<p>Sorry this is somewhat similar to a past post of mine but I guess I phrased the question wrong and this is it:</p>
<p>Can you consider a school a safety IN TERMS OF ACCEPTANCE if you are past the 75th percentile in terms of GPA and ACT/SAT and the school of choice has acceptance rates beyond 50%?</p>
<p>No. </p>
<p>You can consider it reasonably safe, or fairly safe. However, a real true-blue safety is one that is open admission or that posts the GPA and other stats that flat-out guarantee admission right in its website, and you have stats that meet or exceed the guaranteed admission standards.</p>
<p>Or, a safety can be a school that has rolling admissions and lets you know in the fall before other aps are due.</p>
<p>As long as it meets all the other criteria, you like you, you can afford it, etc . . .</p>
<p>And even if the stats are posted online and you think you have the GPA…be sure to confirm (or better, have your guidance counselor confirm) how that GPA is calculated, because it’s whatever the college says it is: unweighted, academic core courses only, weighted for AP but not honors, etc.</p>
<p>Don’t forget to count the affordability! Money matters!</p>
<p>^Agree, all rising seniors should visit the FA & Scholarship right now and read of of the threads about being admitted to schools but not being able to attend due to lack of affordability.</p>
<p>IMO, the best safety is an acceptance in your back pocket. That means EA or rolling schools where you get a decision in early Dec. are key.</p>
<p>You also need to consider your major: if you are applying to a hot field (computer science, biomedical engineering, etc.) the standards for acceptance could be much higher than the median acceptance.</p>
<p>I would look at the naviance for your school, the scatter plot gives a good idea about the safety, if the kids stats are way outside of the schools acceptance and none of the other kids with similar or considerably lower stat is never rejected, then that would be a safety.</p>
<p>A school doesn’t have to basically say on it’s page “If you’ve got these stats, come on in!” for it to be a safety, as I feel like a pretty limited about of schools are that blatant about it (even if they follow such formula) and the ones that do might not even be remotely attractive anyway. </p>
<p>The OP may want to be a bit more nuanced about it, but their guideline sounds about right. A safety school should be a school that student can reasonably expect to get into. Since the majority of admissions are not guaranteed (I had a friend in high school who got accepted to Notre Dame but rejected from a much much lower ranked public school in the state), as CuriousJane suggested, picking a school with rolling applications is a good bet.</p>
<p>To some extent picking safeties is harder. It’s easy to dream ;)</p>
<p>If the school considers Applicant Interest, even with the OP’s stated situation, it is not a safety.</p>
<p>I don’t think it needs to be a school with a posted GPA, but it needs to be obvious you’ll get in. Like your score is way above the 75% and they accept 50%+ of students</p>
<p>Nope! For all we know 75% of the applicants can have stats in the top 25% (of acceptance). Nobody but adcom knows for sure, and they ain’t talking.</p>
<p>I disagree with most posters. IF you can afford it for sure and IF you would be content to go there and IF you have decent grades & recommendations & no disciplinary smudges that might derail you, then be sure to show some interest and turn in a well-thought out application. And then find a second school like that so you have two safeties. I think you are good then.</p>
<p>You are relatively safe, but not completely safe. Remember that with a 50% acceptance rate comes a 50% rejection rate. And that 50% might not always be the lowest 50%. If your stats are in the top 10%, and they expect you will end up elsewhere, you could end up in the rejected group, as has happened to many students in the past. That’s why it’s a good idea to have more than one safety, unless you have secured that acceptance early in the application season, or are guaranteed admission.</p>
<p>I knew I was going to get into to my state flagship (partially because of an early acceptance thing they do, but even before that), because I knew their average scores, other people who had applied the year before, etc. Someone with a 2000 on the SAT and a 3.9/4.0 GPA at a great high school knows they can get into a local public school.</p>
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<p>It may depend on the local public school. Someone who lives in Berkeley, CA knows for sure that s/he will get into Berkeley City College (an open admission community college), but the stats listed above are no guarantee for admission to the local public four year university.</p>
<p>Here is an old thread about finding an assured admissions safety:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1314309-how-find-assured-admissions-safety.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1314309-how-find-assured-admissions-safety.html</a></p>
<p>Of course, to be a true safety, the school must also be affordable and must have the desired academics, as well as be a school that the student wants to attend.</p>
<p>A student who is too picky in his/her preferences (e.g. “only HYPMS are acceptable schools for me”) may not be able to find any safeties. Tiger parents who insist on the student applying only to super-selective prestige schools (or schools which are too expensive) also set up their kids to being shut out.</p>
<p>Right, but he said disregard other parts of safety, and only regard the admissions part. And I may or may not have phrased it well enough, but I meant that many students will know if they can get into the local public school. Obviously someone in Berkeley, or Ann Arbor, or Charlottesville may not be as likely, but someone in Madison, WI with great scores knows they can get into University of Wisconsin.</p>