might need safeties!

College Search & Selection
1

Hello, everyone! I wasn’t sure if I should put this in College Search or Chance Me…
I’m currently a senior and have compiled a list, but recently I’m not too sure about how safe my safety schools are. And I don’t really love my super-safe schools, so I’m trying to either figure out if my safeties are safe enough, or find safeties that I like better. (whew, i used the word safe a lot!)

Stats:
SAT: 2300 (750 CR, 800 M, 750 W 8 E)
GPA: 3.8 UW, 4.45 W
Class Rank: ?/625. School district does not officially rank, but I am in the 30s.
SAT II: Chinese (740), USH (770), Math II (770), Bio M (720)
AP: Human Geo (5) USH (5) Lang (5) Micro (5) Macro (5) Bio (4) Chinese (4) Euro (4) Physics B (3) Japanese (3)
IB: Diploma candidate, SL math (5) SL Econ (6)
Future tests/current courseload:
AP Calc AB, HL Japanese, HL English (possibly AP Lit), HL Chem (and AP Chem), SL Art History

Extracurriculars:
-Volunteer leader in a program run by a neighboring city- grades 9, 10, 11, 12. 28hr/week, 3week/year. no leadership opportunities, the only way to “move up” is to get hired. Summary from my app: “Organized projects and games suited to various age groups; responsible for overseeing, leading youth activities; selected for recognition by the city”
-club fencing- grades 9, 10, 11, 12. 6 hr/week, 48 weeks/year. I’ve done a few competitions here and there, gone to nationals and JO
violin- on my own (private teacher, I participate in CM which is a performance test kinda) as well as school orchestra 6hr/week, 34week/year where I’m principal second (I lead the second violin players) as well as an outside orchestra 4hr/week, 36week/yr where I now play first violin. We performed at the famed Walt Disney Concert Hall. World Relief Chamber Music- grades 9, 10. 3 hrs/week, 40 weeks/year. an orchestra that raised money (around $12000/year when I was there) for a natural disaster every year, also played in nursing homes.
-Girl Scouts-2hr/week, 26week/year. I’m the treasurer, sometimes I chair events too.
-YLA-grades 11, 12. 3hr/week, 30week/year. I’m a sponsorship coordinator, responsible for outreach, fundraising, and, of course, sponsorships
FASCA- grades 10, 11, 12. 4hr/week, 3week/year. A cultural association aimed towards Asian-American youths, specifically those of Taiwanese descent.
-NHS- grade 12. 2hr/week, 10week/year. peer tutoring after school, not much to say

High honors awards (school)
CSF, NHS, Distinguished Scholar (basically honor roll for the entire year)

Other awards:
National Merit Commended (I was one point away from semifinalist, of course I’m not salty or anything…)
National AP Scholar
1st Team USA Fencing All-Academic
VOCE Honorable Mention (a competition for musicians, competed under “solo strings”
Recognized by the neighboring city for my dedication to volunteering and helping the community. There’s no official title, but I got “recognized” by the city, free lunch and pin

Internship/work experience
none

Essays: I think my common app is decent! nothing groundbreaking, but 7-8/10
Teacher Rec: There are four teachers that I asked for recs. Chem teacher had me for two years, the other taught my intended major (econ), the other is my language arts teacher, and the last is my Japanese teacher (my fifth year with her now). My counselor recommended that I ask these teachers, so the letters must be pretty good? My chem teacher is a perfectionist and supposedly writes really good LOR.
Counselor Rec: he likes me more than most of his students. I read his LOR, it was very nice. 9/10 or 10/10

School: public magnet in CA, not sure if it’s considered large or small? class size is 625
Current list of schools (sorry, it’s arranged in order of due date)

University of Chicago (EA)
Columbia University (ED)
UC Berkeley, Los Angeles, Irvine, Santa Barbara
Emory University
Claremont McKenna College
USC
Brandeis University
Brown University
Carnegie Mellon University
Rice University
Washington University in St. Louis

I tried supermatch, but I don’t think I did it right? thank you!

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(posted this to Chance Me as well!)

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Consider one of the UCs on your list as a safety. If you have any doubts then add UC Santa Cruz and UC Riverside to your UC list. I count 8 schools on your list that are reach. Rather than safeties you need 2-3 match colleges that you truly like and remove 2-3 of the reach colleges.

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@fogcity Thanks for replying! Could you specify which 8 schools, since I have 14 schools on the list? I can’t add UC Santa Cruz and Riverside; the UC deadline has passed (same with CSU). I actually considered Brandeis and Emory as matches and CMU, Rice, USC UCB, and UCLA as low reaches. Am I wrong?
I’m also considering Vanderbilt and Northeastern, mostly because there aren’t any supplements…

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I’m not going to remove any of these schools except maybe Rice because I’ve completed the supplements (except for Rice) but I’m welcome to suggestions of schools to add! In addition, I’ve submitted my application to these schools already: Columbia, UChicago, UCs, CMC, USC.

6

You have a lot of “reaches for everyone” schools on your list. Look at more regionally known schools. eg Gonzaga U. I found collegefactual useful for finding schools.

7

My D2 had similar stats, slightly higher test score and slightly lower GPA. Her safeties were Lawrence and Mount Holyoke. She ended up getting in a lot of places, got great merit aid from those two. But some schools do consider interest, and she had definitely done that (visited, made sure her “Why X” type essays were specific, etc). You can Google the Common Data Set for schools to see if interest is considered. A safety needs to be a place where you are almost sure to be admitted, that you are sure you will be able to afford, and you know you would want to attend. They are harder to find than reaches and matches, which is why we often advise students to look for them first instead of last.

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I’ve got no problem with a reach heavy list as long as you have a couple of safeties that you are not going to be unhappy to attend. Other UCs seem like the most logical choice.

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@bouders Which of these schools would you consider matches and safeties on this list? Should I focus on finding more/better matches or safeties?
@intparent Considering that, which schools on my list are matches? Do I have any safeties? What schools would you suggest instead?
@mathmom The reason I created this thread was because I wasn’t sure if my safeties were safe and I couldn’t tell if my “matches” were really reaches. General consensus seems to be that UCB and UCLA are high match-low reach, and UCI and UCSB are safeties?
If it matter, I will definitely get into a UC since I’m in the top 9% and am in CA, I think the program is called ELC.
Thank you all for replying!

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To clarify, the reason I made this thread was to hopefully confirm the safeness of my safeties and have more options. I’m okay with UCI and I don’t have any particular feelings towards UCSB, so I’m trying to find an array of safety schools so I can add one or two more. As of right now, I do not love my safety and I was trying to change that by getting another safety.
What would any of you say that a school like Northeastern is? I was thinking low match, but of course I could be wrong; that’s why I’m asking questions!

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Did you consider finances in crafting your list? Is that not a consideration?

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@suzy100 I was told to not consider it/would be not an issue. My sister will be finished with college soon, and my mom will most likely get a job when I leave the house. Also, I think this comment was based on previous examples, as both my siblings recieved good finaid and scholarships. Thank you for pointing that out though!

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You should work with your parents to run the net price calculators on each college website. You can’t count on getting sufficient aid or scholarships, and it gives you a good idea of your expected cost of attendance. A safety for admission may be a school that doesn’t meet need, and then it may not be a safety at all. I don’t know a lot about the UC options, but others out here do.

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If you had posted before the UC/CSU deadline, I would have suggested adding more UCs and CSUs. If your UC-weighted GPA is around 4.10 (probable with an unweighted 3.80 with lots of AP and/or IB courses), then http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/infocenter/freshman-admissions-summary suggests that your chances at UCSB and UCI are fairly good, but nowhere near certain. UCB and UCLA admit rates for that GPA range are rather low, so these are reaches.

You could, of course, consider starting at a community college and then transferring to a UC or CSU as a junior to be your safety plan. Lots of students in California do that.

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You don’t have any safeties on your list. Look for schools that have a high (>50%) acceptance rate.

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I forgot to mention this since I added it last minute, but I also applied to UC Santa Cruz!
@intparent Thanks for the suggestion. My mom actually just left the country today, should I try to run the net price calculators with both or just my dad? However, one of the reasons I haven’t considered finances is that my parents hired someone to handle the financial aspects of applications. I don’t really know how much they do, though, so I’ll keep your suggestion in mind and ask them about net price calculators.
@ucbalumnus Could you point me towards a resource for calculating UC GPA? I tried a GPA calculator on a website but the result was really strange (and I forgot it, sorry). If it matters, I got a LOR request from Berkeley. I’ve considered the community college route as well.
@bouders Thanks for the clarification, I had been told that ~35% and above acceptance was a safety.
Thanks, everyone! I first tried the supermatch tool and inputted only GPA and SAT, and I got super reach-y results and figured that asking CC would get better results.

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Whoever knows about your parents’ taxes and accounts/assets can help with the net price calculators. If they hired a person to help with the financial aspects, you should ask them.

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https://secure.csumentor.edu/planning/high_school/gpa_calculator.asp
(same for UC and CSU)

19

At this juncture, you might as well wait until you hear from Chicago and Columbia. You should hear from them before the application deadlines for potential safeties. It is too late to apply for non-binding EA at, say, Tulane, and you missed the UC application deadline for lower-tier campuses. I agree that you could use an additional safety or two, although I think your chances at USC are excellent, and Emory is pretty likely. I would add U. of Miami, Pitt, Syracuse, to list of possibilities. . . maybe Lehigh . . . Check their application deadlines and hold off, if you can, until you’ve heard from your EA/ED choices - it would be a wasted application fee if you get into Chicago and/or Columbia.

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Some potential safeties may have scholarship deadlines that are earlier than the admission application deadlines.