<p>If your state has a good public system, a safety for a student with very high grades and scores is often the school that is just below the flagship in selectivity. In Virginia, for instance, the top hs students typically apply to UVA and/or William and Mary, and use Virginia Tech or James Madison U. as their safeties, depending upon whether they intend to major in a technical subject or not. For the slightly less strong students, VT or James Madison might be the “goal” school and the safety George Mason, VCU, or the University of Mary Washington. All these schools deliver an excellent education. My friends in North Carolina, NY State, and California seem to follow a similar strategy.</p>
<p>I think many people just don’t realize how may high-achieving students are out there, because of course they’re thinly spread. A kid who looks (and is!) fabulous in their hometown or local school just isn’t necessarily going to look that remarkable when lined up with the other top students in the nation.</p>
<p>I continue to think that the mindset of (heavy sigh) “WashU/Tufts/JHU/Vanderbilt/Emory/whatever is SO much inferior to HYPSM for my precious little snowflake that if she has to slum it, she’ll put her game face on and deal with it, but otherwise, I just can’t imagine such an awful outcome” is pretentious and obnoxious. Recent immigrants have an excuse since they don’t know any better and they are often the products of misinformation from their home countries, but people who’ve grown up in this country have no excuse for thinking this way.</p>
<p>Dad II…your kids both applied to academic/financial safeties…Ohio State. It’s a great school and you know what…if they hadn’t it the admissions lottery and financial aid one too a the schools where they are, they would have gotten an excellent and affordable (even by YOUR standards) education at Ohio State.</p>
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<p>You know…not every student on the planet wants to apply EA…although I do agree that EA and Rolling admissions schools should be on EVERY student’s list for that early acceptance. </p>
<p>ED…sorry…don’t agree with that if finances are an issue (look at yourself…what if your kids had gotten accepted ED but the finances didn’t work out…oh brother…what would you have done?).</p>
<p>you will find that I have been saying this for about two years now - safety is way over rated. I have been on this board for quite a few years now. They always bring out the story of one student - Anderson or something like that.</p>
<p>LOL…do you really think that only one child here on CC has has to go to their safety school? many kids end up at their safety schools either because they didn’t get into their top schools or they couldn’t afford their top schools.</p>
<p>DadII, why did your kids apply to Ohio State if safety schools are overrated? I’m not gettin’ it! You advise others not to do what you yourself did? </p>
<p>Look, both your kids were fortunate to get into their reaches/matches. My kids too. But I surely recommend that applicants have a safety school or two on the list that they like enough to attend. Not all kids are as fortunate as yours or mine.</p>
<p>A SUPER strong candidate SHOULD be able to score at least an acceptance to a top 20 or so school, IF s/he tries them all. BUT, the truth is almost no one will try them all. If anything, I suspect a lot of top candidates who apply to 10 or more schools only focus on the Ivies and other top 10’s with a couple of slightly lower ranked schools thrown in just in case. Plus, “SHOULD” is still not “SHALL”. Unless your child is a nationally/internationally recognized superstar with a perfect academic record, getting into any of the top 20 schools is far from being a sure thing. Many people often don’t realize the weight of a compelling application, which is much more than just reporting your grades, test scores and EC’s. A bad essay can doom a 2400 applicant.</p>
<p>There is also the issue of overestimating one’s standing in the applicant pool. With an inflated self-assessment, it is very easy to mistaken match and low reach for safety. But, even in this degenerative case, having “safeties” is still a good idea, regardless of one’s idea of safety.</p>
<p>Any financial adviser will tell you to diversify (different mix categories) to minimize risk.</p>
<p>Similarly, any college admissions counselor will tell you you need a diversified mix of colleges in your application list. My S was lucky to get into his first choice and did not need to fall back to his safety. Some of his friends on the other hand did not get into their top choices and/or got into schools that were well rated but unaffordable and are going to the state flagship. This was a safety for all of them including for students in top 5% of the class. I was surprised at the number going to the safety at the end of year. Based on the conversation at the beginning of the year, I was expecting most students to go to other institutions.</p>
<p>The first thing that the GC told them at the beginning of the school year was to apply to the state schools (they have rolling admission), get admission and then start looking elsewhere if they wanted. I remember her telling the students that even if they were applying to Stanford under REA, they could still apply to the state school at the same time and that was allowed. </p>
<p>*Exceptions to Stanfords Restrictive Early Action Program</p>
<p>Applicants must agree not to apply Early Decision, Early Action or Early Notification elsewhere. Exceptions exist, however, and as a result, Restrictive Early Action applicants may apply to:</p>
<pre><code>* Any institution, public or private, under a non-binding Rolling Admission option.
Public institutions in a student’s home state under a non-binding Early Action program.
</code></pre>
<p>*
Given her experience, I trust her judgment. Many of her students are glad they followed her advice.</p>
<p>The reason you want a safety school, or even two is so that you have schools that you and your student have selected. If you wait until you realize that maybe your student is not going to get into the reaches, or that the financial aid/merit money offers are just not going to cut it, your selections are limited to those schools that still have financial/merit money and even spaces. </p>
<p>One of the things that really hurt my friend’s D whose father reneged on paying college costs, is that he did it at the end of the process, instead of at the beginning. Had she known this was a possibility, she could have researched and added some schools where she was likely to get merit money, or apply to the state flagship. The flagship spots were closed by the time she was told that the expensive LAC she chose was not an option, so she was limited as to which schools would take here at that late date.</p>
<p>Many state schools have rolling admissions and once the spots for a particular program are filled, they don’t care if you are a Presidential Scholar and ivy material. You are not going to get in that term. Also the money goes fast. It’s better to be in control of this process of as many things that are controllable because there are ever so many things that simply are not.</p>
<p>I continue to think that the mindset of (heavy sigh) "WashU/Tufts/JHU/Vanderbilt/Emory/whatever is SO much inferior to HYPSM for my precious little snowflake that if she has to slum it, she’ll put her game face on and deal with it,</p>
<p>LOL…imagine thinking that going to WashU, etc, is slumming it! Imagine having to having to (sadly) say, “my child is going to Emory.” LOL These people need to get grounded!</p>
<p>A SUPER strong candidate SHOULD be able to score at least an acceptance to a top 20 or so school, IF s/he tries them all. BUT, the truth is almost no one will try them all.</p>
<p>Right…don’t we all giggle a bit when a student has EVERY top 15 school on his list. No thought about “fit”…just only focused on ranking/prestige.</p>
<p>The problem is what is a “Super strong candidate” these days? A student with super stats from the NE is not the same as a student with super stats from an unusual state. God forbid you’re a super stats Asian from the NE or Calif. You and thousands others have identical resumes…perfect/near perfect stats, musical and science awards, Val, NMF, 15 APs with 5’s on all, etc. (I just described my niece who’s half Chinese and from southern Calif. LOL She doesn’t even want to mention that she’s Asian at all. She has an Italian last name. )</p>
<p>I think we are moving into an era of waitlist purgatory. The large number of applications that students are submitting to the elite schools means that the schools are increasingly forced to rely on their waitlists to sort through the cross-admit confusion. I think this makes having an in-the-bag admission (a safety, if you will) all the more important, if for no other reason than managing the stress.</p>
<p>Last year, I watched the family of an extremely capable student from Colorado go through waitlist hell. He applied to 7 schools, only got into William and Mary, and was waitlisted at every other one. Dad paid deposit at W&M; Emory called with offer. Decline W&M, Dad paid deposit at Emory, Vanderbilt called with offer. Decline Emory, Dad paid deposit at Vanderbilt, Duke calls with offer. Decline Vandy, Dad pays deposit at Duke, and says “This better be it.”</p>
<p>But no matter how stressful that musical chairs must have been for them, imagine how much worse if they were all waitlists. Furthermore, he declined 3 admissions, post deposit, that the schools then had to go fill, presumably off their waitlists. As applications numbers go up, and schools’ ability to construct a class on the first pass goes down, realistic safeties become doubly important.</p>
<p>Yes, the number of kids on waitlists these days is ridiculous. And getting financial aid if you are waitlisted is often not going to happen even at schools that do give 100% of need to their regularly admittted kids. My friends D cleared the OBerlin waitlist, but the aid package was anemic. A surprise because historically the kids from her school have done well with aid from Oberlin. But they were not from the waitlist.</p>
<p>Not always the case. It depends on the school and its endowment. Some kids off wait lists get the same packages as students accepted in the RD round.</p>
<p>But the numbers of kids on wait lists does make an acceptance unlikely.</p>
<p>Being waitlisted at 8 schools (Princeton, UPenn, Dartmouth, Brown, Cornell, Vanderbilt, WUST, and Tufts) and electing to remain on 5 (Princeton, UPenn, Dartmouth, Cornell, & Vanderbilt) contributed to the most stressful two months imaginable for our family. During May and June our daughter had a hard time relaxing and getting psyched about the school where she deposited because of the “waitlist purgatory” she found herself in. While her friends were busy making plans to “fly off”, she was in an agonizing “holding pattern”. Here’s the thing…waitlists seldom EVER result in an offer. Reading stories like the one UT84321 describes simply serve to give false hope, I believe. Typically, less than 10% of students at these types of school receive phone calls; nonetheless, students still think to themselves, “Someone gets called, right? It might be me!” In short, it’s an emotional hell. 4 of her 5 waitlists closed without producing fruit at the end of June. One WL is still outstanding; however, she has decided she is now so entrenched at her new school, she will decline of offer it were made (which at this stage is HIGHLY unlikely).</p>
<p>It is a purgatory that is more like hell to be waitlisted at schools you really, really want more than the school where you sent the deposit. It is always recommended that when you get a waitlist notice, to let them know if you want to be considered, send any extra things that may help your chances to get in there, and then FORGET ABOUT IT. If you clear the waitlist, they will contact you. Especially if there are every so many kids on the waitlist and few spaces the year before, you know that your chances are very slim. Smaller than what they were to get in during the regular season.</p>
<p>My son dumped all of his WL school, but his pathetic mom sent in one postcard. And he did clear the waitlist in August. He had no interest in going there so that was the end of that.</p>
<p>Aniger: Even for a student with tippy-top stats, the schools you list are mostly reaches, possibly matches.</p>
<p>In my book, for a school to be considered a safety for a student, that student has to exceed the midrange of scores and GPAs for the freshman class the previous year. In addition, and this is important, the college’s acceptance rate should be at least 40%. Plenty of kids are above the 25-75 range at lots of schools, some with admission rates below 20%. Regardless of stats, those schools are just not safe bets for anybody. A college that’s rejecting 80% or more in a self-selected pool of strong applicants? Not a safety. </p>
<p>Since you say your child is “heavily focused on HYPSM,” I’m going to assume that mid-sized research universities are his/her preference. S/he might want to consider as possible safeties George Washington U, American U, Brandeis, Boston U, U of Pittsburgh, U of Denver,Tulane, Syracuse, or one of the excellent public flagships such as Michigan or Wisconsin.</p>
<p>You might be surprised to see how many “safety schools” have chapters of Phi Beta Kappa. We found the list of member colleges was a very helpful filter when we built Son’s list last year.</p>
<p>That’s a bit harsh, pizzagirl. A student who winds up at Wash U, Tufts etc. is by no means “slumming it.” These are wonderful schools. But there is a group of students who have achieved enough to legitimately aspire to attend HYPSM. For that group, there is nothing “pretentious or obnoxious” about that aspiration. My sense from your posts is that you think any kid who says his first choice is Harvard or Yale is automatically a poser who thinks he’s better than everyone else. It’s just not so.</p>