Hi! I go to a public school in Texas and was wondering if you could give me a few pointers about safety school. I know A&M would be an ideal choice, but I really don’t like the campus and can’t see myself going there for four years. I would love any suggestions for other safety schools for engineering (it doesn’t have to be in state)
Stats: SAT: 1500 (might retake) ACT: 35 GPA (on 100pt scale- weighted): 99.21 GPA (unweighted)- 3.92 14 APs by graduation
Rank: top 4.2% of my class (this is important for UT)
Pretty good extracurriculars - won a few awards for various competitions
I have done a lot of scientific research in the past few summers
Schools I am applying to:
Stanford
Columbia
Brown
Harvey Mudd
UC Berkley MET program (EECS)
Duke
Rice
Georgia Tech
UT
Purdue
UIUC
A&M (really don’t want to go)
I think I have a good shot at UT and if I don’t get into any of the ivy league/ UC Berkley schools I will definitely go there, but just in case I don’t get in or don’t get the major I want, any suggestions on safety schools would be appreciated.
UT and all other Texas public universities are automatic for campus admission with a top 4.2% rank, but not necessarily to competitive majors like CS or engineering majors.
But some other less selective Texas public universities should be safeties if CS and EE are not competitive majors there.
SMU has a good engineering/CS program and would likely be a safety for you. SMU gives good scholarship $ to high stat students. You might like Dallas a lot more than College Station.
AM, UTD, Texas Tech and Colorado are safe for you. You’ll definitely get into UT engineering more than likely UT CS also.
Stanford, Columbia, Duke, Harvey, UCB… almost no chance. UCB too expensive anyway.
Rice, GT the same reach chance… ~10%. Rice likes Texans, since they are more likely to accept an offer.
UIUC, Purdue the same low reach chance… ~20% to 30%
University of Pittsburgh would be totally in the bag with those stats and with the ACT 35 you stand a good chance of getting a 1/2- full tuition competitive merit scholarship.
Not sure why people think that a student with great grades and test scores has “almost no chance” of making it to a top university. You’re definitely competitive.
“Not sure why people think that a student with great grades and test scores has “almost no chance” of making it to a top university. You’re definitely competitive.”
You can be competitive, however, if the student body you are competing with are just as strong then the chances remain low. At this point it isn’t so much about the quality of the applicant, it’s statistics.
“Purdue the same low reach chance… ~20% to 30%”
If you apply EA then I would consider Purdue a strong match. I would think your chance of admission is higher than 20-30%. RD all bets are off. They are then rolling admission and once things fill up it can be difficult even for excellent candidates to be accepted.
“Not sure why people think that a student with great grades and test scores has “almost no chance” of making it to a top university. You’re definitely competitive.”
I think when the acceptance rate is ~5% and your scores are average for the applicant pool for a high demand major, you have a very low chance of acceptance. His best chance of those reach schools would be Harvey Mudd about a 7% chance, since they have accept rate around 12% and his scores are a little above avg. If he was shooting for a linguistics major his chances probably double. However the schools can detect your interest by looking at your ECs and transcript. And you’ll look dishonest if you’ve been writing apps and state that you want to study philosophy.
Of course you won’t have a chance if you don’t apply. But you need to manage your expectations.
“UIUC, Purdue the same low reach chance… ~20% to 30%”
That’s just way too low for this applicant, even if it’s OOS and applying to CS or engineering. The school’s naviance chart will have the best info, but a 35/3.9 for UIUC is more than 30%, probably much more, same with Purdue. If family is full-pay, UIUC could be a safety (they need the money).
It’s pretty apparent that you’ve used a single metric to vet your schools, ranking. It’s unfortunately a poor way to form a list. You end up with one like yours where the variability in the collegiate experience between the schools will be MASSIVE. I can’t think of two schools more different that HMC and UCB. It would be VERY unlikely that both would end up on the same list if fit was the driving factor.
Folks. The thread topic is help me choose a safety. Not where can I get in. The schools mentioned as more difficult and in some no way is in response to his question.
How many high schools have separate Naviance charts for more competitive majors or divisions? I.e. would a high school have a separate Naviance chart for UIUC CS versus UIUC general?
Virginia Tech is another in the same vein as your list, on the less competitive end. If you are liking Purdue as a low-match then VT makes sense to consider too. Pitt is a great suggestion - also look at Tulane. If you’re sure about your STEM focus, how about CO School of Mines, and/or RPI? Both are just as rigorous/intense as your reach schools.
RIT, WPI, RPI, Cal Poly Pomona & SLO, VTech all have 30+% acceptance rates. I am not sure how much more selective CalPoly is with their OOS applicants, or if thats not applicable so you might want to look into that.