<p>But here in Ca., the best UCs are not safeties and for kids like my son, the state schools don’t offer enough rigor in math and physics, at least not our local state school. The local UC would be more than sufficient if my son had decided to apply, but it wouldn’t be considered a safety in terms of applicants admitted. And actually, the local state school where my son is doing his graduate level research isn’t a safety for many students, either; admit rate is around 30% due to the sheer number of applicants.</p>
<p>My son’s 3 safeties were all about the 50% admit rate last year (Baylor, UT Dallas, and Pitt). He’s never visited any of them but they all are on the list because they have good offerings in graduate level math/statistics and physics and they are in cities that he likes. He’s admitted to all three so it seems we chose fairly well there.</p>
<p>Depends on the individual and their intended major, but anyone with those stats can find schools where they’d be happy, even if not overjoyed initially. For instance, I know one freshman who was aiming at those two and similar for engineering who is now a very very happy frosh at Purdue. Over on the college class of 2015 thread, last year there was one young man who wanted a school that had a nuclear reactor. Not many options there, and MIT said no. He’s now a very happy frosh at Mizzou.</p>
<p>We may be quibbling a little here about exactly when the kid will be “happy.” I think it’s reasonable for them to have preferences, perhaps even strong ones, and they aren’t going to be happy when they don’t get those. If they’ve chosen safeties well, they should be happy…eventually.</p>
<p>I applied to one school ED, and four others EA. If I get into any one of them, that’s my safety (assuming I get rejected from my ED school), so I can focus on applying to only schools I like better than it. I think its a good strategy.</p>
<p>We live in the town where the state flagship is located - so too close to home and neither of my Ds applied (even though it would be a safety with a good honors college).</p>
<p>D1 (2010) picked an academic safety that was really strong in her ECs. She liked it enough to go to the admitted student’s day despite being admitted to several higher ranked schools.</p>
<p>D2 (2012 kid) picked a safety that has a great program in her intended major and is an EA school. She is already in. If she had gotten a no we would have added another to her list. She will likely attend the admitted students day there regardless of what happens next.</p>
<p>Both Ds had good stats so their “match” schools are still reaches due to low acceptance rates (less than 30% is our definition). </p>
<p>There is no one and only school where a student can be happy. It is important to find something appealing about the safeties that could make them want to attend. If it is not academics or prestige it could be location, size, ECs, athletics, lots of other things that could make them happy. It is definitely worth the search to have a list of schools that include only places where something appeals to them.</p>
<p>What a safety school is for a particular kid depends on how accurate her assessment of herself is. I remember years ago a kid refused to apply anywhere lower than #10 and was eventually accepted at several of the top ones. People who understand themselves that well are rare IMO.</p>
<p>Be careful about using acceptance rates to determine reach/match/safety. USNWR (yes, I know) lists both CSU East Bay and UC Berkeley with a 22% acceptance rate. But there is a significant group of students who would find CSU East Bay a safety but UC Berkeley a reach from an admissions standpoint.</p>
That would be my son. His safeties were WPI and RPI. If we’d been in the midwest he might have had Rose-Hulman. Rolling admissions at U of Michigan would probably have accepted him. (It’s rated #13 for comp sci.) University of Maryland also has excellent comp sci. Rutgers. U of Rochester. Finding tech schools is super easy.</p>
<p>Similar to our son mathmom, my older s’s safety was Ga Tech. He got in the day before his ED acceptance to another school arrived. There are lots of very good and very acceptable safeties for thse kids of kids.</p>
<p>Queen´sMom:
"Academic rigor can be found in almost any school if a student is interested "
agree 100%, I would add, not "in almost any school “, but absolutely at ANY school. My D. was shocked by challenges of classes at her state UG, the classes theat she had AP’s - ‘5’ on exam and she was told to repeat. Good that she listened and repeated them. As an example, the first Iintro Bio college class went thru AP material in first 2 weeks. I heard the same type of comments from other top students (different HS/state UG combo). Kids who decided to go to state for 'easier” program will be very dissapointed, there is NO easier program there. Very. very challenging for very top kids and maintaining high college GPA is much more important for student future than HS GPA.
Also, intellectual peer could be found at ANY school as not all top caliber students attend Ivy/Elite, there are plenty of very top caliber valedictorians from private prep HS at ANY college.</p>
<p>Absolutely <em>ANY</em> school offers academic rigor and “plenty of top-caliber valedictorians from private prep HS”? I think that overstates the situation. You can make your own opportunities in just about any school, but not all schools have bunches of valedictorians attending. Maybe any very large school, maybe any state school, but “absolutely ANY” school? Absolutely not. We visited at least one school where it was clearly not the case, and I’m sure there are many more like it.</p>
<p>Does the semantics fight over “ANY” or MOST ANY" really matter? The point is there are PLENTY that do, or at the very least more than enough that do. Particularly if your stats are high enough to (realistically) apply to MIT, there should be no trouble finding academic rigor at RPI or similar.</p>
<p>“Absolutely <em>ANY</em> school offers academic rigor”?</p>
<p>Even in the category of large state schools, I would hesitate to make such a sweeping generalization. My own state doesn’t have a flagship, even, but offers lots of campuses with differing ease of study. The state in which I grew up has a flagship campus (which probably a third of the college-going kids in my hs class attended), and many satellite campuses which were regarded as second-rate to the flagship–not in prestige, but in rigor of study. </p>
<p>It is very possible to have classes with difficult subject matter and still find that there are only a couple of other students in the class who want to engage with that subject matter on a really challenging level (this might not matter in a lecture class, but in a discussion, it’s crucial). If a school offers essentially walk-in admission, I would expect that the number of kids with adequate preparation for college-level study would be pretty small. For most really smart kids, the prospect of going to class with others who are also really smart is one of the great inducements for attending a rigorous school. The OP’s examples of unhappy kids at academically mediocre schools ring true to me, and I don’t think the answer is that such kids are just not trying hard enough to find their niche. Some schools don’t have a large enough niche.</p>
<p>The reason the semantics matter is that the safety should be as good a match to the student’s capabilities as possible; it is simply not true that any school would offer the same opportunities to a kid motivated to seek them out.</p>
<p>Absolutely UCs can be safeties, especially for a student with Caltech/MIT contender stats. In some cases (depending on the student and the high school) Berkeley and UCLA are safeties.</p>
<p>Most people think of a school where the student falls in the middle range as a match rather than a safety. However, the UCs differ in selectivity, so a student who finds Berkeley and UCLA to be not a safety may find some other UCs to be safeties.</p>
<p>But note that major or division applied to can make a difference in selectivity at a UC.</p>
<p>“Absolutely <em>ANY</em> school offers academic rigor and “plenty of top-caliber valedictorians from private prep HS”? I think that overstates the situation.”</p>
<p>-Not at all. I imagine that most here are not even familiar with regular state UG’s as much as I am. My D. was never aspired to attend Ivy/Elite and happily went to state after graduating #1 from private prep. She met many people like her in her Honors programs and had great experiences there well beyond expected. She and her UG frineds had good choices of Med. Schools, including top schools in the country to atend also after graduating from their state UG which gave them plenty of Research and other opportunities outside of academics as well as prepared them well academically and provided top nothc pre-med advising including crucial support durinn Med. School application process. She is surronded with kids from Ivy/Elite at her Med. School. She does not feel any inferior in her preparation, she feels at the right place.</p>
<p>I think it really depends on the major and the student. The local state uni. 10 minutes away does not have enough of an offering for my son for 4 years of college in his areas of interest.</p>