five thousand and a disadvantage to the people who apply RD.</p>
<p>^^ I’ve tried to figure out those Yale numbers but they don’t add up. </p>
<p>If a third of the class (i.e 450 students) is EA admits and 730 are accepted EA, then by my calculation the yield works out to 62%, which is lower than the overall yield. And what about the EA deferred students who eventually get accepted? Anyone know what that percentage is?</p>
<p>^I’d love to know too. Most people put it at like 5ish%</p>
<p>I think the EA yield may actually be about 70-ish percent, let’s just say 72%. So out of 730 527 decide to enroll that is actually 40% out of 1312 (?) of the freshman class. Only about 1800 students were accepted last year so EAers were about 40% of the admitted class. Stil 40% of the class from a pool of 5,000 is still ridiculous.</p>
<p>I think people should stop talking about safeties. There is almost no such thing among the top 25 universities and the top 25 colleges. The head of admissions at Princeton told me they could literally fill every single freshman slot with a HS valedictorian with 2300 - 2400 SATs. EVERY freshman slot. Harvard and Yale could probably do the exact same thing. As we all know, only a small fraction of each freshmen class at HYPSM are HS vals. So if HS vals with 2400 SATs aren’t guaranteed admission to any college in America, what makes any of us think that a kid with lesser stats is guaranteed admission to any Tier I, 4-year college or university, especially those in the Top 25 in each category? To me a “safety” is a total lock, guarantee, you can bet your life on it. How can any top school be considered a safety by anybody? You really can’t be certain until the letter arrives.</p>
<p>Many of the schools mentioned in this thread are not T25 on either the natl U or LAC lists by USNWR.</p>
<p>^ High school valedictorians are very numerous, because high schools are numerous, and I think it is literally true that there are more high school valedictorians (especially because there are more than one valedictorian at some high schools) than there are spaces in Ivy League entering classes. But see </p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/413821-sat-score-frequencies-freshman-class-sizes.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/413821-sat-score-frequencies-freshman-class-sizes.html</a> </p>
<p>for the frequency of SAT scores in the range from 2300 to 2400. </p>
<p>I agree with the point that no one should consider a college in the echelon of an Ivy League college a sure thing. My son has been puzzled about rejections faced by several of his friends, who he thinks are amazing and very well prepared for college. </p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/493318-dont-forget-apply-safety-college.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/493318-dont-forget-apply-safety-college.html</a></p>
<p>Plainsman, if you apply EA to a top 25 and get accepted you can use that school as a safety. There may not be any true safeties in the USNWR top 25 schools, but there are definitely some in the 40 to 100 range. Especially if you are engineer.</p>
<p>Replying to the OP late in the game, as I see the thread is a month old, but it did just get bumped. </p>
<p>I want to focus on the reasons why more than the names (although I’ll add those), because the “under”-tier(s) were chosen overwhelmingly on academic offerings, and they were the original list, not the ultimate list, because she got an Ivy EA acceptance. They were also somewhat chosen with respect to location, combined with strength of academics, or academic options. The point was, there had to be something which compensated or was a draw.</p>
<p>Her truest Safety was Berkeley, since she was ELC (& later Regents) for that; and after the EA acceptance it was her only safety. But frankly, for some of the original schools on the list, neither of us knew that much about them except what we had read/heard, and the vast majority beneath the Reaches she never visited.</p>
<p>So here were the non-Ivy “others” (not including Berkeley): Chicago, Georgetown, Northwestern, JHU, UVA, Connecticut College, Whitman College. At one point William & Mary, as well as Hamilton College were on the list, but the list really needed paring down, so those went. Pomona College was also originally there but was removed for location reasons as well.</p>