First off from what I have seen a safety school is usually defined as a school in which 90-95% plus of similar students get accepted, then there is match, reach, and Dream. Also I would point out that these chances are based on data that is usually a couple of years old. A school can get hot and have a surge of interest even in a span of a year or two. So no, any individual safety school is never a guarantee. My daughter was one of those high achievers 1480 sat, 3.95 GPA class rank 3/300 but she was waitlisted at one of her safeties and at four of her match schools. With her stats the only dream school was supposedly Columbia. But she applied to 2 dozen schools through all three categories so she ended up with good options . I believe it is important to apply to more then one or two safeties and as many schools as possible. The schools hate that but the process is so arbitrary it makes sense for the applicant.
However, an actual safety needs to be both. It also needs to be a school that the student wants to attend.
Of course, students who think that they can only be happy at reach schools (i.e. those who think that any school that is easy for them to be admitted to is “beneath” them) may not have any actual safeties that they like. Also, parents who do not clearly give their kids the cost limits before application time could lead their kids down the path of having no affordable options in April.
There have been several threads in the past of students who got shut out of all schools; re-applying the following year after a gap year is always an option.
The students in honors/AP classes at our high school almost always apply to Pitt, Penn State, or Temple; some to two or three. Sometimes students end up choosing one of the three over more “prestigious” options, for financial reasons and often for other reasons as well, such as greater freedom for academic exploration and perks that are frequently offered to outstanding applicants.
I myself told frazzled kids that once they applied to one of these schools in early fall, they could choose or not choose to apply elsewhere as well, and that we would re-visit once all offers were in. Some of their peers were “one and done” by October.
Yes, andi’s son applied to an all-reach list, got shut out, took a gap year, applied to a mostly-different mostly-reach-with-no-safeties list, and got into some schools (it would have been even more devastating to get shut out a second time, but he got lucky).
But that is not the only shut out or financial shut out (all admissions are to colleges that are too expensive) story. Some show up each year.
"I liked who ever it was that said the EFC (estimated family contribution) really stood for every F’ing cent. "
I believe that was curmudgeon’s quote
There’s a lot of great information and advice on this thread. What I find so unfortunate about this process is how disadvantaged some students are with respect to accessing it. If you’re a student who doesn’t have the time or wherewithal to seek out this type of advice, doesn’t have parents who are in a position to help collect and disseminate the knowledge, and doesn’t have a guidance counselor with the time or expertise to help, you can be in a whole world of hurt. I love the idea of the parents’ group that one earlier poster mentioned. Maybe CC should start facilitating these types of groups, particularly in schools where that type of guidance is absent, to help fill that knowledge gap.
"And I think college is about finding people who are different than you, learning their views, seeing how everyone fits together. The world is not full of serious, intellectual people and it is unlikely you are only going to interact with other people just like you.
I don’t think there are many kids in college who aren’t serious about learning, or at least not many who will remain in college for long. I don’t think there is a college in the top 200 that doesn’t have at least a group of students who are ‘serious students’, who win national prizes, do research, write papers and books, invent things, discover things."
I agree - but for an introvert (such as myself), it would be a lot harder to find the serious students. It’s not that they wouldn’t have existed at my state flagship (which was Mizzou), but that it would have been harder for an introvert to find / socialize with them amongst the partied-in-high-school-partying-in-college crowd. For me (me!), a dense / thick presence of such students was very important to me and I value that for my children too. That does NOT mean “oh, they are only found at Ivies / similar school” but it does mean that not every school will have them. Some state flagships will be better than others on this dimensions. I’m sorry, Mizzou was not and is not Michigan.
Yup. I’ve tried to steer my kid towards at least considering some big state schools with strong programs in areas of interest, with assurances that the right niche will be there, but my kid has a visceral negative reaction to the predominant vibe if it is more of a party/sports oriented vibe. It’s just not a good setup, so we look elsewhere, recognizing that it could be a great choice for a differently disposed kid. There are plenty of options in all shapes and sizes.
This is where some good LACs come in (granted, the financial aspect still has to work somehow). Reed comes to mind as a school that is very intellectual and challenging but isn’t extremely difficult to get in to because for the longest time, they almost disdained playing the rankings game. However, Reed is following UChicago (which had Reed’s attitude for the longest time and then made a 180 degree switch to being one of the hardest gaming school out there), so that window of opportunity may disappear. Those with a technical bent will have more choices as schools like RPI/WPI/Stevens are almost certain to have their tribe and (because the tech institutes haven’t kept up in popularity) aren’t too hard to get in to.
@blossom I agree with your post #175 about safeties and school reputations being very regional. I have been wondering how to best ask this question on CC for a while but was not quite sure how to say it well. You have done so. Would you be willing to start another thread asking for folks to discuss the perceptions of the schools which kids from their area, or at least kids they know, attend? Since hiring can be very regional as well, I think this is useful information. Marketing materials can present whatever image the school prefers but regional perceptions may be quite different. I promise to be one of the first to post if you do start a thread.
The ratio of guidance counselors to students in US public high schools today is 481 to 1 on average. I’m guessing that many students never have a meaningful one-on-one discussiong with their GC regarding appropriate college choices. I also think many students don’t fully appreciate just how selective the top 20 colleges really are. They read about students who were admitted with such and such test score and GPA and if they have these stats think they have much better admission odds than they really do. It is also true that these top 20 schools carefully build each incoming freshman class -so many legacies, so many international students, so many URMs, so many athletes. In our case, D was a white female with an income too high for financial aid with no legacy, URM or athletic hooks. Since colleges are very mindful of the male / female balance she was, in reality, competing with students of a similar demographic. What percentage of the incoming class does this represent - probably about 25%, maybe less. What are the academic credentials of this 25% - higher than the overall pool. I think students make the mistake of assuming that the averages for all admitted students are the credentials that they need. A very common mistake is also not realizing how critical an exceptionally high un-weighted GPA and class rank are. The top 20 schools probably represent something like 50,000 admissions spots (Ivy’s are 14,000) out of a total pool of 3.1M US students and probably at least 500K international students applying to all colleges each year. 50K / 3.6M is 1.4%
People have this filter that processes the information they see and hear and then creates something they’d rather believe.
I get told all the time that someone’s kid got into the “number one university” in the country.
Of course, then you have to very carefully feign ignorance and ask which one that is.
Yep, kids use the overall admit rate as a marker all the time even when it it blatantly inappropriate to do so.
Some also see to expect that they should get in even at schools that reject 7/8 or 9/10 applicants.
BTW, @Wje9164be, because the 2 biggest elite privates are in the Ivy League (Cornell and UPenn) and some of the smallest (like CalTech and MIT) are not, you won’t have 50K slots in the “top 20” even if you add in the top 20 LACs unless you include some of the big schools like Cal/UMich/UVa/USC/UCLA/UNC.
@JustOneDad, didn’t you realize that there are at least 5 schools that are #1 in the country (just like there are 25 schools in the top 15, 40 schools in the top 25, etc.)?
You know, it might be number one amongst medium sized regional liberal arts colleges or something like that.
Number one for accountancy placements in a particular year…
Won it’s sports division last year…
Too much to keep track of.
Indeed. Many schools are #1/top 10/top 25 by some criteria or ranking.
Oh dear, I just saw a poster on another thread referring to Carnegie Mellon, UC Berkeley, and GA Tech as “safeties.”
@albert69, it would be funny if that poster was applying to CS.
Most people think the odds are not against them and will always come out on top. They will be blind to the facts. Well I got to go buy some lottery tickets.
And they might be, for some select students.
I’m certain it does not apply to everyone.
^Maybe a first generation URM with excellent scores and a stellar GPA!
@Cheeringsection anyone can start a thread.