<p>Both daughters applied to various combinations of HYPSM + other Ivys as reaches (not all of these schools but some of them), Berkeley, UCLA, plus schools such as Rice, Pomona, or Wellesley as matches, and mid-tier UCs as safeties. For both girls their rock bottom safety was my alma mater - UC Davis.</p>
<p>Thank you all those who weighed in (more responses welcome). Some great ideas here (will ignore those who think we are obnoxious and elitist). Women’s schools are a great idea, but my kid is a boy. Our state does not have a good public. The “second tier lac” suggestion seemed a good one, but he is more focused on larger universities. I loved the idea of rolling admissions at UMichigan, and we may fly off to visit, apply early, and be done with the safety issue if he gets it (I am told UMichigan admissions is very numbers focused, let me know if you agree). UVa I gather is not rolling and is difficult to get into OOS? We are seriously considering some of the other suggestions like Boston University and Brandeis. Any thoughts on McGill? Canadian schools are also numbers focused. Our counselor suggested University of Rochester, McGill or USC as safeties. On other points - we are full pay and not concerned with cost (although obviously may play a role if comparing two otherwise equivalent schools). Also really like the idea of locking in somewhere early, it is a real puzzle whether to go SCEA to Stanford or try to lock in an easier to get into school.</p>
<p>No, that’s not what I said. I think the <em>attitude</em> that these other top schools are so very inferior is arrogant. That’s very different from saying that someone’s top choice is HYPSM. There’s a difference between “my top choice, should I be so fortunate, is HYPSM but I’m also applying to these other great schools” and “my top choice is HYPSM and all the others are a huge, huge step down.” I hope that clarifies the difference. </p>
<p>My nephew is one of those. He is attending P in the fall and also got into MIT, along with Claremont McK, Williams, Vanderbilt and one other place I’m not recalling off the top of my head. Rejected at H, wait-listed at Penn (or the other way around, something like that). He had those aspirations, but it’s not as though any of these other places were slouch schools or also-rans.</p>
<p>Keep in mind that schools that used to be matches or safeties for high stats kids can become non-safeties within a short time. Also, a school might be considered a match or safety for top students at one high school, but will be a reach or match for students at another high school. Checking with the school GC is always a good idea. </p>
<p>When (rising senior) D1 was a freshman, UC Davis was a well-established safety at her high school. Since we have relatives in the area, she’d visited and liked the campus. Pride goeth before the fall, and I smugly thought that she had the entire “love thy safety” thing all wrapped up way ahead of schedule. Then came the admissions bloodbath the following year, when students at D1’s high school with stats that were Davis-acceptable the previous year were denied.</p>
<p>Aniger, it sounds like your son is well on the way to developing a nicely balanced list. Keep in mind that U of M is now EA, not rolling.</p>
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<p>Unfortunately, Michigan has dropped its rolling policy in favor of straight EA. [Office</a> of Undergraduate Admissions: Early Action](<a href=“http://www.admissions.umich.edu/early/]Office”>http://www.admissions.umich.edu/early/)</p>
<p>That means if your kid is planning to apply to either Stanford or Yale SCEA/REA, he can’t get an early answer from Michigan. Neither school allows concurrent EA apps with an SCEA/REA app (He can still apply to Michigan, of course, but he’ll have to apply RD.)</p>
<p>IMO, there’s a “Catch-22” of safety selection. A good chunk of the strata of schools with entrance standards high but just below the tippy-top justifiably want people there who really want to be there. They do not like being treated, or thought of, as safeties, having to report a low yield, taking a wild guess at how many acceptees wil actually show up. Consequently if an applicant is way above their stats by objective standards but has not “shown the love” and compellingly demonstrated why he/she belongs there, there’s some reasonable chance of rejection. The very fact that it appears to be a good safety for the applicant makes it less of a safety. </p>
<p>D1 used the local state U as a safety, they gave her a free ride. In retrospect I kind of wish she went there. D2 didn’t need a safety, accepted ED. S will probably use a state U as a safety.</p>
<p>wjb…re-read Pizzagirl’s posts. SHE doesn’t think kids are slumming it. She’s appalled at people who think this way.</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>Yes, many mid-tiers have Phi Beta Kappa chapters. Oldest son was inducted last Dec. Younger son will be inducted this year. </p>
<p>Here is the chapter locator … <a href=“https://www.pbk.org/interact/chapterlocator.aspx[/url]”>PBK - Phi Beta Kappa;
<p>^^You misread my post. </p>
<p>And I now get pg’s point.</p>
<p>My daughter got into Yale and Dartmouth but was waitlisted, and ultimately admitted, to Northwestern. People forget that the stats are a given when applying to these various top schools, it’s the rest of your application that makes the difference. Most applying have top SAT 1/SAT 2/ACT scores, take APs with 5s on the tests, are in the top percentages in their schools but what makes them special? What makes them a match for each particular school? Every school has a personality and philosophy as does every student and the admins are looking to find those applicants who match.</p>
<p>Princeton has admitted one student from our high school in the last 10 years, Brown loves us and takes 4 or 5 most years; we’re a Brown kind of town. (Graduating classes of about 110-120.) We have our fair share of acceptances from Harvard, Yale, Cornell, etc.</p>
<p>Same thing for “second tier” or “1A tier” schools, same thing for most schools - who is your child and what school fits them? That is the most important focus of any college list, not perceived “status.” (By the way, my daughter is at Northwestern and thrilled, never looked back at having passed on Yale or Dartmouth.)</p>
<p>
I find this hard to believe. Could be a perception issue?</p>
<p>In our area there are 2-3 kids every year who don’t get in anywhere (or at least are open enough to discuss it with their friends.) Sorry Dad II, it is a phenomenon not limited to CC and Andison.</p>
<p>The reasons are usually too idiosyncratic to be helpful but if I look back over the last decade when my kids first started the college go rounds I observe the following:</p>
<p>1- oldest child or only child, parents have been focused on how gifted the kid is since kindergarten when he or she was reading before the rest of the kids in the class. Parents don’t listen to GC; are in denial when it’s clear that the early advantage has not played out through HS (i.e. kid is smart, in tough classes, but not considered “the braniac” by the other kids, nor considered a natural intellect by the teachers.) The list is top-heavy and the only safety type school tacked on at the last minute isn’t really safe and has a reputation for wanting to feel the love. Kid ends up with nowhere come April</p>
<p>2- Kid’s stats and application are so skewed that even the GC is stumped. Either off the chart test scores and lackluster grades (but in very challenging classes) or phenomenal grades and weak scores. Usually accompanied by a world class EC or out of classroom achievement. So the tippy top schools see the kid as a slacker, kid doesn’t want to be at the usual suspect of safety schools with the “dim bulbs” from HS, the more interesting “colleges that change lives” type of place which would be solid admissions choices don’t have the size, graduate program/opportunity to do advanced work, or the EC in question since most of them are small LAC’s so kid won’t apply. Kid has no choices in April.</p>
<p>3- Kid is very grounded and takes advice. GC works with kid on a broad range of schools and kid intends to apply. Some conflict in the home prevents this- Mom doesn’t want kid to go out of town or out of region so a bunch of schools get nixed. Dad thinks anyone who majors in graphic design or music theory or Renaissance Studies will be on food stamps so eliminates half the list. Kid tries to regroup and then Mom/Dad decides that the local branch of the State U is for “druggies” who didn’t apply themselves during HS. Kid re-groups again and is accepted to 2 of the schools who made it through the approved list. Mom and Dad decide that they’d give a kidney each to have a kid at Harvard, but won’t pay their EFC at Holy Cross or Hamilton. (just to pick on the H’s today.)</p>
<p>Kid has nowhere to go come April.</p>
<p>My takeaway-- the safeties are the most important part of the list. Anyone can apply to Harvard (and thousands do, every year, like the swallows to Capistrano). It takes work and research and some measure of objectivity when looking at your own kid, as well as some measure of subjectivity when assessing what it is about a college that got your kid excited. And then venture off the beaten path. There’s a reason why 20 kids from your kids HS will apply to Penn next year, and an equally good reason why 17 of them won’t get in. If you live in New Jersey and won’t venture further than Philadelphia to the South or Cambridge to the North, you may be building a list which gives short shrift to the safety.</p>
<p>Blossom’s got skills.</p>
<p>My top-credentials kid and most of her friends used our flagship state university, the University of Maryland at College Park, as their safety. It is known for being generous with merit money for top in-state students, so if you do end up going there, at least you’re paying little or nothing for the privilege. And it’s a good school, though not quite on the level of the very best state universities, such as Berkeley or UVa or UNC-Chapel Hill. (But then again, if you live in California, Virginia, or North Carolina, you can’t use your state’s top public university as your safety because there’s a significant chance that you won’t get in. You have to go down a level in your state system to find a true safety.)</p>
<p>And not all of the top-credentials students at UMCP are kids who didn’t get into the schools they really wanted. Some of them are at Maryland because they wanted to avoid taking out loans or because they wanted to pay as little as possible for college and save the money for medical or law school. </p>
<p>Another popular safety school in our part of the country is Penn State. Some people like it better than the University of Maryland because it’s in a nicer community. And it has the huge advantage of rolling admissions – so you can know that you’ve been admitted to one college before Thanksgiving. It’s no more difficult to get into Penn State from out of state than in state, but of course, out of staters pay a lot more.</p>
<p>Agree, glido. I was gonna comment about another eloquent Blossom post, but got sidetracked by… <<<embarassed to=“” admit=“”>>> Entertainment Tonight :o</embarassed></p>
<p>Though Michigan has gone to EA as a result of going to the Common App (I suspect there was no Early Response on the pulldown list), it is still Rolling Decision for all other applicants. As I understand it, applying EA guarantees you a decision by a certain date in December, while applying Rolling means when you will get your decision depends on where you are in the admissions queue…when did they have a complete application to review. The following is from the Michigan admissions website:</p>
<p>**We will begin reviewing completed applications in late September and we will begin releasing decisions in early November. All applications are reviewed using the same guidelines we will not be awarding priority in the review of an application simply because it was submitted for Early Action. While there is no advantage in the review process for completing an application before November 1st, we continue to urge students to submit application materials early for the benefit of receiving a decision quickly.</p>
<p>As in prior years, we will continue to review students completed applications and release decisions periodically from November through April. We regret that we cannot release admissions decisions over the phone**.</p>
<p>Honestly, I don’t know why everyone is lumping all of the Ivies together. For an applicant who has HYP as a target (yes, such applicants exist), than the mid range Ivies (Dartmouth, Columbia, Penn) can be good safeties. Likewise a student who has Dartmouth/Columbia/Penn as targets can see Cornell, Brown, Hopkins, Northwestern, and WashU as safeties. </p>
<p>It annoys me that a lot of people say that WashU/JHU/Northwestern are safeties for the Ivies, when they’re ranked above a quarter of the Ivy League.</p>
<p>I don’t think your can review the Columbia and Penn ED results threads and conclude they are a safety for anyone.</p>
<p>^^And Cornell/Brown aren’t an entire admit-level easier to get into than Dartmouth/Penn/Columbia. Or are WUSTL/JHU/Northwestern - NONE of these schools are safeties. Matches, perhaps, but not safeties.</p>
<p>Brown is no safety. Nor Cornell, Penn etc.</p>
<p>Nor, frankly is any other school which recieves 30k applications and has a class of 1500 or 2000 to fill. Even if you are at the top of the top of this year’s applicants, there are plenty of kids just like you in that 30k. </p>
<p>And the real “safeties” have their yields to think about, and know that most of the very high level applications they are receiving come from kids who will drop them in a heartbeat if they get accepted at the Ivies to which they also applied. They will accept some but not all of them—they have a real class to fill with “their” students.</p>