Possible safeties to consider that have D1 football and the major area of interest would be: Western Michigan, Kent State, Washington State
Other possible matches could include: Temple, Michigan State, Appalachian State, Georgia State.
If memory serves Michigan State may have a strong grad school program in her area of interest, I’d probably look hard at that one. It’s a 72% admission rate so is a low match I’d think.
@eandesmom
This is so helpful. Thank you!
“it’s really hard on kids if they get shut out” — that would be a nightmare!
Totally agree with you that the lower the admission rate, the more of a reach it becomes, regardless of a kid’s stats.
Trying to remember where to find the gpa and sat bands for the schools. Looked at naviance and cds, but didn’t see it. Can you remind me?
This forum has been really helpful. I told D about the schools mentioned here and she seems to be interested. UNew Haven (80% acceptance rate), and D has a friend at Yale, so that got her interest. And when I told her about the body farm at UTenn (77% acc rate), she said “that’s so cool” — we googled body farm, my reaction was more like “that’s disturbing”.
@eandesmom
Thanks again. I was drafting when you posted.
Another possible safety that keeps popping up is Merrimack College, here in MA. It’s a smaller school with Div II football, but has her major and has an 82% acceptance rate. Looking at Naviance, everyone from her school who has applied got in, all with lower stats than hers.
@momzilla2D Please check your private messages here. 
It’s the envelope icon.
@momzilla2D there are a few good places for gpa and sat bands. CollegeData is one source, each schools individual CDS is another. The CDS, IF the school publishes it and it’s currrent will be the best source as collegedata and naviance can lag behind the real results. The data i pulled for you was from college data, it’s a good starting point and an easy interface.
@momzilla2D and others, I hate to bring up the dirty word of college costs, but with all the private, smaller endowed colleges being thrown about, I figure why not. I’m not making any assumptions about anyone’s finances, but I know that many family’s in our surburan community were shocked to find out that there was no way under any certain terms could they afford the colleges where their kids applied and were accepted. Most of them end up going to in state public colleges or universities. I am in no way saying that’s a bad thing as I work at one; however, these students end up super disappointed. I don’t want to be a Debbie downer, but being in this business for my entire career, I know that going into the process with eyes wide open is a must.
I agree with @eandesmom and my spreadsheet was primarily created using collegedata.
Thank you, once again, @eandesmom !
I am learning so much here. Did know about the CDS’s, but not the CollegeData site. Seems like a good resource.
Thanks for the reminder, @MAandMEmom . That I do have spreadsheeted!
Not being a downer at all, just calling it like it is. We cut a few schools for financial reasons. I can’t stress enough my total agreement on knowing the budget and having a list that matches it.
My rule has been that a college has to have a chance, based on actual data, of being in budget. That chance may be a reach and that’s ok…as long as the student truly knows the odds and the budget.
I personally believe a true safety is one the student would be happy to attend, is assured admission and is in budget. Admissions safeties that aren’t financial safeties, aren’t really safe at all.
We see a lot of kids who apply to dream schools to see if they can get in. The parents may assume they won’t and so it’s safe.
Kid gets in, parents can’t pay, kid has assumed if they got in it would magically work out.
And you end up with damaged relationships all around. It gets worse when all that is left is the in state safety they swore they’d never attend or have no schools that come in as affordable and end up in a gap year situation.
There are a lot of parents who don’t realize the student has a limit on the loans they can take directly and side the kid can just borrow enough.
I think the “well I’ll just have to take loans” comments said so many times by students on CC is very troublesome. Students don’t know that $5.5k is all they will have to personally play with their first year. Supposedly high schools are teaching personal finance now and this should be topic one. I know that our high school does zero in this area and guidance does little in the guiding department. Most families are on their own.
@momzilla2D Welcome. Also in MA…suburb NW of Boston. My S17 was a 3.45 uw / 31 ACT and is at McGill. My S19 is a 3.3 uw / 31 ACT. He top choices are McGill and Concordia in Montreal and UVM. He’s applied to UMass Amherst as well but doesn’t seem interested. (I forced him to have an an in-state back up for costs.) I’m fortunate that two of his top three are affordable…and possibly all three.
The above advice is good. I think it is important to make sure you have a school that is a safety and affordable on the list. For us, we are expected to be full pay (according to most schools) but not quite sure we can pay $70K per year, especially with two in college at once.
In terms of SuperMatch…don’t use it. Use your school’s own Naviance grid data. SuperMatch kept saying some schools (e.g., Penn) were a match for my son even though they have not accepted anyone from our HS under a 3.8 in years.
Feel free to PM me if you have any questions. I’m happy to help.
I think we actually expect too much of the HS’s in this are. They, legally, cannot ask about a students finances.
So yes, can they provide general info about the federal loan caps? Sure. Not much more than that and a lot more info is needed to guide kids as to what may or may not be possible financially. It’s not just the kids though, parent seem to think the kids can and should borrow whatever is needed which is appalling.
@JBSeattle , not sure if this was answered, but all of the EA schools that my DS applied say they have results coming in 12/10-12/20.
This is so true. Before I started really looking into this, I assumed that students could borrow the full cost of college. You hear so much about high levels of student debt and you assume its because students are allowed to tak on enough debt to pay for college. It was a real schock to find out how low the loan limits really are.
@SwimmingDad
“In terms of SuperMatch…don’t use it.”
I do find SuperMatch useful for finding schools, filtering for criteria like size, major, sports, etc. But not for Safety-Match-Reach. But then, you can look at, or even filter on, acceptance rate to get a better idea of relative chances.
I do like the scattergrams in Naviance, comparing D’s stats against results from other applicants from her school in last 3 years, but even then, there are so many variables. That one accepted with lower stats may have been a recruited athlete, for example.
Try parchment.com. I think it is alit better at “chancing”.
Momzilla2d:
Eandesmom’s comments did not note a couple schools I saw on your list like UConn which would be on the more likely side.
Also, all else being equal, Eandesmom is an expert whereas I am just a guy who knows enough to be dangerous ?!
My daughter says she is half way through the CSU app. Will be nice for her to get that done. After that, the rest of the schools are various levels of financial/academic reaches: Tulane, Occidental and University of San Diego. My wife told her to give up on Tulane but she said “free app”. Oh well, she knows the deal on these.
My DDs had to take Financial Lit in HS and there was definitely a unit on student loans and the interest accruing on them. It was enough to scare them a bit. Though I think a lot of their friends weren’t scared enough.
I know my nephew and his wife had student loans totaling $120,000 after undergrad- I guess their parents must have co-signed. I’m determined not to let that be my kids, though IDK what their future spouses will have for loans!
I’ve mentioned it on the other 2019 thread but not here- DD’19 seems to have made a decision. We’ve done a lot of looking and it’s the only one that meets her distance/major/budget/aesthetics/Chik-Fil-A parameters. It’s been a bumpy ride because she just didn’t like the fact that it’s normal for kids at school to go there, including a few from her class that she wanted to avoid. She had a panic about that last week. I said my piece and she talked to her friends (the friends probably being the better influence) and this weekend told me she will attend. Kids from her school will constitute .003 of the student population. Housing deposit is in and she got in a Living Learning Community so she’ll be in the nicest dorms. She’s wearing the t-shirt to school today.