I see these three words all the time, but don’t know how to 'properly" apply them.
For instance, is a match school where my D’s stats are in the middle 50%? And if exceeds that middle 50% then does that make it a safety?
Is there a “how to” quick explanation of this?
For example - she is looking at a school with a 50% acceptance rate. She is in the middle 50% of the GPA, and the practice tests she is taking puts in in the bottom 25% (but super close to middle hopefully by the time she takes it). Where does that leave her?
I don’t think there’s any quick answer to this question. Everyone seems to define reach, match and safety differently. For our family, I would feel comfortable calling a school a safety if the school had a 50% accept rate and my kid was in top 25%. I would call it a match if it was a 50% accept rate and my kid was in middle 50% (but then there are gradations of match, as some people assign high match or low match to these schools). And I would call any school with less than 20% accept rate a reach, no matter where my kid’s stats fell.
But I still regard reach, match and safety categorizations with a grain of salt. There are so many factors that can go into a schools admissions decisions that classifying any school based only on percentages provides only a very rough idea of a kids chances. I think you really need to look at in state versus out of state for public universities (especially flagships), hooks and strength of ECs and other factors at selective schools that have holistic admissions processes, demonstrated interest at those schools for which that is considered, etc.
@mamagirls Reach/match/safety, however they are defined, are most accurately predictive of your daughter’s chances when seen in the context of actual prior year(s) results from your daughter’s high school. If your daughter’s school uses Naviance, taking a look at the individual scattergrams makes figuring out reach/match/safety much easier. If her circle lands in a: 1) field of green squares, the school is probably a safety; 2) in a green field with a fair amount of red X’s scattered about, it is probably a match; 3) in a bunch of red X’s with some green, it is probably a reach to high reach. This also depends on your (and your daughter’s) perception of certainty and risk. Does something have to be close to 100% to be a safety, or is 80% OK? Others might think 80% odds are a match, not a safety. To each their own, but scattergrams will give you a pretty good picture on how kids at your HS have fared in the admissions process.
Safety: admission is assured (including into the desired major if the school admits by major or the desired major is otherwise competitive admission), affordability is assured, and the student likes the school.
Note that overall admission stats can be very misleading for some schools. For example, a school may not be hard to get into, but its popular majors in computer science and nursing may be much harder to get into than the school overall. There may also be different admission buckets of other types. For example, University of Texas - Austin has a 100% admission rate for those who meet the automatic admission criteria (but that does not assure admission to competitive majors), but should be considered a reach for all others due to the small number of admission spots for non-automatic admits.
And remember there is no rule that you have to have reach schools. If your financials and desires of the student make all their choices safety or matches that is OK. That happened with us. For the schools he was interested in with his major the only reach part was for certain scholarships and programs and that is what we stretched for.