<p>How do you define match, reach and safety? Is this a % per common data set? Majority of the data sets have 25% and 75%. So if the student is at 75% this is a match? What else is a determining factor in classification?</p>
<p>Safety: you are certain to be admitted, and certain that you can afford it. Often, this can be due to meeting automatic admission or scholarship criteria based on your academic stats.</p>
<p>Match: you are reasonably likely to be admitted, and reasonably likely to be able to afford it.</p>
<p>Reach: your chance of admission is small, or the chance of a needed large merit scholarship for affordability is small.</p>
<p>Out-of-reach: you have no chance of being admitted, or no chance of being able to afford it.</p>
<p>@ucbalumnus But how do you determine the likelihood of your admission?</p>
<p>Another part of the equation is the %age of students accepted (a highly competitive school may only accept 10% of applicants so it’s a reach) and whether your parents can pay for the school (a school you can’t afford is NOT a safety, no matter whether you can be admitted).</p>
<p>@seal16: You determine it through judgement, experience, and comparison of the potential applicant’s data/qualifications with the institutions’. However, fundamentally it’s an art, not a science. </p>
<p>Great. So how do people come up with college list that has matches, reaches and safeties? Do they post their stats on this forum to get chances by another teenagers?</p>
<p>@seal16: Initially, at least, I urge YOU to RESEARCH with considerable care. CC can provide valuable opinions based on decades of experience, your Guidance Counselor is a vital resource, teachers can be most helpful, perhaps (??) your peers and classmates may assist, as will your parents and other adult advisors. BUT – above all else – YOU need to investigate and to evaluate YOUR undergraduate options. After all, this is a very important decision . . . and it’s both YOUR life and YOUR essential determination. </p>
<p>A good place to start is probably the school and/or public library, which doubtless has dozens of college guides of various types. However, before you go there, I strongly recommend you take a few minutes (perhaps even a week, with several sittings) to develop an INITIAL list (that probably should be modified frequently) of characteristics you seek in a college or university (academic stature and societal reputation, size, cost, majors, location, cultural environment, and MUCH more). You may even wish to prioritize that list into crucial, important, and nice-to-have attributes. With that index and your library’s information, you should be able to develop (and this research will likely require several months) a tentative catalog of, perhaps, two dozen highly viable institutions. That carefully researched listing of <25 schools becomes your principal basis for many discussion with parents, advisors, teachers, your GC, peers, and even knowledgable CC participants – including “reach, match, and safety” decisions. </p>
<p>All of this will obviously require considerable work and thought, but all valuable things do, and YOU ALONE ARE FINALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS STUDY AND ANALYSIS . . . it’s your life and your future. </p>
<p>If your high school subscribes to Naviance you can confirm your estimate of getting accepted to a particular college by looking at the stats of students from your school who in previous years were accepted.</p>
<p>You can run the SuperMatch engine on the left of this page as a start. Add your flagship U and see how your stats compare to the Common Data Set. Then go from there.</p>
<p>Thank you @"Erin’s Dad" I am not sure if this SuperMatch engine is working. I get from 99 to a 100 % match at a lottery schools. That is an indication that something is not working.</p>
<p>Sometimes, a safety can be determined if the school has stated automatic admission or scholarship criteria that you meet, and you can afford it at list price or with automatic scholarships that you qualify for.</p>
<p>Sometimes, an out-of-reach school can be determined if it states some minimum requirement that you do not meet (e.g. GPA or course selection in high school), or if there is no possible way it can be affordable.</p>
<p>Everything in-between involves making estimates and guesses.</p>
<p>Naviance is a good start.</p>
<p>For my kids, we looked at Naviance and estimate the probability of admissiosn to 1 significant figure. (ex 10%, 20%, 30%, etc). </p>
<p>30% or less was a reach
40-90% was a match
100% was a safety</p>
<p>I actually used these probability of admissions and a rank ordering of preferences to calculate the probability of attending a school to help them focus on which applications were the most worthwhile. </p>
<p>. . . and please remember, it’s more than just admissions probability; it also must include AFFORDABILITY (e.g., an unaffordable safety school is not safe and a reach that simply cannot be financed – even with generous scholarship and grants – is likely a wasted application).</p>
<p>Yes, agree on affordability. A school may be a safety for just admissions, but if it is only affordable if you get a reach-level merit scholarship, it must be put in the reach category.</p>