<p>Financial as well as admissions safeties are so important. And the campuses of every school we saw were beautiful. Each one of the safer schools we visited could have been a first choice for my high-achieving son in one way or another.</p>
<p>My son had a mind of his own and his choice of schools/applications could not be swayed by me. He applied to only four schools. Two matches and two reaches. He applied to one of his reaches ED and was rejected. He applied to one of the matches EA showed a lot of interest and visited two times and developed a good rapport with the local school representative. He was accepted there. He was rejected by his other reach a(did not visit) and did not get into the major of choice at the other match but was accepted to the school.</p>
<p>We are counting our blessings here and have sent in the deposit to the EA school.</p>
<p>For all my angst I think he had a pretty good handle on what he was doing but he cut it pretty close. I think it's important to show demonstrated interest at the smaller schools.</p>
<p>For students hoping for Acting, Musical Theater, Film, Dance or other ARTS majors, I'll suggest 2 safety strategies.</p>
<p>Some programs are more competitive than Ivies, for example, some film programs with video submissions, or Musical Theater programs by audition only, have statistics in the range of 8-15%, even if the university as a whole has easier odds.</p>
<p>What to do? Find a school that has that department and a good course offering for majors, but doesn't require an audition, portfolio, etc. submission as an incoming freshman. Perhaps after you take some courses, you might still wish to declare that major by Junior year, but if not, you'll be in a university with other majors.</p>
<p>As well, look at some related majors to your "dream" major. This isn't a safety, exactly, but a way of diversifying. For example, in some film production programs, the admission rates for wannabe directors is 8-12%, while wannabe screenwriters are at 25%. Film editing, or brand new majors such as digital arts, may offer better admission chances than the classic Directing major. If you crave a major in Theater, perhaps approach it through Production or Stagecraft rather than only Acting.</p>
<p>my DDs safeties include two privates and a public. All have acceptance rates over 60%: The acceptance rate to me is more important than the child's stats in figuring a safety but their scores are above the 50% mark for all. All have strong sciences, the two privates offer great merit aid if the numbers are there. And, even if no money comes from anywhere CSUMB is affordable.</p>
<p>Most importantly they would be happy to attend any of the three school.</p>
<p>I disagree with DadII (post #14). A safety doesn't have to be a school that anyone can get into. Some accept mostly very high stat kids, but have a small and focussed applicant pool. An example of such a school is Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. The middle 50% math SAT scores is 650-730 and verbal 600-690. (That means that even at a tech school at least a quarter of the class probably has very strong verbal abilities - hey the star of Wordplay was a student at RPI when he won the crossword puzzle contest.) 64% are in the top fifth of their graduating class and 95% were in the top fifteen percent. Despite these stats it had a whopping 75% acceptance rate the year before Mathson applied. It turned out to be less safe when it made Newsweeks list of 25 new Ivy's and got a BIG uptick in applications. WPI has similar stats and still under many radars outside Massachusetts. For a techie oriented kid who isn't going to miss strong departments in the humanities and social sciences, these schools are great safeties. BTW for girls applying to these schools the odds are even better. The best thing about RPI as a safety was that they had a priority application. Mathson had an acceptance before Thanksgiving.</p>
<p>In fact I'd say that the best kind of safety is a school with rolling or early admissions. If these are matches or reaches you might not even need a really safe safety.</p>
<p>Let me echo Primetime Mom on the importance of demonstrated interest at the smaller schools that on the surface that might seem to be safeties; students from our local high school with similar stats have had very different results at some schools with relatively high admit rates depending on how much interest they had shown. Also, some competitive intelligence on who else is applying to those schools from your high school may be useful beyond the macro statistics in determining probabilities of admission at smaller schools; some strong students always seem to receive rejections from small LAC's when it is a year that the particular school is popular among local graduating seniors</p>
<p>mythmom, sorry but I am a bit confused by your post. are you speaking of both a son and daughter? and who went where?</p>
<p>Yes. S goes to Williams. D goes to Barnard. Sorry to be confusing.</p>
<p>Mathmom, I think that RPI changed and no longer has a priority application. Now, they only have ED and RD, even medal winners have to wait until RD to receive their decisions.</p>
<p>I can't agree more about demonstrated interest in certain schools. I don't know if the outcomes would have been different but my D got into the schools she visited and did not get into the schools she didn't visit. She did not apply to any Ivies and the schools that denied and waitlisted her were very hard admits this year.</p>
<p>My D and a classmate applied to the same school this year. The other classmate was much higher ranked and her scores were quite a bit better than my D's. My D visited, applied as a major that needed women and showed interest in other ways. Her classmate did not visit, applied undecided and showed no interest. My D was accepted and her classmate was waitlisted.</p>
<p>About showing interest at small schools-I think it is important, but there I also think that there is such a thing as too much interest. My son visited one school twice (one time was after acceptance, but before FA packages were mailed). He also participated in some online "chats" through their admissions office, and he had an interview off campus. This school was a safety, he was accepted, but no merit or financial aid grants were offered (all loans in the package). I really think that the school thought my son was sold, and would attend with a lousy package. They were wrong. It was depressing, because we would have sent our son to this school. My son really liked it, but we felt it was an admit/deny because of money. I always wonder if my son had shown less interest, if there would have been merit money and some grant money.</p>
<p>interesting northeastmom. I never thought of the other side of that coin. Kind of like what our mamas told us about men "Keep him guessing to keep him interested :)"</p>
<p>re: #49 I don't think RPI is the safety it used to be - especially if they did away with the priority application. (Which they didn't advertise, it just appeared on our doorstep.) It's gotten more selective, because of increased publicity, but there are a bunch of other engineering schools that are also very good. WPI I think is the new hidden gem - particularly because it is part of a five college consortium. So there are plenty of opportunities to be in a less male dominated atmosphere.</p>
<p>A good rolling admission school can really reduce the pressure while waiting for the big guns to come in.</p>
<p>We drove by WPI today and my son liked the campus. Does anyone know anything about this school. My friend's son wouldn't consider applying to it??? any good reason why?</p>
<p>I'd like to reinforce a sub-theme of this thread. . .please include less-selective schools in the beginning of the search. Too many students (and their parents) spend the first 90% of their search time on the reaches and matches, and then scramble for a safety, or just toss in an app without visiting. This adds needless anxiety to the application process, and can add anxiety all the way to dorm check-in if the safety ends up his or her school, and it was not appropriately researched. </p>
<p>And I'd challenge the statement that an EA or rolling admission school is by definition a safety. Sure, many of them are less selective, but unless the student is certain of acceptance, likes the school and his family can afford it, it is NOT a safety.</p>
<p>It is a safety in a sense that you have an acceptance to a school you'll be happy to go to before the rest of the applications are due. So you don't have to apply to any schools that you like less than the one that accepted you early (unless you want to compare fin aid offers)</p>
<p>I definitely learned the value of a safety first-hand. I'm second in my class of 170, 33 ACT, really good awards and ec's and got waitlisted at Chicago. That one was kind of unexpected, especially since I was counting on getting in - I'm gonna be an econ major. Then again, that may have been why I got waitlisted...applying to the econ program at Chicago has to make it ten times worse in terms of competition.</p>
<p>I am so thankful for all this info about looking at less selective schools. We went on 3 visits so far this week. Two of which would be considered "safeties". We fell in love with the school we visited today. We are now going to dig deeper and look for more schools that don't have the name recognition but would be great places to attend.</p>
<p>Learned a lot in the time between D1 and D2. D2 will definitely be applying early to a rolling admissions safety in additions to reaches and will avoid ED/EA. I think there will be a lot more joy in Mudville this coming application season.</p>
<p>reidm</p>
<p>That is such a good point about beginning the visits to the less selective schools early on. A friend of mine helped her D fall in love with Georgetown, Brown and Yale before fully considering admissions chances and FA. Tacking on safer schools at the end made those schools seem like chopped liver, even though they were all really good schools. I'd even say, try to visit the safer schools when they will look best, spring or fall perhaps. If you have the time, do something fun in the area, etc.</p>