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<p>I’m not saying you don’t “have a solid chance.” I’m just saying it’s not a safety. A safety is a school where you’re a lock for admission, and plenty of cocky OOS applicants with stats as good or better than yours get waitlisted or rejected for Michigan engineering these days. Every spring you’ll find a series of posts in the Michigan CC forum from bewildered high-stats OOS applicants, asking “How could this have happened? I think they must have made some kind of mistake, Michigan was one of my safeties and I got into Princeton.” </p>
<p>And your GC is misinformed if he thinks Michigan “relies more on grades and scores.” Working in your favor is that Michigan relies most heavily on grades and course rigor. Test scores are of secondary importance. Take a look at the scoring sheet they do for each application, which you can find online. It’s about way more than “grades and scores.”</p>
<p>Rutgers is your safety. They have a 61% admit rate, you’re in-state, and you’re well above their 75th percentile in SAT CR, SAT M, and GPA. Michigan engineering is not a safety; their OOS admit rate is now probably somewhere between 20 and 25%, your SAT CR score is only mid-second quartile for them, and their pattern of admissions is a little too quirky and unpredictable to make it a safety for anyone, at least any OOS student. If I were a betting man, I’d bet you’ll be admitted, but it’s not a sure thing.</p>
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<p>Fine, have it your way. I’m just telling you your SAT CR score is below WUSTL’s 25th percentile, and for a school that has a 16.5% acceptance rate, that’s a red flag. I’m not saying you’ll be rejected; it could go either way. But in my book, any school with an acceptance rate below 20% is a reach for anyone, no matter how good their stats, and for someone who is below that school’s 25th percentile on any key stat, it may be a high reach. Especially at a school like WUSTL which has elevated itself in the US News rankings largely by being extremely attentive to its SAT medians. </p>
<p>You’re in the third quartile for SAT CR at Johns Hopkins, which is better than being in the fourth quartile, but still not exactly match-y territory for a school that had a 17.7% acceptance rate in 2012.</p>