<p>I'm not joking about this.</p>
<p>They think especially UCLA is a safety school since it's public, but we all know that can't be further from the truth. The worst part is, they seem to be basing this off of the stupid ranking websites (ie. US News).</p>
<p>How do I convince them otherwise? It's strange that they think NYU is a competitive school (which it is) while UCLA is considered a safety...</p>
<p>It’s really OK, as long as the applicant has so REAL safeties that the applicant is >75% likely to be admitted and has the means and ability to pay. If the person can apply to a rolling admissions school and get an acceptance early with no obligation, all the better. There has been a lot of confusion about how easy/difficult it is to get into various schools. Parent can be stuck in their mindset about schools, based on old info and reputations. It’s often easier to work around the biases than trying to change them.</p>
<p>Your school counselor might be able to point out info in your school’s Naviance or history that shows what % of kids with stats like yours did and didn’t get into those Us. </p>
<p>For S, he was accepted and graduated from USC while his lab partner was rejected from USC but accepted at UPenn and went to Boston U on generous scholarship–merit + FAid. S got much better merit aid from USC than BU; unpredictable decisions & results.</p>
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<p>Tell them to apply first…and if they get in, then you’ll consider them to be safeties.</p>
<p>Seriously, they seem to think that publics accept nearly everyone. They need to learn some basic facts…</p>
<p>The number of applicants to these schools
The number of acceptances
What these schools value more for acceptance (GPA, rather than test scores so that kids from underprivileged neighborhoods have a chance to get admitted with their high ucGPAs, but lowish test scores.</p>
<p>UCLA for 2014</p>
<p>Admit rate — Overall 18.2%
Admits 15,760
Applicants 86,521
California Residents (% of admits) 57.9%</p>
<p>Averages</p>
<p>High School GPA 4.17 (UC weighted method)
ACT Composite Score 30
SAT Critical Reading 675
SAT Mathematics 703
SAT Writing 689</p>
<p>too late to fix…</p>
<p>My post above should say:</p>
<p>UC’s weight GPA more heavily than test scores so that kids from underprivileged neighborhoods have a chance to get admitted with their high ucGPAs, but lowish test scores.</p>
<p>Who are "these parents? If this was the 70s (as in 1970s) that might be true ish. Now? What are these parents doing or thinking? Obviously reading and research is not their strong suit.</p>
<p>In my daughter’s school naviance, students with much lower stats get into NYU rather than the UCLA and USC.</p>
<p>Listen Jarjarbinks… I just wanted to write that in a sentence.</p>
<p>Have your parents call your high school guidance counselor. He/she will set them straight.</p>
<p>Do you have any real safeties in mind? Have you made your own list? </p>
<p>Good luck to you!</p>
<p>Even if they go by USNews rankings (which have their own problems), UCLA and USC are tied at 23rd while NYU is 32nd. Outside of Stern and Tisch, no other NYU undergrad program is particularly renown. So where are the OP’s parents getting their wacky ideas from?</p>
<p>In any case, can your parents even afford these schools without merit or fin aid?</p>
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<p>Unless they really only mean NYU-Stern, I’d really love to know what those parents are smoking. Even 2 decades ago, UCLA was already much more competitive and prestigious over all its divisions compared with most of NYU’s with the possible exception of Stern and Tisch. </p>
<p>Even my in-state California cousins would have laughed at that comparison 2 decades ago. </p>
<p>Also, as a native born NYC person who is familiar with NYU and its history, NYU’s current reputation as a “hot school” is only around a decade plus old and a product of both genuine improvements and a lot of well-executed marketing/hype. Just 2 decades ago, with the exception of Tisch or Stern, NYU was widely considered a school for rich mostly suburban tri-state area kids with B- averages and SAT scores so low even SUNY-Bing wouldn’t have accepted such students. </p>
<p>Go back another decade or two, and NYU was a commuter school for rich kids who couldn’t get in to a CUNY.</p>
<p>Safety is just a term and not a proxy for quality or selectivity. It should be a proxy for being HIGHLY likely to offer an admission. And it should also be a school that is highly likely yo be affordable for the DURATION of the four to … six years to graduate. </p>
<p>Like it or not, schools such as UCLA, USC, and other UC schools are safeties for a number of students! As the yield confirms. It just happens that some students have such high stats that admissions that are mostly paint by the numbers become safe bets. </p>
<p>Fwiw, this </p>
<p>Admit rate — Overall 18.2%
Admits 15,760
Applicants 86,521</p>
<p>has everything to do with the ease of applying to the UC system in general. Looking at the unduplicated applications adds a different angle. Getting into one of the UC, even outside Merced, carries a very high probability. More than sixty percent of the 100,000 Californians who apply are admitted to a UC campus. Only 9 percent to Merced. </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.ucop.edu/news/factsheets/2014/fall-2014-admissions-table2.pdf”>http://www.ucop.edu/news/factsheets/2014/fall-2014-admissions-table2.pdf</a></p>
<p>Getting in to a UC (that’s not Merced) <> Getting in to Cal/UCLA.</p>
<p>So you can say that some UC is a safety for many students. Cal & UCLA, not so much (and if you look at stuff like Parchment, you’d see that admission to Cal & UCLA aren’t completely by the numbers).</p>
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<p>@PurpleTitan </p>
<p>Yeah, pre-1969 CUNY/CCNY was highly regarded as an elite system of colleges with topflight faculty and students. And it was completely free for NYC residents until 1975. All changed after the sudden implementation of open admissions in '69, the flood of underprepared students, the flight of many topflight Profs and students, and the City’s financial woes in the '70s. </p>
<p>Incidentally, this lack of awareness of CCNY/CUNY’s pre-1969 status is one reason I was amused when some news articles implied General Colin Powell “settled” when he turned down NYU to attend CCNY in the '50s. In reality, NYU was his safety and when he was admitted to CCNY, it was just as much of a no-brainer as if someone was deciding between say…Hofstra and Harvard with the former being full-price and the latter being nearly/practically free. </p>
<p>You mentioned UCLA and USC, so I’m guessing you are a CA resident. Among CA residents, the UCLA is admit rate is even lower than the posts above suggest, as described at <a href=“https://www.admissions.ucla.edu/prospect/Adm_fr/Frosh_Prof14.htm”>https://www.admissions.ucla.edu/prospect/Adm_fr/Frosh_Prof14.htm</a> .</p>
<p>CA Resident – 9,143 / 55,295 = 16.5%
Out of State – 4,110 / 15,180 = 27.1%</p>
<p>USC’s admit rate was not much higher at 17.8% – <a href=“USC Releases Admission Statistics for Fall 2014 - Press Room USC”>https://pressroom.usc.edu/usc-releases-admission-statistics-for-fall-2014/</a> . That said, both UCLA and USC admissions decisions are far less holistic than the ivy-type colleges that we tend to focus on, on this site, so admissions decisions among top stat applicants are far more predictable. For example, Parchment members with a 3.9+/2300+/4+AP have had a 100% admit rate to UCLA over the past couple years. I wouldn’t call it a safety, but some students can expect that is extremely likely they will be admitted.</p>
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<p>Or perhaps I could buy the latest copy of People magazine or pay attention to the equally worthless self-reported numbers on CC. Parchment is pure garbage. </p>
<p>The point of my post was not about equating Merced to UCLA. It was about the reality of one application to all nine UC UG schools and the ease of getting four free ones. Hence, plenty apply to two adequate schools and add two miracle needing schools. </p>
<p>Again this is not measuring the quality and prestige of a school but its likelihood to offer a quasi automatic admission. </p>
<p>By the way, mostly by the numbers is NOT<> from not entirely, don’t ya think? The degree by which Cal and UCLA are holistic have been discussed here in the past. And so has the numerical scorecard that was/is used at UCSD and others. </p>
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<p>That is because the term is misused when adding a pejorative connotation. Safety MEANS extreme likelihood or even guaranteed admissions. </p>
<p>In Texas, for seven to ten percent of each graduating class, UT at Austin or TAMU are safety schools. And a dream for the ones who are ranked one percent beyond the cutoff. </p>
<p>True. UIUC Engineering & CS is a safety for some of the top students in IL looking to study engineering or CS. It is also, unless they get in to Stanford/MIT or maybe a handful of other schools, likely the best option available to them.</p>