Match and Safety Schools for 36 ACT

College Search & Selection
1

Hi! I am a current senior and I just received a 36 on the September ACT. I am trying to figure out if my match and safety schools are just right or are they too safe. I am in the top 10 (UW GPA 3.94) of a competitive Ivy-feeder public HS in NJ and have substantial involvement in multiple EC’s. While I am applying to multiple reaches, I am focusing right now to assess my Match and Safety schools.

Match Schools:

  • UVA
  • Hamilton College
  • Wake Forest College
  • Colgate University

Safety Schools:

  • University of Richmond
  • University of Florida
  • UT Austin

I am asking advice because on Naviance for many of these schools I would be the most qualified applicant ever to apply from my HS and am wondering if these schools while great might be unnecessary to apply to because of my qualifications. Thank you in advance!

2

I can’t chance you because there is so much to your app that posters don’t know, including your intended major, but I don’t see any safeties above.

UF and UT Austin admit by major and limit OOS students, so definitely not safeties… depending on major they are reaches, maybe a high match.

UVA OOS and Hamilton admission rates are below 20%, so they are a reach for everyone, there are many applicants that are competitive with your stats. Wake Forest, Colgate and Richmond are probably matches, but not sure things (all have 20%-30% acceptance rates).

Lastly, make sure you run NPCs to make sure the schools are affordable and demonstrate interest at the schools that consider it.

Good luck.

3

@nikom814 Congratulations on your excellent academic record. I am sure you will have many great options next year. That said, my definition of a safety is someplace that is auto-admit for stats or with an acceptance rate of at least 50% and where your stats place you in the upper half of admitted students. That may be a conservative definition, but by my criteria, there are no safeties on your list.

UF, UT-Austin, and UVA, are not safeties or matches for you because the OOS acceptance rate is much lower than in-state.

If you are interested in CS or engineering, acceptance rates will be even more competitive.

Hamilton and Colgate due to their small size should not be considered matches, Their acceptance rates are roughly in the 25-30% range. Given your stats, I suspect you’d fare well, but no guarantees.

Richmond has also become increasingly competitive in the last couple of years so I’d consider it a match/low reach. Look at the threads from last year - some applicants with very impressive stats were waitlisted or denied.

To conclude, I don’t see any safeties on this list at all. I’d look at your better in-state public options like Rutgers, Rowan, College of NJ. If you’re open to larger public schools in the south or west, your stats would get you acceptance and large merit awards at places like U of Alabama, U of Arizona, Arizona State, UT-Dallas, or U of New Mexico. These schools have great honors programs.

Finally, a safety or a match also has to be affordable so if you haven’t yet done so, have the money talk with your folks and run the budget through the Net Price Calculators to verify if your target schools are affordable.

Best of luck and congrats again on your excellent test scores and grades.

4

@Mwfan1921 At my school, UVA acceptance is almost directly correlated with GPA and test scores. Around my stats, there are only acceptances on Naviance and that is why I considered it a match despite the low acceptance rate. Also, for UF and UT Austin I would have the highest stats ever to apply from my high school.

5

UT Austin is not a safety for OOS. Are your parents willing to pay full OOS cost?
I would add Rutgers as match/safety.
Without knowing your accomplishments and interests i.e. based on stats only, it is difficult to give suggestions.
Are you looking for LACs or big research unis ?

6

@NCKris I am willing to pay OOS cost. I am interested in political science/philosophy. The reason I am not applying to Rutgers is that my family is moving after I graduate and I will be unlikely to get instate tuition. I think I will have to talk to my GC because my school’s admission rates seem much higher than nationally and what the Guidance department considers safeties is much different than on these forums. For example, my school’s admission rate to Rutgers is 85-90% and my safeties which are considered too reachy here are considered too safe at my school.

7

Naviance is good info to have…but that doesn’t give you visibility to know whether the applicants had hooks (legacy status, athletic recruits, etc.), or know which school they applied to, or their rec letters, or their essays. Admission to some schools is more competitive than others, and you still must do well on the UVA essays to gain admission, high stats or not.

I hear you and agree your stats are great, but same reasons apply as for UVA above. More competitive majors and schools for OOS students could have admit rates below 20%, perhaps even below 10%.

@mamaedefamilia wrote:

Class of 2023 acceptance rates: Hamilton 16.1%, Colgate 22.6%. Both tough admits, and dropping every year.

8

That concept doesn’t exist.

You are using your criteria for qualification. All of these schools are holistic. The most qualified candidate in my S’s HS class is so because he is ranked #1 at his position and single digits overall for football. His academic credentials are good enough that he can go to any school that he wants (that has a football team). That type of qualification doesn’t show up on Naviance.

P.S. Don’t take it that people on this site don’t thing you will get in. It is just every year, someone like you gets rejected/waitlisted at every school that they apply. We just don’t want it to be you.

9

@nikom814 I believe that if you are eligible for in-state tuition at Rutgers when you enroll, then you will remain eligible even if your parents move out.

“Any dependent student who is domiciled in the State for tuition purposes shall continue to be eligible for New Jersey Resident Tuition Status despite his or her supporting parent(s) or U.S. Court Appointed legal guardian(s) change of domicile to another state, while such student continues to reside in New Jersey during the course of each academic year and is continuously enrolled.”

https://nbregistrar.rutgers.edu/forms/ResidencyPolicy.pdf (last sentence of section 1.E)

In any event, I agree with all the other posters that you need real safeties, and, as others have already pointed out, Rutgers is the most obvious one (and with your stats Merit and/or Honors College seem possible).

10

Is this a joke? Your “match schools” are actually your safety schools – and your “safety schools” are schools you should only apply to if you’re looking for a free ride somewhere.

11

Last year was a particularly rough year for admissions from the student perspective. Students that were all in the green in Naviance did not get accepted. Hopefully this year will be more predictable. From a stress reduction perspective, it is very nice to have an acceptance from a rolling admission school early on. If you are applying to UTexas Austin through Apply Texas, go ahead and submit to UT Dallas. Or, apply to a different rolling admission school you would be okay attending. (You might also consider applying for Plan 2 at UTexas Austin, not as a safety but because it might be a good fit honors program.)

Good luck!

12

Echoing all others who have posted that UT Austin is never a safety for OOS students.

13

UT Austin is an admission safety only for Texas residents with top 6% class rank and who are not applying for a more competitive major. It should be considered a reach for all other applicants, who must compete for the ~25% of spaces left after the automatic admission fills up ~75% of the spaces.

Political science or philosophy… are you intending pre-law? If so, you may want to consider going to a less expensive college (e.g. in-state NJ publics) so that you can use the money for expensive law school.

14

I don’t know much about Richmond. UF and UT Austin are very good universities. I don’t think that either are quite safeties since you are OOS.

My views on Rutgers might be skewed by the graduates from Rutgers that I happen to have known in the past. However, based on what I have seen in graduates, it is certainly possible to get a very good education there and to do very well after graduating from Rutgers. Since you are currently in-state, I believe that it would be a safety, and a very good safety.

“I am willing to pay OOS cost. I am interested in political science/philosophy.”

Would you need to take on any debt at all in order to attend UT Austin or UF while paying OOS costs? Do your parents have enough money to happily pay for four years at either of these schools, and then to also pay for law school?

15

@nikom814 My daughter was in a similar situation and here is what we ended up doing:

  • Apply to reach schools knowing the odds
  • Apply to match/safeties that she had a very good chance of admittance, but there are no guarantees. We felt like she needed 3-5 of these type of schools, and it was easy to recycle essays. I like UF, Rutgers, and Richmond and would suggest you add UGA and maybe Clemson. UGA has an early admittance that is heavily weighted towards stats, and you should get a response early Dec.
  • Finally we hunted for as close to lock as possible. We wanted a place she would be OK with, had early/quick decision, and significant merit aid. She chose Montana State because she liked Bozeman, they have rolling admissions so the decision was very quick, and she was very competitive for a large merit award. If she went there we planned to save her college money for grad school.