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<p>A student should have in his/her application list either a 100% sure thing safety school, or at least three or so almost-safety schools (95-99% chance), to minimize the risk of a shutout. Note that this applies to affordability – if you don’t know that you can afford it, it is not a safety for you.</p>
<p>Having only one almost-safety and no sure thing safeties does risk a shutout, since sometimes students incorrectly estimate the chance of admission, or are misled by schools which have different admission buckets like the UT Austin auto-admit versus non-auto-admit example or different divisions/majors with different selectivity.</p>
<p>UCLA and USC are not safeties or almost-safeties for anyone, although they can be low-matches (70-80% chance) for some.</p>