<p>Since I'm seeing a lot of threads about applicants applying to schools that are so competitive even qualified applicants with great ECs get rejected from there, I think it is best to identify them.</p>
<p>Here's a preliminary list of "reach-for-anyone" schools:</p>
<p>Harvard
Princeton
Yale
Stanford
Johns Hopkins
MIT
CalTech
US Military Academy
US Air Force Academy
US Naval Academy
US Coast Guard Academy
US Merchant Marine Academy
Swarthmore
Amherst
Washington U in St. Louis
Pomona College
Williams College
Vanderbilt
Duke
UPenn
Brown
Dartmouth
Cornell
Columbia
Bowdoin
Olin
UChicago
Claremont McKenna
UNC-Chapel Hill (out-of-state only)</p>
<p>What would you say defines a “reach” exactly?</p>
<p>Edit: because even if a qualified applicant gets rejected from a school, if other applicants who were about equally qualified had a, lets just say 90% chance, I wouldn’t call it a reach exactly. Just not guaranteed. So I guess I’m asking for a percent answer. Seems like a good list though, i’m sure more could be added too.</p>
<p>Edit: although I realize that an exact percent is impossible to come up with, so an estimate will do just fine.</p>
<p>Most of the “reach-for-anyone” schools have acceptance rates in the 10-20% range… if not lower still.</p>
<p>And even students with 4.0 unweighted GPAs, 2400 SAT scores (or 36 on the ACT) as well as impressive leadership ECs often get rejected from “reach-for-anyone” schools.</p>
<p>The list is longer than you think – You’re missing some obvious schools like Northwestern, others famous for this (justly or unjustly) e.g., Tufts and probably any other school in the top 50 or so in the USNWR University list and at least the top 20 LAC list.</p>
<p>In fact, the reason that students have ‘safety’ schools is that people get rejected by schools for which they are statistical matches all the time.</p>
<p>Perhaps rather than saying that these schools are ‘reaches’ for everyone, we should say that they are ‘safety’ schools for no one (until the admissions or likely letter comes in).</p>
<p>PS – I rewrote my reply while Catria responded, so this thread is a bit out of step. Sorry.</p>
<p>Reach for anyone school: A school with an acceptance rate under 15% that receives a number of applicants each year higher than the number of students in the entire college/university.</p>
<p>That would be my definition of a reach for anyone school. It makes sense because there are far too many applicants for the available slots and the school does not make many offers.</p>