<p>It is absolutely ridiculous to parse out the schools at this level (and there is no such thing as “mid-range Ivies.” Puh-lease, no one divides the world up that way except for on CC). When you’re talking top 20 universities, when you’re talking schools with sub- 25% acceptance rates, they are safeties for no one. Absolutely no one. I don’t care if your SAT’s are perfect, your GPA is 4.0, you help little old ladies across the street routinely, and you’re president of every club you ever saw.</p>
<p>That is the real problem and why kids shooting for elite schools have to apply for so many. Your stats and qualifications may match “Ivy” but those schools are still a reach. Then the one level below (however, defined - whether it is Cornell/Brown or WashU/JHU or however you parse it) should be a solid match/safety BUT because they also have such a low admission rate AND practice Tufts syndrome in rejecting some of the best qualified candidates, you either need to apply to tons of schools or apply to some schools significantly below that level or do both… resulting in a very long list. It is very frustrating.</p>
<p>No on 2 counts:
Cornell/Brown/WashU/JHU et al are not “one level below.” It is ridiculous to parse out the top 20 schools this way.<br>
And it’s not that it’s “Tufts syndrome.” It’s that “best qualified” is determined by what the college wants to see – not that the 3.95 / 2350 kid is more qualified than the 3.85 / 2250 kid.</p>
<p>^I don’t believe in Tufts syndrome, but I do believe that Tufts actually practices holistic admissions. You won’t get into Tufts just regurgitating your Harvard application. You have to make your case for what you will bring to Tufts. I know because they accepted my son that they’ll look past a less than perfect transcript if a kid can write a good enough essay.</p>
<p>I’ve said it in other threads, but didn’t see it here, for the science/math kids there are lots of engineering schools that make great safeties. They are full of smart achieving kids. </p>
<p>The notion that the “lesser Ivies” could be safeties for anyone is ludicrous.</p>
<p>To me, the best piece of advice I could give anyone is … use your junior year to figure out where you want to apply, get all your visits out of the way there. Start the summer before senior year to get your essays laid out, and polish, polish, polish. Above all, do not write essays based on “what I think adcoms want to hear” - kicking the state-winning championship soccer goal (or worse yet, missing, but realizing we were a team, kumbaya), how I realized we were all brothers under the skin by visiting a poor area or nation, etc. As I may have said upthread, my S’s essay was on a fairly common household object, but it had a real spark / voice to it – you were intrigued and wanted to meet the kid who thought about this object this way.</p>
<p>I haven’t read through ALL the posts, but enough to see that I am going to agree with many of the posts here that say you get to a certain level of selective school, and all the high achieving students have about an equal crap-shoot chance of admission. Your student can be in the 50+ percentile on GPA, scores, rank, etc., and it’s still the flip of a coin. To an extent Pizzagirl is right, an essay can make a difference, but not always. You can do all the right things and sometimes it’s just not going to work out. </p>
<p>My 2011 son has a reach that statistically should be a match (50-75th percentile on all counts with good ECs, blah, blah, blah), a match that should be a safety (well above the 75th percentile, blah, blah, blah). None of that matters. What matters is what we have seen in the past few years as evidence of students that are being accepted, and the equally deserving students turned down. You have to be realistic. BOTH of these are state schools. BOTH are ranked, one in the top 20, one the top 20 in his major. State Us can be great, but don’t use these as a safety school, no matter the acceptance rate, if your student feels they would hang their head in shame if attending. There are too many great schools in our nation to do that. If you are plunking a state U as a safety, when your student would hate it, you and your student are not doing due diligence. There are great schools under the elite level that give great merit. You have to find the one that suits your student. We went OOS for DSs safety. The school is not nearly as selective, but offered great merit (making it a financial safety), he would be happy attending, and has his major. It took some looking and was not the obvious second tier in-state school. He would have been miserable there. That would have been a mistake and a disservice to my son.</p>
<p>I think that it is important to remember that ‘your mileage may vary’ with respect to the safety school - a year can make a huge difference in how a school is perceived, or in the economic demands on parents - making a hs fortunes at a particular school rise, or fall.</p>
<p>Our hs had truly terrible results for graduation years 05-10. Val and Sal denied accross the board, ending up at safety schools. Top 10 kids denied at state flagship. Truly results that made no objective common sense. </p>
<p>Turn to 2011 class - and the results are remarkable. Kids this year seem able to use schools as safety schools that would have been match or more in years prior. </p>
<p>Moral of story - apply early to a rolling admission school. And, by early, I mean in September or October, so there is enough time to revisit and refocus if that admit is not in the hand by December 1.</p>
<p>Cornell/Brown/WashU/JHU et al are certainly “one level below” in selectivity. Their statistics bear this out very clearly. </p>
<p>And there is “Tufts syndrome.” It appears quite clear that many colleges including excellent selective ones use yield protection (under guise of “interest”, “fit” and similar) in admissions. I am not sure why denying reality is helpful. </p>
<p>All of this supports the view being espoused on this list - these types of schools are not safe to use as safeties.</p>
<p>A lot also depends on the student’s high school. If the school’s highest-ranking students have a history of using a college like Cornell/Brown/WashU/JHU et al as a backup option, then yield protection is going to be a bigger factor. A student from that high school that is seriously considering an etcetcetc college will have to make it very clear in their essay that their interest in Etc U is genuine. </p>
<p>For some of these schools, I think the sheer size of the application pool is what causes some highly qualified applicants to be rejected. If Etc U has already admitted a few score of students who were Intel/Siemens semifinalists, ran marathons and translated “Hamlet” into Klingon, then the next Intel/Siemens semifinalist marathoner Klingon translator is going to be turned down because the admissions people need a little variety. Looks like yield protection, but it’s not. </p>
<p>In other cases, the yield protection claims are accurate but it’s no one’s fault but the applicant’s. This is stepping further down the prestige pantheon, but take a look at the RD admissions threads from GWU last year. Lots of high stat applicants, shocked that they’d been rejected from their “safety”, especially after they’d written about how much they love DC. Anyone who’d spent even five minutes researching GWU admissions would know that this is one of the worst topics one could choose. You might as well write “I’ve applied to Georgetown and expect to get in, but I suppose you guys are a good second choice” or “I’m aiming for the Ivies, but if that doesn’t work out I suppose I could still get some great internship opportunities in DC.” </p>
<p>The important lesson is to take the safety and match applications seriously. </p>
<p>Conversely, there may indeed be high schools where a top-ranking student could consider schools like “Cornell/Brown/WashU/JHU et al” a match or a safety. But that’s a very uncommon situation.</p>
I looked at the Naviance data for our school and I could only find one school in the entire set that you could suspect of practicing yield protection. Was there the occasional high stat kid who was rejected from a lower ranked school who got into higher ranked ones? Yes, but they were extremely rare.</p>
<p>I’ve also heard of a high stat GW wanna-be who was wait-listed in favor of some “inferior” student. When the GC called they said she didn’t appear interested since she had never visited. It was her first choice, but she came off as not really caring. She did get in off the waitlist. That said, when I looked at the GW Naviance anyone with grades above x and SATs above y got in. So this particular student was in the match, not the safety zone. There was no question in my mind that our top students all got into GW if they made any effort at all.</p>
<p>I had to take a peek at this thread even though my own daughter has no applications to (or interest in) ivies. Her boyfriend has only applied to MIT, Harvard, Penn, Cal Tech, and Harvey Mudd (all RD I believe). I thought it seemed a bit crazy even with his exceptional stats. But she said that there’s no where else he’s interested in going, so he’ll just take a gap year if he doesn’t get into any. In some ways, the last four are just alternatives (couldn’t call them safeties!) if he doesn’t make MIT which is definitely the dream school for him.</p>
<p>Including Brown in that list is ludicrous. The last couple of years, Brown has had approximately the same admission percentage as MIT or Columbia, roughly half that of Cornell or Hopkins (which, while plenty selective, are not quite as random). At the schools my kids attended, Brown remains extremely popular – it draws more applications from top students than Columbia, Princeton, or Stanford, and gets chosen over Columbia (regularly) and Stanford (on occasion).</p>
<p>I do agree that Cornell, WashU, Hopkins, Chicago, Northwestern, Tufts (and maybe Penn belongs with this list) constitute a different level compared to the schools with single-digit (or near that) acceptance rates. And a good thing that is, too. But they STILL aren’t safeties, even for the tippiest-top students, because they turn down plenty of kids with tippy-top credentials. Fewer than HYPS, yes, but not so few that anyone should bet his future on getting in.</p>
<p>I have to disagree with the folks that think safety schools do not matter. The last 2 years at my D’s school the Val did not get into any of the schools except safety school’s. The val applied to all of the Ivy and schools like Dartmouth and Columbia etc and was waitlisted. Hard to believe. This kid had all of the EC’s, had a 4.0 GPA, had taken 10 or 11 AP’s and still didn’t get into these top schools. The val of this yrs. class was waitlisted for his 1st choice EA school (Yale). He has similiar stats as last yrs val. Go figure. I think the wise thing to do is apply to a safety school. The safety school maybe a State U. It is that difficult to get into these schools.</p>
<p>^I think it really depends. For my kids we looked at the Naviance data for our school. If you are in a sea of green dots it’s probably a sure bet. My older son’s safeties were other engineering schools where stats were matches, but the acceptance rates were much, much higher than MIT, Caltech etc. (Around 75% we thought - RPI ended up being 40% that year because of a favorable Newsweek article.) For my younger son his CR SAT was above 75%, his Math SAT was in the high end of the 25-75% range, and the acceptance rate was 51%. His second planned safety had similar stats, but he ended up with the best safety of all, getting an unexpected acceptance EA at a reach.</p>
<p>Some colleges with around 30% acceptance rates can seem to have quirky results, though, and small colleges that have a large percentage of their incoming classes taken up by recruited athletes can have skewed acceptance rates as a result.</p>
<p>A previous poster said that UNC-Chapel Hill shouldn’t be considered a safety for an in-state student. However, my D’s guidance counselor said that in 9 or so years of working at the school, there were no real surprises. In the last two years, about 15% of the graduating class has attended UNC-CH (I don’t know how many more were accepted but didn’t attend.) I hope she is right!</p>