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<p>Which leads to the advice that all the College Confidential veterans know: build a college application list beginning not with a "dream" school, but with a "sure-bet" school that offers desirable characteristics (including the opportunity for the student to change paths during college years) and is affordable. </p>
<p>The definition of a safety school is a school that
1) is pretty much certain to admit my kid, based on its known behavior in acting on admission applications,
2) has a strong program in an area my kid is interested in,
3) is affordable based on its known behavior in acting on financial aid applications,
and
4) is likeable to my kid.</p>
<p>That last point, "likeable to my kid," is what I am picking up here with the quotations from Marite and MrsP. It's a good idea to encourage kids to be self-motivated and to have dreams, but also to be open to blooming where they are planted. Careful parental encouragement--including not disparaging good colleges that just don't happen to be the most elite colleges--leaves students with more possibilities that are likeable, and thus a broader range of "safety" schools at which they can have good learning experiences. </p>
<p>It IS important to make sure that at least one college on each student's application list is really, really, really safe. State universities that admit "by the numbers" often have this characteristic, but not all do. The idea is to look for a college with essentially nil possibility of rejecting the student. A college at which the learner has a 50:50 chance of getting in cannot be called a "safety." That's what is useful about the term "sure bet"--it sounds less pejorative than "safety," and the term implies that there should be no chance of going wrong in that application, which is the kind of college prudent to put on every application list.</p>