<p>"Love your safety school(s)" is advice I've seen a lot lately. However, I don't think there are very many schools that I absolutely love, let alone my safeties. I like to think that I'm not prestige-driven, but maybe I'm only deceiving myself. It just seems that every college that I look at has some sort of "flaw" in my view.</p>
<p>Perhaps, the notion that there's a 100% perfect school for everybody that one can find if only they put in enough effort, is flawed.</p>
<p>The purpose of the quote is not that you must love any one school. If you really don't "love" any of your schools, that's great - you can be happy wherever you go. The problem lies with those who fall in love with a reach or a highly selective school, and then apply to various "safeties" that they don't want to go to.</p>
<p>"Love your safety" simply means to find a school that you are reasonably sure you'll get into and would not mind going to. If you've already done that, you're golden.</p>
<p>I love my safeties. I have four. I love one because I can graduate in 2.5 years with my AP credits, or take a reduced courseload and have lots of internships in DC. Plus, they have the exact major/program I'm looking for. I love another because my sister goes there and it's cheap (yeah, that part turns me on) and it's close to home and they have the exact major/program I'm looking for. I love another because I'm applying for the combined BA/JD program, which doesn't make it a safety anymore, but if I got in and went, I would be going to a safety school for a non-safety program, which is just as good as a non-safety school. The last I also love because of a non-safety program I'm applying for where you get to take whatever courses you want and pretty much design your own curriculum. It's pretty sweet.</p>
<p>There are different ways/reasons to love your safeties.</p>
<p>No school will be perfect. Even if you think you absolutely love one, there will be a couple characteristics that you'll subconsciously brush off by saying 'well that's not important to me.' The truth is that you'd be happy at dozens of schools, and the academic differences between them will be negligible; they only really make a difference if you go to grad/professional school and everything matters for your career. Otherwise, you're just getting a liberal arts education to know as much as possible. That's it. And you can do that almost anywhere.</p>
<p>I guess you don't really need to love it (I don't) but make sure it's somewhere you wouldn't really hate to spend the next four years.
There are enough colleges that you don't need to pick a safety you hate. if you wouldn't ever consider attending it, its not really a safety.</p>
<p>I agree with the OP that there's no school out there that's 100% perfect. Same goes for places to live, careers, spouses, etc. The lesson should be that aiming for perfection is futile, but the decision you make after realizing this is even more important to your happiness. Some people adopt a cynical "damned if you do, damned if you don't" attitude and since all choices have flaws they treat all choices as equally flawed. Not true!!! Even if one can't achieve nirvana one can still prefer one basket of choices over another.</p>
<p>Enough of the philosophizng ;) As for the "love your safety" mantra, one of the moderators put it best when he wrote (I paraphrase here) that it should be a place where you're torn between attending it and your match/reaches.</p>