<p>leigh needs to balance out it’s male/female ratio and get rid of it’s greek presence!(IMO)</p>
<p>This:
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<p>Many of my students dismissed this during the application season, and their results showed it.</p>
<p>epiphany, if a school is 95% sure they are a safety for you, they will reject you. better to reject then be rejected.</p>
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<p>Haha, wonder what his (or her) employer thinks about such a moronic statement.</p>
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<p>Non-responsive, completely. My post replied to siliconvalleymom’s accurate observation, upon reading the article, of the importance of campus visits. I’ll say this again, as you seem not to understand. If you value the school at all – whether a safety or a reach – think again that visits don’t matter. They are not a guarantee of admission, nor even do they add, necessarily “points” (positivity) to the application. It is their absence which, comparatively speaking, can be detrimental, especially in the tight comparative & compettive game of college admissions, among selective schools. And I am telling you that students who ignore the benefit of a campus visit, relative to “interest” assessed, do so at their peril, whatever the category of the school. That would include, not exclude, safety schools.</p>
<p>My understanding is that the lack of a campus visit is only held against you if you live within a reasonable distance away.</p>
<p>Also, if a college thinks a highly qualified student is using them as a safety, the usual method is to wait list them, not reject them. If that student then accepts the wait list, they may be quickly accepted. The college is trying to minimize their acceptance rate percent and increase their yield rate - but they want that student if he wants them. </p>
<p>Of course these comments are extreme generalizations, and policies vary from place to place, including many colleges that don’t track student interest.</p>
<p>Don’t all schools track your interest? Meaning, when you visit, you sign in…</p>
<p>I think the message here is that a school like Lehigh can NEVER be a safety because they use a non-objective measure in making their decisions. </p>
<p>If a school needs you to show interest in a school, it cannot be a safety. If a school uses your essay or your recommendations or your ECs to evaluate you, and there is a chance that you could actually be rejected or waitlisted, than it’s not a safety. </p>
<p>A safety school is one that will admit you solely based on objective measures. </p>
<p>Another approach that we used was to find schools that look like safeties but have rolling admissions or early action. </p>
<p>For a top ivy-bound student, I view a school like the University of Wisconsin-Madison as the ideal safety because 1) it’s a school where a top student can get a world-class education, 2) there is no data indicating that they would reject a highly qualified student, and 3) for a student who applies in September, they can get a decision in October or November. </p>
<p>There are many other schools like this. University of Pittsburgh is another one. So is University of Arizona and University of Colorado-Boulder. These are fine research universities that are safeties for many people. </p>
<p>Note that it’s not a safety for everybody, but if you think that your stats are competitive for the elites, it’s a safety for you.</p>
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<p>No. Plenty of schools do not care about “level of applicant’s interest” in admissions.</p>
<p>Trivial examples include:
- Open admission community colleges.
- Schools with GPA/rank/test-score formulas for admission (many of the state universities in California, Texas, and Iowa, at least for a portion of their classes).</p>
<p>Even many schools with holistic review, essays, etc. do not consider “level of applicant’s interest”. See the school’s common data set or entry on [CollegeData:</a> College Search, Financial Aid, College Application, College Scholarship, Student Loan, FAFSA Info, Common Application](<a href=“http://www.collegedata.com%5DCollegeData:”>http://www.collegedata.com) .</p>
<p>You can add U of Richmond to the list of schools that do not considered demonstrated interest in their evaluation process. I was surprised when I heard the Ad Com say this. Richmond was one of four schools on a panel at our HS a couple of weeks ago, and I would have expected them to be a school that considered interest. Their CDS states the same.</p>
<p>When my daughter was visiting schools, her top 3 all stressed the fact that they prefer students who show the school some love. Tufts made a point to tell her that showing interest would give her an edge and lehigh was even more clear. Lehighs regular decision rate is right around 28-29%. Adding in the early decision students which include legacies, sports recruits and students like my daughter who absolutely fell in love with this school brings the acceptance closer to 32%. I would assume that any student who wants to attend a school that acepts less than a third of applicants would show the school some love, either with visits, emails to the admissions counselors, local alumni interviews etc.</p>