Is there a Rule of Thumb for Reach, Match, Safety?

Parents Forum
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<p>If you have access to Naviance I think it’s pretty easy. </p>

<p>First, find your child’s “Naviance Neighborhood using SAT1600, converting ACT to an SAT”.</p>

<p>Now for the scattergram for each school, you can estimate the probability of your child getting in. </p>

<p>Reach: Hardly anyone gets in, hardly anyone within your Naviance neighborhood gets in, or the data is very inclusive. In other words, reaches are schools where you’re “unlikely” to get in. </p>

<p>Match: Most but not all people in your Naviance neighborhood get in. </p>

<p>Safety: Everyone in your Naviance neighborhood gets in.</p>

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<p>I’ve glanced at Naviance but not in great depth. Is this something they calculate for you, or is it something you ballpark yourself based on the look of the scattergram?</p>

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<p>Well, if you’re talking about Harvard, with its 80% yield, there isn’t a whole lot of difference between the admitted pool and the enrolled pool. If you’re talking about the University of Chicago, with slightly less than a 40% yield, I think there’s a lot of difference.</p>

<p>There are other things to watch out for when you look at the distributions. The most selective colleges are all relatively small, and 25-50% of the enrolled class may be students who were admitted based in significant part on other-than-academic criteria: recruited athletes, people with special skills, URMs (and maybe legacies, although I think that’s a much weaker factor). At really small schools, like Amherst, those people probably constitute the entire population of the lowest statistical quadrant. At Harvard, etc., they are a big component of it. The yield on this group is going to be very high; they aren’t as big a proportion of the admitted class. But, still, the number of admission slots for the general population of unhooked good students is meaningfully lower than the total number of admission slots, and the general population of unhooked good students (including legacies) represents all but a tiny fraction of the applicant pool.</p>

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<p>It’s a ballpark thing, though Naviance lets counselors put what they believe your likelihood is.</p>

<p>Naviance makes it easier, but it doesn’t take into account ECs, interviews, writing, letters of rec, sports, and so on. Naviance is helpful, but use it with some caution, understanding that you can’t know everything about the other students in your area.</p>

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<p>fog^2, I’ve read on CC that a student doesn’t necessarily need equal numbers of reach/match/safety. Depending on his stats, your kid could make do with 2 or even 1 safety. </p>

<p>Our school district doesn’t have naviance, and I’m skeptical of using other school’s scattergrams without knowing how another school compares to my own child’s school.</p>

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<p>Yes, it’s purely eyeballing the scattergram. But you can certainly assess reach, match and safety very well from a scattergram. You have to use some common sense too. For example, for my D, Northwestern came up as a safety. Obviously it’s not a safety for anybody.</p>

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<p>Staying away from the quantitative issues is the best way to commence answering this matter. The formula(e) for determining what is a reach, match . . . is not simply a sterile percentages and numbers game. Hence, your college counselor at school (or private) needs to gauge those items first.</p>

<p>The rule of thumb I like is what one school suggested. And, this rule was required! You will note, that to some people with egos, it can be humbling, but it allows the best results for the school as whole.</p>

<p>You apply to 10 schools or less. The formula: 3 are reach, 3 are match, and 3 are safe. The extra school can be implemented in any of the three groups.</p>

<p>You HAVE to list the schools in priority from 1 to 10. One being the most wanted.</p>

<p>Once you are admitted into the highest available school, you MUST immediately withdraw all other applications. Exceptions exist for negotiating scholarships, or some other justifiable reason.</p>

<p>The term “highest available school” means if you get into school 1, then obviously it is time to send withdrawals out. Or if you get into 3 but were rejected by 1 and 2, then again it is time to withdraw.</p>

<p>As the better students withdraw, the school sees benefits to the higher middle and middle being admitted into schools higher on their lists. Thus, the request that students withdraw upon admittance to the highest available school benefits the class as a whole. And, at really no cost to the withdrawing party but maybe a statement that he or she did not get into 19 of 20 schools applied to.</p>

<p>A very good school for admissions tackles the harder question: what is a reach, what is a match and so forth. Those lines are not easily defined. And, a real professional can be of great value for making those calculations.</p>

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<p>Being incredibly conservative: a safety is one where you are accepted by mid-December, can see yourself going there, and you can afford it. </p>

<p>Anyone needing financial aid would be foolish to withdraw applications. Even need-based FA offers can be vastly different.</p>

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<p>… Which is useless if your kids are going to be the first kids ever applying to a given school. Very few of the schools my kids are considering have Naviance entries from our school. No one’s ever applied to any of the women’s colleges, for example, as far as I can tell. Very few apply to LAC’s. It’s all our state’s various schools. I find the references to use Naviance really frustrating.</p>

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<p>Our school just started Naviance and only has stats for recent graduates. Do some of your schools offer stats for more than your high school?</p>

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<p>I will say that I think you can overthink it. As long as you have one good safety you can afford and would like to attend, then does it really matter if you have three reaches and four matches or 1 reach and six matches? I don’t think so. I have a friend who said I was too conservative calling two of ds’s schools reaches when she thought they were matches. Who cares that they’re called? If he likes the school, he’ll apply regardless of the category someone wants to put them in. I feel like having them as reaches rather than matches helped manage expectations. If he gets in all his reaches, then good for him!</p>

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<p>The only concern about having 1 safety is that these days, most safeties are not 100% safe. You can’t be 100% sure until you’re in.</p>

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<p>I used D1’s school naviance and got it pretty close so I would suggest start with that first.</p>

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<p>The “nothing’s 100% sure” is true at the outset, but if a safety is a rolling admit school, you can have the safety in hand by October, at which point any other considered safeties can slide off the table. Or you could be in a state where class rank gives you the guarantee, e.g. top 10% in TX if a student would be happy at UT, or top 4% in CA for a student who is happy with the ELC UC campuses.</p>

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<p>Using Naviance when it’s new or doesn’t contain the schools S/D is applying to obviously won’t help much. In that case, to get a sense, you’ll be left using the numerical methods suggested here, keeping in mind that they will not necessarily be accurate and you’ll need to consider your own case, the intangibles, and what GC says. As mentioned above, it really doesn’t matter how many reaches vs. safeties you have, so long as you apply to a range of schools. So such classification isn’t necessary (unless it makes you feel better). Naviance is helpful and provides data so you don’t need to do as much research, but it’s not the end-all of college admissions. If Naviance could tell you everything or give you a decision, there’d be no need for those tedious applications. An Adcom from one of the colleges I applied to said during an info session that Naviance isn’t particularly helpful for their college because they focus a lot on intangibles. Looking up data for the college helps, reading posts here helps (although it may give you a somewhat skewed view of reality, it’s probably better than nothing). Be conservative in assessing your chances, but don’t discard a school as out of reach without evidence suggesting that to be the case. Make sure there are several schools where a lot would have to go wrong for S/D not to be offered admission. Then see what happens.</p>

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<p>^You don’t need to apply to a range of schools unless you want to. If you want to attend college you just need a safety (or a school that accepts you early enough that safeties are moot.)</p>

<p>Naviance doesn’t tell you anything beyond the numbers, but for many schools it’s quite obvious that only students with certain numbers have a chance. Then it’s useful. Looking at Naviance it was clear that my older son had pretty good chances at a particular college from our school - then I got to decide how much of a boost to give him for being a legacy, how much of a minus I got to give him for not being very active with school ECs, and how much to cancel out that disadvantage with his out of school ECs. You have to use Naviance with some intelligence, but if your school has it, and it has enough data, it can be very useful.</p>

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<p>I think every student (unless wealthy) needs to have 2 - 3 financial safeties…</p>

<p>1) because you may later dislike the financial safety that you liked in the fall.</p>

<p>2) because you may not get the merit at one of the safeties that you thought.</p>

<p>3) because if you don’t get into any of your reaches/matches (or all are unaffordable), you’ll still have a choice to make in the spring. (You won’t feel railroaded into the “consolation prize” school.)</p>

<p>Some wonder what a financial safety is…I think it’s a school that you’re 100% (or nearly) sure that you’ll be accepted (based on stats, etc), and that you can afford to pay out-of-pocket, thru merit scholarships, thru small student loans (or some combination). A financial safety is NOT a school that you’ll likely get accepted to, but you will have to borrow big loans to afford.</p>

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<p>All good thoughts here.</p>

<p>I hear that the GCs at our kiddo’s school will require kiddo to withdraw apps from other schools when the highest ranked (by student) is accepted–as the GCs say “we do not allow students to collect scalps” </p>

<p>That said, FA really does vary from one school to another. Kiddo will not get funds from the ivies for the sport but would get funds from some big state Univs and FA will factor in…so matches wont all be about academics, and sport, we need some FinAid options…</p>

<p>I do find that while the Naviance evidently helps–it doesn’t tell the picture, ie athlete, URM, leg etc…</p>

<p>The list kiddo has is rather long and top heavy right now because of the availability of chosen major/concentration and sport. Some schools have engineering, others only physical sciences and math…some have varsity status , some club…
Some have an admit rate of 7-8% , others in the 30%s and 40%s…</p>

<p>I guess its true that kids with nice stats have a difficulty finding matches…</p>

<p>I wonder about the “Tufts” effect and how some kids who are obviously well qualified get denied because AdComs expect them to go elsewhere…</p>

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<p>^^^ Unless GC plans to pay for my children’s college, I would not be taking any school off the table until all aid decisions are in.</p>

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<p>Unless your S or D is considering Early Decision, I would suggest looking for a safety school that has Early Action. It’s great to get an acceptance in December, even if it’s just to a safety school, because it takes away that horrible doubt about “what if I don’t get in anywhere?!” Highly suggested for sanity reasons.</p>

<p>xD</p>