Even as a male with high stats, he needs to show demonstrated interest at Kenyon or is likely to be rejected due to yield sensitivity.
I would say Richmond and Providence for merit, location, majors
It definitely helps being male as an applicant at Middlebury. It also helps to be from the Midwest as opposed to the east or west. Good luck!
I don’t think schools with <40% acceptance rate can ever really be referred to as safeties. Typical safeties are lesser state schools and less-selective private schools.
With LACs focusing so much on crafting the right balance for a class of 400-600 freshman – interest, and fit both matter a lot.
A student who simple tosses in another app to Macalester, or Kenyon etc. without having gotten on the mailing list, visiting if geographically feasible, attending local college fairs where a rep will be in attendance – could be waitlisted or rejected, even if they are in the top percentage for admitted students. These schools have plenty of high stat kids who have done their due diligence and demonstrated they are a good fit, they don’t need to offer a spot to the kid who may be great but hasn’t bothered to connect with the school. Hence, the challenge of finding true safeties for a high achieving kid.
Which is why I always say the best safety is the school you get into early. Unfortunately very few LACs have Early Action, most only do Early Decision.
American University has extensive government (political science) offerings.
However, it wants to see a high “level of applicant’s interest”, presumably because it does not want to be a “safety” behind Georgetown and George Washington.
Should the study of economics become a significant priority, this analysis from IDEAS can be helpful: “Economics Departments at Liberal Arts Colleges.”
This ranking, reductive title aside, is one of the few that can help you identify the selectivity of colleges roughly in order: “The 610 Smartest Colleges” (Business Insider).
“Vassar has enough guys . . . to maintain a 50/50 ratio.” (#19)
Vassar’s incoming freshman class is 57% female.
Consider Grinnell (LAC with good merit) and Carleton (small merit awards for NMF-only, but strong political science dept).
Check out schools of Colleges That Change Lives. They are small LACs. Many can act as safeties or very low matches (exceptions are Whitman and Reed - they would be matches) and they often offer merit aid. Look at Hendrix, Denison, Gettysburg, College of Wooster, Earlham for a start.
@longwood definitely not safeties- both with acceptance rates under 30%. I was accepted to Stanford, Penn, etc & waitlisted at Grinnell.
For a kid with high enough stats and other qualifications they are. Of course, A) as others have pointed out, it helps to be able to give the impression that you are actually interested in the school. I assume this kid would do so; and B) selective LACs can be quirky in their admissions, since they have fewer spots to fill, and C) the uber-selective LACs are a different matter. But we’re not talking about them.
@Proudpatriot, is there any place he likes that he could apply EA?
I second @longwood’s recommendations of Carleton and Grinnell. (My son was admitted to Carleton, Williams, and Reed, but chose UChicago.) I have a lot of respect for midwestern LAC’s, including in addition Kalamazoo and Beloit. I’ve known several graduates from all of the LAC’s I’ve listed.
That’s an interesting unweighted gpa scale. Find out how you can convert it to the standard A = 4.0, please. I’ve only heard of adding/subtracting 0.3 for + and - qualifiers. When you look at the middle 50% (25-75) grades a 4.0 scale is assumed I believe.
Thank you all for a nice list of places to look at.
A few comments.
He doesn’t mind real cities. He wants a school with a defined campus. He doesn’t like city schools that don’t have a real campus like BU and NYU.
Merit aid is a plus, not a requirement.
He doesn’t want to just throw together apps. He will get the list down to a manageable size and find safeties he likes, not just throw out some random apps.
I think he can consider schools with less than 40% acceptance rates safeties. It depends on the school.
We are hoping he will ED at one of the selective LAC where he can be a recruited athlete. He has had some interest so that is a possibility. If that happens this discussion will not matter. But we don’t know if he will wind up a recruited athlete.
I don’t need to recalculate his GPA to a 4.0 scale. There are many ways to do it.
I guess it depends on how you define a safety. To me, an admissions safety is a school at which an applicant has a 90+% chance of admission. I just don’t see how any student’s chances of admission could be that high at a selective school – more than twice the admission rate. Schools reject students every year with stats above their 75th percentile for GPA and test scores, especially schools that care about yield.
That may be true, which is one of the reasons my kids had two safeties. But looking at our Naviance my son got into American (currently 25% acceptance rate then I think around 35%) with much lower stats. He was in a sea of green dots. I think at least some of those rejections are from kids who just phoned in their applications. If one is truly risk adverse obviously a school that admits solely by stats should be on the list.
Agree that a safety is really an EA or rolling admissions school that you know you can afford.
Since the OP is a FL resident, why not apply to UF?
If you haven’t done so already, check out the athletic recruits subforum under College Admissions for recruiting info.