<p>Why would anybody apply to more than 1 safety? It is a safety. Which is supposed to mean they will accept you. So you pick your favorite safety. Why bother with a second?</p>
<p>^Because what’s a favorite in October might not be a favorite come April. Because it’s nice to have choices. Because you haven’t had a chance to visit your safeties. Because even safeties can offer different financial aid packages. (My older son got $5000 more a year from one safety than from the other.)</p>
<p>I really think it’s a mistake to think of schools as safeties. They are schools you like that for one reason or another you are pretty sure to be accepted at. They aren’t necessarily inferior. In my younger son’s area of interest (especially with the honors program) his safety was a great school.</p>
<p>ucbalumnus: That is true, to a point. The message has been emphasized as to why it’s important to rock the essays for the admissions safeties with likelihood of large merit aid but no guarantee. Kid is all mid 700s on SAT I and II and 4.0 unweighted in full IB plus 6AP exams (4 5s and 2 4s) plus a singular EC/“tip” and has shown very strong interest over year and a half, visit etc. at both academic safety financial aid likely schools. I think it’ll turn out OK, wherever she ends up, but it’s a strange middle ground to be in.</p>
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<p>Because for some of us, money is very much an object. Right now, her financial safety is DD’s first choice. (“Right now” because her first choice has changed several times.) But if one of the other schools comes through with a big merit award, that will change the picture. </p>
<p>Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using CC App</p>
<p>I really think it’s a mistake to think of schools as safeties. They are schools you like that for one reason or another you are pretty sure to be accepted at. They aren’t necessarily inferior. In my younger son’s area of interest (especially with the honors program) his safety was a great school.</p>
<p>I agree.
Some schools are better fits than others, academically & financially, but students should never apply to any school they wouldn’t be willing to attend.</p>
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<p>A few reasons:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>The student does not have a clear top choice among the safeties, and/or is prone to changing his/her mind about which one is the preferred one.</p></li>
<li><p>While all may be definitely affordable, there is the possibility of even greater need or merit aid at one or more of them that can only be compared after admissions and financial aid is done.</p></li>
<li><p>There is a slight possibility that the student, parents, and counselors incorrectly assessed a “safety” school. As many schools get more selective due to increased volume of applications, what was a safety going by last year’s stats may not be this year.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>It’s nice to have a choice rather than feeling like you’re going somewhere by default. That’s why I would encourage my kid to apply to two “safeties” (both financial and academic). Some kids apply to all reaches and just one safety, and ended up attending the safety reluctantly and bitterly because they really believed that it wouldn’t come down to that.</p>
<p>annasdad - having a d may be helpful at case & rochester. Did she interview at either school? DS interviewed with Rochester, but in our home state with an admissions rep. He said several times that ds was exactly the type of student Rochester wants, and though it made ds feel that it meant he was “in”, I’m more practical and wonder how many kids that rep tells that to. He even sent ds out to bring in dh to talk to him. I never heard of reps talking to parents in an interview.</p>
<p>We hear mid-dec from Case, I can’t believe they don’t have a website for the kids to check the status of their apps and have to wait for snail mail.</p>
<p>Of all the schools, I’d pick Rochester for my ds, he doesn’t have a clear cut favorite. </p>
<p>I think that plus Lehigh are his top choices, but least likely admits.</p>
<p>I also think it is a mistake to think of a school as a safety. It sounds like they are almost all either target or reach. The targets will accept you and then you decide based on financial aid. The reaches may or may not accept you. In my mind the safety is the one you can pay out of pocket for - probably a state school or CC. There is no way I would encourage my kids to apply to 3 community colleges. Pick one and get back to the target schools.</p>
<p>“My daughter applied to one University and a specialized program at the University that was on rolling admissions. Her plan was to “sit” on all other applications until 1) she was accepted or denied at special program or 2) the deadline to other schools on her “short list” approached.”</p>
<p>^ This was plan A for S, although would have applied to 2 more if accepted EA. But, this is what’s happening:</p>
<p>“However we didn’t factor in the time required for our perfectionist writer to construct earnest responses to the unique supplements associated with each application. She’s had too many lost weekends, sometimes spending 24 hours in pajamas to produce a few paragraphs that may or may not affect her application success.”</p>
<p>What a process!</p>
<p>I do like the 3/3/3 idea and if you can eliminate some through EA, all the better.</p>
<p>eyamamom - yes, she interviewed with both, but neither during the on-campus visits, which were last spring during the admissions period when neither school was doing interviews. She interviewed last summer with a Rochester regional admissions rep and this fall at her high school with a Case rep. In both cases, she said she thought the interview went well.</p>
<p>I guess none of you who have kids applying to Case are turned off by SAGES. That approach to humanities just sounds downright awful and alleviates the need for Case to hire permanent scholars. I don’t mean to hijack the thread, so I’ll start another, but I already tried discussing it in the Case thread, and it didn’t get much traffic.</p>
<p>After reading 50 posts, which almost exclusively discuss personal approaches to the madness, I wonder whether or not the schools or admissions offices in the schools are delivering either any formulaic methods or hints on handling the process of your child’s college admission.</p>
<p>Classic Rocker…SAGE was a big reason my math/science child was not really excited about Case. </p>
<p>FOTB- in my experience over the past year, the colleges all have their own “advice” on how to approach admissions. Most want you to think that they are really exclusive, and that everyone with a certian stats have equal and unequal chance of admission. So they tend to tell everyone to apply.</p>
<p>Classic Rocker - we liked what we heard when they explained sages to us. What about it didn’t you like?</p>
<p>Here’s the thread he started about it: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1249697-sages-case-new-low-humanities-education.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1249697-sages-case-new-low-humanities-education.html</a></p>
<p>I think he overreacted a bunch.</p>
<p>FOB, how are colleges going to give formulaic hints when they say their admissions process is holistic? What I have heard them say (beg even) is for students to really try to figure out who they are and what they want out of college during the application process and then target their college applications appropriately. Harvard gets really tired of applications that start off “I want to major in business.” Ahem, there is no undergrad business major at Harvard.</p>
<p>I think another reason for more than one school in a “tier” is that it really is impossible to assess everything about a school well enough for some students early in the game.</p>
<p>My son is looking at quite a few schools in his mix where he is definitely in the top 25% of the testing/ grade spread… and where his chances of getting in are excellent. He chose them based on academics, general atmosphere, availability of good learning supports, and he visited almost all.</p>
<p>But once he is in, there are many other evaluations to make. He has some specific personal issues and will be entitled to some residential accommodations, and we want to see which schools not only have/make the accommodations, but are gracious and pleasant. He will need academic accommodations, so likewise. He has taken calculus and linear algebra, and is (or will be) more than competent at both, and his school does not do AP, so he wants to find out if he can test out of them… (not get credit, just not retake if he can demonstrate competency at the school’s required level.)</p>
<p>So, it really does come down to the individual student. Everything else is a rule of thumb… a starting point.</p>
<p>The reason for more than one safety is </p>
<p>1) You may not have had time to visit a safety. If it’s a safety, whether you are admitted does not depend on mushy things like “level of interest”, so for many safeties, it’s faster and cheaper to just apply then to travel out to visit. If it becomes a serious option you can travel and visit. </p>
<p>2) It’s not just about having a choice, but MAKING a choice. After getting rejected left and right, it can be a catharsis to turn around and reject a school. Also, having a choice and being forced to make one makes you go through the process of identifying what’s really important. After making the choice, it’s easier to feel good about the choice.</p>
<p>There are safeties and there are safeties. My S has the state flagship as a financial and academic safety based on its automatic admission formula, which should make his admission automatic unless something catastrophic happens to his GPA. So for him, there is absolutely no reason to find another safety, though I can see how others’ situations would differ. With a good state flagship safety, he does not even have any interest in thinking about match schools. It is all reaches for him, and that is fine, as all of us (S + parents) would be perfectly happy if he goes to the flagship.</p>