<p>How do you know which colleges are way out of your reach or if they are your safe schools? (sorry it's a stupid q)</p>
<p>Your best bet would be to carefully examine the Common Data Sets of the colleges you're interested in. There's a fairly long list here (posts #135-137). Failing that, most colleges post a profile of admitted students.
<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=76444&page=7%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=76444&page=7</a></p>
<p>Consider the SAT ranges, rank/GPA ranges, and percent admitted. Most colleges with <20% admit rates are reaches. If your SAT scores are 150-250 points above the average, it's probably a safety. If your SAT and GPA fall in the middle 50% of admitted students, it's probably a match. If they're a bit low, it's probably a reach. Most elite public schools (UNC, UC Berkeley, UVa, etc.) are reaches for out-of-state students.</p>
<p>I agree with everything Warblers said. I always recommend picking up the US News college guide. While the rankings themselves should be taken with a grain of salt, the magazine does provide the SAT scores of the middle 50% of the class, how many accepted students were in the top 10%, a school's acceptance rate, etc. It's a handy thing to have.</p>
<p>The thing that bothers me about showing the middle 50% of SAT scores is that it can be a little misleading to applicants. If school X has a 25th-75th percentile SAT score of 1300-1400, then the average SAT score is a 1350. So an applicant with a 1310 has a lower SAT score than over half of the acceptees and may not be able to consider that school a match. So when looking for match schools, I would suggest finding places where your SAT score is close to 50% of accepted applicants. </p>
<p>As far as safeties go, look into schools that offer automatic scholarships to accepted students who meet certain SAT and class rank requirements. (They usually have this on their website.) Although no sure guarantee, meeting those standards is usually a safe bet.</p>