<p>So, I have been looking at the SAT and GPA portions of common data sets for various schools for son who is a junior this year. I am trying to get a realistic idea of where he has a strong shot of being accepted. Ideally, where should son's SATs fall in the posted percentiles? Above the 75th percentile? Smack dab in the middle of the middle 50? And what if his CR is at the 75th and his math is closer to the 25th?</p>
<p>So, here is what I would say (others may have other opinions). This is all assuming he does not have a hook:</p>
<p>For a TRUE safety, both scores should be 75% or better. Also, if you are aiming for merit aid, that should be the case. The good news is that he is a junior, so he has time to study for the math portion of the SAT and try to improve his scores.</p>
<p>For a match, I would say both scores above the 50% mark AND an admissions rate of at least 30% of applicants. When the % acceptance is lower, it becomes a crapshoot even for qualified applicants. Just remember that many of the students admitted from the under 50% range are hooked somehow (athlete, URM, legacy, etc.).</p>
<p>Then he can also apply to some reaches. </p>
<p>It is much harder for most students to find safeties (and in some cases matches) that they really like, I advise spending a considerable amount of time and energy on that. Focus your visits & research mostly on those schools. We always have kids out here in the spring who applied to many reaches, a match or two, and essentially no safeties, and are very unhappy with their results.</p>
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<p>It’s still not a true safety if the acceptance rate is low. For my money, I’d put “low” as 35% or less.</p>
<p>Yes, I agree that a safety also has to have a high acceptance rate as well.</p>
<p>Being in the top 25% of applicants is not enough if the selectivity of the school is in the single digits. There’s no magic formula. My older son’s stat’s put him in the top 25% of any application pool, but we didn’t consider a school safe unless our school Naviance data indicated it was safe. For the schools we were considering that turned out to be schools with a 40% acceptance rate or better. He got into one of the single digit acceptance schools to and attended the one that had about a 15% acceptance rate the year he applied.</p>
<p>My younger son was more of a conundrum - he CR score was in the top 25% of every school he applied to but his math was in or very near the bottom 25% of many of the schools he applied to. He ended up getting into three reach schools (all with acceptance rates around 25%, one only had that acceptance rate EA), got rejected from all the schools with less than 20% acceptance rates, and got into his safety which I believe had an acceptance rate around 50% that year.)</p>
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<p>I would go so far as to say it’s completely irrelevant to anything if the selectivity of the school is in single digits.</p>
<p>A True Safety meets these four criteria:</p>
<p>You are flat-out guaranteed admission based on your stats either because it is open admission, or because you meet or exceed the requirements for automatic admission that are posted on its website. Umpteen years of data at your own HS that clearly indicate that all applicants with your profile have been accepted is not good enough for True Safety status. Colleges do change their admissions policies and can surprise you.</p>
<p>You can afford it without any aid other than federal (FAFSA) aid, guaranteed aid from your state (Hope, Bright Futures, TAP, etc.), and/or guaranteed merit aid from the college/university itself (see above).</p>
<p>Your major is offered.</p>
<p>You would be happy to attend if all else goes wrong in the admission process.</p>
<p>^On that basis my kids didn’t have true safeties. They didn’t apply to schoos with automatic admissions of any sort. We thought it more important to identify safeties they’d have been happy to attend.</p>
<p>I also forgot to say my favorite safety is the one you get into early. Both my kids were into one school by December 1st. </p>
<p>Pizzagirl, I think it’s still helpful to be in the top 25%, but at that point once you’ve crossed the bar, they’ll base the decision more on the other stuff in your application, and not how your stats are.</p>
<p>Both my kids were in the top 25% of stats at all of the schools to which they applied with SAT scores in the 99+%.</p>
<p>S1 was accepted at four, rejected at two, waitlisted at one. Selectivity ranged from 6% to 40%, with most of the schools in the 10-30% selectivity range. Got into two T-10s. Got merit $$ at three of the four. </p>
<p>S2 was accepted at four, waitlisted at two, rejected at two. Selectivity ranged from 19% to 40%, with most in the 20-30% range. Got merit money at two of the four and got into a T-10.</p>
<p>We considered the top 25% scores enough to get on the admissions table, and nothing more. </p>
<p>Safety for them was our flagship. Both qualified for merit $$ there and they felt they could make the school work for them.</p>
<p>Also – a student might be such an obvious shoe-in at the school he regards as his safety that the “safety” rejects him…because the admissions staff has a strong hunch the kid has no intention of actually going there. My son’s graduating class had one of those last spring, a real WTH? situation. A classmate was turned down by a university for which he clearly was extraordinarily qualified. </p>
<p>Our HS GCs have changed their vocabulary in recent years. They no longer say “safety.” Instead, it is now “likely.” They believe there is no longer any such thing as a safety.</p>
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<p>This is a good reason for applying to a state school in your own state as a second safety. State schools generally don’t pull this sort of thing on in-state applicants.</p>
<p>Of course, if your state U is your safety anyway, you need not bother with a second one.</p>
<p>Our kids targeted schools where they came in as top applicants and had reasonable acceptance rates. So far they have been awarded some pretty hefty merit awards because of that strategy. The schools are great fits for their intended majors and for the other activities they want to be a part of in college. I couldn’t tell you where any of these schools rank in any ranking system because it just doesn’t matter. All but one school they applied to has rolling admissions. DS has 7 out of 10 so far, waiting to hear back from the other three, one is an April notification. DD has 6 of 9 back, probably hear back from the other 3 in the next couple days. Our applications were based more on the financial side of “reach”, “safety” etc. because their stats were such that no school was an academic reach, only financial and single digit admissions reaches.</p>
<p>I think that in addition to a safety being a school where you’re guaranteed admission, a school can be a safety because you have already been admitted.</p>
<p>I know when I applied to schools, many many years ago, I heard from UCLA extremely early. I think it was in October or something. At that time UCLA used a rolling admissions policy. So, while UCLA wouldn’t be a safety for anyone using %ages, it was for me because it allowed me to stop looking for safeties or low matches or worrying that I wouldn’t get in anywhere. Instead I focused only on finding schools I thought I might like better than UCLA.</p>
<p>When I look at schools today, it seems like there are a fair number of schools that let you hear very early. If you have admissions to one of those schools, can afford it, and would like to attend there, then you can cross half the schools off your list.</p>
<p>OP, it really depends on the type of schools your kid is applying to. As has often been observed here, a high-stats kid who is a realistic candidate at the “lottery” schools (those with acceptance rates below about 15%) can easily be in the top 25% but still have little chance of getting in, just like all of the other outstanding unhooked kids that apply.</p>
<p>And then there is the financial aspect. My S’s “safety” school, the University of Rochester, gave him the worst FA package of all of his schools. (He got merit +need, but apparently they have some kind of auto NMF scholarship that he qualified for but wasn’t included in the first pass. We didn’t pursue it because he preferred other options.)</p>
<p>SteveMA,
Mazal tov to you and your kids! How nice to have a basically stress free senior year…good job!</p>
<p>“I am trying to get a realistic idea of where he has a strong shot of being accepted.” - This is hard to do if it is a very top student targeting competitive schools. But there are some state schools where there is a grid show auto-admit stats.</p>