Safety Please ?!

2019 D will not attend instate due to social/religious restraints .Fly over state. Looking for strong academic science safety East middle to small size <10,000, >2000. Please Help. Will not seek financial Aid. Not apposed to merit aid.

Stats
35 ACT 36science/36read/35eng/33math one take (PSSF expected for state).
217 SI ,1520 PSAT NMF
4.0/4.0

1 in class

730bio 790WH one take
National AP scholar All 5s X9
taking 6 more AP s this year
6 time region champ 3 time Podium at state Sport ( hold 3 school records) not fast enough to attract IVY .Captain
3 time region champ 2 time State champ Debate (Not going to cont in college). Captain
Academy of sciences diploma published research/ research internship.
Significant important repetitive service.
Significant ongoing job.

lots of others.

Thanks in advance!

What does she want to study?

Environmental Biology and Rhetoric

Afaik, there aren’t that many schools with majors in rhetoric. UC-B is the usual suspect, followed by UT-A, but there aren’t many (and I think a lot of times it’s lumped in with communications).

If affordable with $15-20K merit $$ (which based on our experience, she would be v likely to get), Dickinson could meet your criteria: >2000 (barely: 2600); has both rhetoric & env sci majors, and is probably a safety for her. Carlisle is a small town, but they really emphasize the international thing- both students studying abroad, and bringing international things to campus. I know recent grads who have had multiple terms abroad (one who went to Argentina, Spain & DC and another- in env sci - whose study abroad in Oz led to her doing her Masters there).

Thanks D had not looked at Dickenson. Do you think Middlebury is a reach or safety (ED2/ RD) based on Stats and assuming D is a good writer and has great recommendation letters.

No school with under a 20% acceptance rate should be considered a safety. I would even go further to say not even a match.

Agree with @momofsenior1: Midd acceptance rate for women is 13% (19% for men). Definitely not a safety. A match in technical terms (ie, her stats match), but the acceptance rate is so low you can’t count on it.

Makes sense. Thanks

Thanks. I wonder is there an acceptance percentage that equates to a safety school for a student with near top stats?

I don’t know if University of Rochester has a rhetoric concentration, but they have an open curriculum and excellent science and English departments. There is even a “design your own major” option. Undergrad is around 6000 kids.

For DD, her definition of a safety was a school with over a 70% acceptance rate, where her stats were well over the 75th percentile (and affordable) Basically a sure thing. She had two safeties, one had rolling admission so she had a full tuition scholarship w/honors college acceptance in hand in October. Saved her sanity to know that was in her back pocket. We considered any school under a 25% acceptance rate to be reach and then had a range of matches in the 25-50% acceptance range.

One of her friends had a bunch of “matches” in that 20-30% acceptance rate range and was denied or wait listed at all of them (with just slightly lower stats than your daughter). He’s at the safety the GC forced him to add to his list and will be trying to transfer next year.

I think a safety for your child’s stats is about 50% overall acceptance or higher.

Mt. Holyoke and Elon come to mind, but I’m not sure about those majors there.

Problem is that some ‘safety’ private schools may reject high stats kids due to yield protection so make sure she shows some interest.

Good luck!!

@AlmostThere2018 makes a good point regarding yield protection. A friend who runs an admissions counseling service was telling me about a student she worked with who had a 35 ACT and a 4.5 GPA, and who applied to a large public university of only middling repute; this student was rejected outright – not even waitlisted-- in favor of students with lower test scores and GPA, because the university’s analytics indicated that this high-stats student would likely not accept an offer of admission.

Both public and private universities are becoming more sophisticated in looking at applications, in order to protect yield; and what you think might be a slam-dunk on admissions is not so much – potentially adding yet another level of stress to the admissions process. So some degree of “demonstrated interest” may be called for.

Does talking to the sport coach ( where D would be top 1-3 on team at D3) schools qualify as “demonstrated interest” or does that only count if you go ED and take there backing.

Have her fill out the Request interest form for each college and click on every email they send.
Based on her stats in say a college with 40%+ acceptance rate where she’s expressed interest is a safety/likely.

Presumably, this school’s common data set section C7, or its admissions entry on collegedata.com, says that “level of applicant’s interest” is considered (or important or very important)?

The only real “safeties” are those which have some sort of assured admission for the student’s stats, and which are assured to be affordable. Others which seem extremely unlikely to be rejected from should be called “likely” rather than “safety”. However, one that values “level of applicant’s interest” probably should not be assessed as anything easier than “match”.

Some email programs and web mail interfaces do not display images by default for both security and mobile data use reasons. But images may be used for tracking reading the email to determine “level of applicant’s interest”, so the applicant may want to load the images upon getting an email from a college that considers “level of applicant’s interest”.

University of Vermont is probably a safety for your child. It has good environmental science and studies programs. It does not have a rhetoric major but does have “design-your-own-major” options. It is expensive for OOS students but your child probably would get merit aid to reduce the pricetag a bit.

Thanks D will look at that one too.