<p>Hi.
I'm a current junior and I've been trying to craft a college list lately. I've been having the most trouble with safeties, for various reasons.
1: How do you actually KNOW what is a safety for you?</p>
<p>I have a 2240 SAT, 33 ACT, and probably 3.99 UW GPA (maybe around 4.3 weighted; I will take 9 APs by the time I graduate and the average for my school is about 2 or 3).
I also have a lot of extracurriculars (some school leadership, some sports, and some scholarship stuff).</p>
<p>Anyways, I live in Washington state and am trying to find safeties. I don't want to stay in state, and I also don't want to go to the middle of nowhere for a safety. (I am okay with rural if it is a top school.) </p>
<p>So, question 2: What would count as a safety for me given my stats/etc? Any suggestions are GREATLY APPRECIATED!!</p>
<p>A safety is a school you know you can get into, afford, and would like if accepted. </p>
<p>Why exactly do you not want to use one of your in state schools for a safety? What specifically don’t you like about them?</p>
<p>How much can your family afford? Do you have location preferences, a possible major or majors in mind? How large or small would you like the school to be? Any special programs you’d like the school to have?</p>
<p>Sorry, I realize I left a lot out.
How would you know for sure if you can get in though? That’s a big confusion for me.
And I am looking at small/medium sized schools, which my state schools don’t cater to. UW is a great school, but too big and too close to home for me. The only in-state school I’d consider going to is Whitman.
My family can afford probably 30-40k a year total. We make a combined 140k a year and don’t have much savings. And I say we could afford 40k, but obviously lower would be better.
Location: Not the midwest (with the possible exception of Chicago), and not Maine. Other than that, I’m open to basically wherever.
I’m thinking I’ll major in international relations/languages/something similar.</p>
<p>You wouldn’t know if you could get in for sure, but it’s basically somewhere you are pretty sure you’ll get in, given the average stats of people who get in and the acceptance rate. and, of course, you have to like it and it has to be affordable.</p>
<p>There are some schools which accept over 40% of students, and where the average stats indicate you’ll get in. These schools typically don’t look at an applicant’s level of interest. Those classify as assumed academic safeties. For instance, assuming you don’t apply to one of Washington State or WWU’s programs which require a separate application, they could be considered financial and academic safeties. Generally speaking, I recommend a student with your stats also apply to their in state flagship (for you, UW), just in case. </p>
<p>You’ll need schools which give great merit aid if your family can only realistically afford $30,000 a year. Colleges will likely expect that your family can pay far more than $30,000 a year which means that financial aid will be limited at best.</p>
<p>Do you have any idea what language? Almost every college offers spanish, but far fewer offer, say Russian or Farsi. Also for your assumed language, what level are you at? A liberal arts college may offer fantastic programs in a language for people starting out (especially in the less common languages) but poor programs for advanced learners.</p>
<p>Well, if you are too picky, you may not be able to find any safeties. In particular, if high prestige or high selectivity is one of your main criteria in choosing a school, you may not be able to find any safeties, since high prestige and high selectivity schools tend to be too selective to be safeties for anyone.</p>
<p>Also, less selective schools that consider “level of applicant’s interest” (see section C7 of their common data sets, or the admission tab for the school at [CollegeData:</a> College Search, Financial Aid, College Application, College Scholarship, Student Loan, FAFSA Info, Common Application](<a href=“http://www.collegedata.com%5DCollegeData:”>http://www.collegedata.com) ) are poor choices for safeties, since they may reject or waitlist applicants who appear to be using them as safeties.</p>
<p>Remember to check each school’s net price calculator to see if it can be affordable to you. A safety must be affordable.</p>
<p>My family can afford probably 30-40k a year total. We make a combined 140k a year and don’t have much savings. And I say we could afford 40k, but obviously lower would be better.</p>
<p>I think you need to ask your parents for a definite number. You say that they don’t have much in savings. Well, think about it. For them to spend $40k per year on your college, that would mean that they would have to have an extra $4k per month to put towards your education. Do you think that people who “don’t have much in savings” would be able to spend $4k a month on college? I don’t think so. Because if they could, guess what??? They’d have savings! </p>
<p>$40k is almost 1/3 of their income. Without savings, I doubt that they could spend that much and have enough left over to pay for taxes, mortgage, and other living expenses. </p>
<p>Go to your parents and ask them how much they can spend each month towards your college costs. Ask them when they’re both together to get a more realistic answer.</p>
<p>Warning: Be prepared to hear a much lower number. People without much savings likely have expenses that are similar to their incomes.</p>
<p>I’ve discussed this with my parents a few times, and I think another problem with the number is it would depend where I got in (i.e. they’d be willing to stretch a little more for certain places). And we don’t have much in savings (maybe 10k?) BUT my mom just got a full-time job this past month, basically in the first time ever for our family. This means that financial aid will go down, but we will have $40k in income that our family wasn’t used to having, so most of it can realistically go towards my college expenses (I am an only child).</p>
<p>I’m doing AP French this year, and I’d like to continue French in college. However, I’d also like to do Arabic, Farsi, Swahili, or Russian as another language in college, and I guess this narrows things down somewhat.</p>
<p>Does anyone have any examples of what could be considered a safety for me? I get that some in-state schools do, but I’m not interested in those really. What about out of all the California schools?</p>
<p>Well the UCs are absurdly expensive for out of state, and the better liberal arts schools are quite competitive, especially for merit aid purposes.</p>
<p>Seriously look into UW. The school offers a wide variety of languages, and its Jackson School of International Relations is excellent. Since you’re interested in the less popular languages, most of your major specific classes are likely to be quite small.</p>
<p>American and George Washington Universities meet all of your criteria but I’m not sure if they’ll offer enough merit to make it affordable.</p>
<p>New College of Florida, a tiny public liberal arts college in, you guessed it, Florida offers an international relations major as well as Russian. There are only two professors in the French department which would probably constrain you if you opted to major in the field.</p>
<p>Syracuse might be an academic safety and would probably offer fairly substantial merit aid. </p>
<p>Trinity University (Tx) meets all of your criteria. I’m not sure how much aid they’d offer you, but it has a majors in French and Russian. The international studies program seems well developed.</p>
<p>Other schools which might offer merit, have solid to excellent academics, and are academic safeties which seem to fit most/all of your criteria
-Beloit College
-Bryn Mawr College (if you’re female)
-Howard
-Rhodes College
-Oxford College of Emory (apply to the Oxford scholars program)
-Tulane
-College of Charleston
-Connecticut College
-Lewis & Clark College</p>
<p>There are others but I don’t feel like listing them</p>
<p>In California, the UCs have an out-of-state list price of about $50,000 to $55,000 per year, but financial aid does not cover the out-of-state additional tuition, which is about $23,000 per year (so they are unlikely to be affordable unless you get one of the very rare huge merit scholarships). The CSUs cost less at list price, probably around $35,000 out-of-state, with likely minimal to no financial aid available for out-of-state.</p>
<p>Out-of-state public schools generally are not good with financial aid (exceptions are University of Virginia and University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill – but these are selective enough that they should not be counted on as safeties), although some may have large merit scholarships, and others may have relatively low out-of-state list prices (e.g. Minnesota, SUNYs, CSUs, NCSU, some others in the mountain west and south).</p>
<p>Thanks! I’ll be sure to look into all of those.
And yeah, I’m not really getting my hopes up on the UCs/Cal States because the money doesn’t seem realistic at all given constraints. I was thinking more of California private schools that have lower average stats, maybe. I don’t really know.</p>
<p>Here are, IMO, the better California privates:
-University of San Diego
-University of Redlands
-Loyola Marymounty University
-USC
-Chapman
-Occidental
-Cal Tech
-Claremont Colleges
-Stanford
-Santa Clara
-University of San Francisco (maybe)</p>
<p>Now Cal Tech, Claremont Colleges, USC, and Stanford are all ridiculously difficult to get into. They offer the best need based aid, but merit is absurdly hard to get. Also Cal Tech is a specialty school and dominates in fields you have no interest in.</p>
<p>Next is Occidental College, which has a fantastic IR department and great academics. But the students have very high stats (something its acceptance rate may not show) so merit is likely to be more limited. I’d still recommend applying, but it’s certainly not a safety.</p>
<p>After that are LMU, Chapman, Santa Clara, and possibly USD. They’re likely to offer merit, but I’m not sure it will be enough to bring the cost down to what your family can comfortably afford. Plus, these schools all seemed to lack at least one thing you desired. Perhaps that’s not a big deal, and you’d still like to apply. In that case by all means, do so. They’re all mid sized suburban or urban universities. Some, like LMU and USD are absolutely gorgeous.</p>
<p>Lastly, there’s University of San Francisco. IMO it’s fairly weak academically and seems to predominately cater to relatively average B students. Nothing wrong with that, but I’m not sure it would offer you an adequate academic challenge. You’d almost certainly get fairly substantial merit money.</p>
<p>I know almost nothing about University of Redlands.</p>
<p>Tulane and UMiami (FL) are very popular safety (and non-safety) schools for the kids in the Northeast. They both give very good merit money are academically strong. Check them out on CC. I think you may get 1/2-3/4 tuition merit aid. Applying from Washington State I think will be helpful too. (If you are strong in community service, Tulane has a separate app for more merit $. Friends daughter got about 1/2 tuition merit and the other 1/2 tuition as community service merit. )</p>
<p>Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa has a language resource center. It’s an academic safety and seems to meet most of your criteria. You may get fairly substantial merit aid (forgot to mention it on my original list).</p>
<p>I believe that with your stats, you will get some merit money at Tulane, although it’s not certain it would be enough (and by the way, the French department at Tulane is terrific!). In addition, if you’re a National Merit Finalist, USC offers a half-tuition scholarship that might make the school affordable for you.</p>