<p>What would be some good safety schools for MIT applicants? Here's what I thought:
-University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
-University of Washington
-University of Texas at Austin
-University of Michigan at Ann-Arbor</p>
<p>All of these schools have strong engineering/CS departments and relatively high acceptance rates. Do you know of any other similar choices? If you have already applied/are planning to apply to MIT, what safety schools did/will you apply to?</p>
<p>Although MIT was not my first choice school (I got accepted though, yay, and realized it was actually the best ^_^!), my “safeties” were
<p>uiuc, UT austin, umich, ucsd for me</p>
<p>@bookannelida those aren’t safety schools, let alone targets. Those are clear reaches… Were you accepted to them? </p>
<p>It’s hard to generalize MIT applicants as a group. Some of the "safety schools "listed above like Johns Hopkins do not really seem like safety schools for most applicants either. I think the ones listed in the OP are pretty good for top students who are in state. I am a current student and my safety schools were University of Minnesota (in-state) and NYU.</p>
<p>@majorsenor Yes I was accepted to all of them with special programs in some, like GEAR in Uni of Rochester and RPI Medal for RPI. They were the only schools (plus you know the one small private safety college in my state that accepts ~70%) which I applied to besides the Ivies/MIT (got into MIT and three of the Ivies; oh and I am neither URM or athlete, just someone who loves science and learning). I was just answering the question OP asked about what MIT students have as safety schools. </p>
<p>I think “safety schools for MIT applicants” is best defined as a school that a candidate with a ~2250+ SAT and all A’s except for maybe one “B” would be assured of getting in, because your typical MIT admit (though not every admit) has this. I’m not sure what schools that were mentioned would qualify, but I would leave off U. of Michigan if you were out-of-state; admissions may be as competitive as an ivy like Cornell. I would leave off Johns Hopkins off that list too. I would guess the other state schools mentioned would be safeties. Carnegie Mellon may be a safety for an average MIT admit if and only if Carnegie Mellon is fairly stringent about their academic requirements. If they almost always prefer people with top grades and scores, this means that it is much easier to get in with said scores. MIT, on the other hand, may take chances on people with lower scores, making it tougher to get in with a sterling record. </p>
<p>collegealum, I think your definition is fairly reasonable but 2250+ SAT and almost all As are not really typical for MIT applicants. My guess is <25% of MIT applicants have those stats.</p>
<p>Yea, a lot of these schools aren’t really safeties, I know people that were accepted to MIT but rejected/waitlisted to some of the schools mentioned, and I’m not really the type of person to know where other people got accepted to / rejected from for college. CMU and Johns Hopkins are really ridiculous choices for a safety school, though they might be good choices for someone looking for other reaches to apply to.</p>
<p>I usually see schools like Case Western, RPI, WPI, and RIT listed as safeties for MIT specifically, since all the previous schools focus significantly on engineering. A lot of schools that are generally recommended as safeties on CC (usually because they give a lot of merit aid) would also be fine for MIT applicants I would think - these usually include Alabama, ASU, Northeastern, Pitt, and probably some more that I’m forgetting about. I’m not sure though if these are true safeties though, I know at least one person who was rejected from one the schools I just listed but was accepted to MIT.</p>
<p>I feel like most people just use their state flagship as a safety - that’s what I did. (I also applied to Case Western but I didn’t really consider it a safety).</p>
<p>Purdue University was my safety school. In high school, I thought I wanted to go aero/astro, which is one of Purdue’s strengths. I received my acceptance 2 weeks after I applied with a free-ride offer. I was not expecting Purdue to necessarily be my safety school when I applied, but I heard back from them so quickly that it kind of defaulted into being my safety.</p>
<p>I hesitate to call UIUC, UWash, or the other schools on your list “safety schools”, particularly UIUC in regards to computer science. UIUC is one of the best in that realm, along with MIT, UCBerkeley, Carnegie Mellow Yellow (hee hee), and such.</p>
<p>I highly recommend applying to a bunch of schools, rather than to just a few. I have known folks who were very confident and applied to 1 or just a few schools… who were caught off guard.</p>
<p>Part of growing up is making sure you demonstrate preparation and planning, and having contingency plans in place for the unexpected.</p>
<p>Unless UIUC admits by major its strength in CS is basically irrelevant to its selectivity for undergrad admissions. </p>
<p>^It depends on whether computer science is classified in the engineering department or in the liberal arts and sciences. There might be two separate computer-related majors, one in the engieneering department and one in the liberal arts and sciences. Engineering is typically tougher to get in.</p>
<p>Regardless, just because the engineering department is rated highly doesn’t mean it is hard for a top stats person to get in. The ratings indicate the quality of the faculty and research; they don’t correlate with student selectivity.</p>
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<p>Just be careful with WPI. I know two very high stats kids who applied there - one was waitlisted and the other rejected. One of those kids got into MIT, and the other got into Cornell for engineering. It appears that WPI is sensitive to being seen as somebody’s safety school. If WPI is your safety, make sure you express an interest in attending. </p>
<p>Edited to add that both boys ended up at UMass Amherst for financial reasons and at least one of them would have preferred to attend WPI with some merit money over the massive UMass campus. All’s well that ends well since that boy ended up getting job offers from amazon, Microsoft, and a call back interview from google (ultimately no offered). </p>
<p>UC Berkeley was my safety school. Even after being accepted to both MIT and UC Berkeley, I almost chose UC Berkeley. I also applied and got into Cornell and Carnegie Mellon but in the end the decision was between UCB and MIT.</p>
<p>@UMTYMP,</p>
<pre><code>"My guess is <25% of MIT applicants have those stats (2250+ SAT) ".
</code></pre>
<p>Yes, I agree with you. 
</p>
<p>Actually, that may or may not be true. Check out the data here:
<a href=“Admissions statistics | MIT Admissions”>http://mitadmissions.org/apply/process/stats</a></p>
<p>I don’t see how that falsifies my claim. The 75th percentiles for applicants in each section are very likely 780 or 790 math, 730 or 740 reading, and 740 writing. These sum to 2260 but the 75th percentile for composite scores is almost certainly somewhat less than the sum of 75th percentiles so it seems quite likely that 75th percentile for composite SAT scores of MIT applicants is less than 2250.</p>
<p>EDIT: Also moshot is misstating my original claim which was that <25% of MIT applicants have 2250+ SAT and almost all As. Granted based on the link Discipulus shared I think it is also probably true that <25% of MIT applicants have 2250+ SAT but I am less sure of this than my original claim.</p>
<p>@UMTYMP student: It’s hard to tell, since MIT doesn’t provide stats for the composite SAT, but, according to the provided score distributions, 41% of applicants scored 34+ on the ACT composite. Based on the ACT score conversion chart (<a href=“http://www.act.org/aap/concordance/estimate.html”>http://www.act.org/aap/concordance/estimate.html</a>), it seems probable that a little more than 25% of MIT applicants have 2250+ SAT scores.</p>
<p>Also, I’m not sure where you are getting your 75th percentiles from, but the score distributions in the link I provided show that 4005/(4005+3431+2722+1995+2304)=28% of applicants score 750+ on the SAT CR, and 4005/(4005+3431+2722+1995+2304)=30% of applicants score 750+ on the SAT Writing. Your estimate for the math section is likely correct, though, because 57% of applicants score 750+ on the SAT Math.</p>
<p>Your original claim is probably still correct, though I’m sure a large number of applicants with these high test scores have almost all As.</p>
<p>Right. I was taking the total number of applicants as the denominator not the number who submitted SAT scores. Adjusting for that the sum of 75th percentile for sections is probably something like 2290 at which point it’s less clear if the 75th percentile for composite scores would be less than 2250. </p>
<p>I think looking at SAT scores directly is a better measure of the applicant pool than looking at ACT scores as more than twice as many students submitted SAT scores and there is no particularly good reason to suspect students submitting ACT scores are a particularly random sample of the applicant pool. At the very least the number of students submitting ACT scores is going to be geographically biased and I believe strength of applicants varies considerably by region. The other issue with using ACT estimate is that it doesn’t map smoothly to SAT scores. It’s more accurate to map the scores of 34 on the ACT to the some distribution over the interval (2220-2280) than map them all to 2250 which will substantially reduce the number of applicants with ACT scores equivalent to 2250+. My guess is that accounting for this like 30% of MIT applicants who submitted ACT scores had ACT scores equivalent to 2250+ which could well be explained by ACT takers being a non random sample of applicants. To see why this smoothing is necessary we not if we didn’t do this we would find a massive drop off from the number of students with ACT scores equivalent to 2250+ to the number of students with ACT scores equivalent to 2260+ which is obviously absurd.</p>
<p>Given the revised data analysis I am no longer confident that <25% of applicants had 2250+ SAT scores although I don’t think this has been definitively settled. I remain reasonably confident that <25% of applicants had 2250+ SAT scores and almost all As (I agree most people satisfying the first condition will also satisfy the second).</p>
<p>You have to look at Discipulus’ data more carefully. It’s probable that well over 25% of MIT applicants who submit SAT I scores have scores 2250 or higher.</p>
<p>40% of applicants who submit SATs (and that’s over 75% of all applicants) have a math SAT I score 750 or above, and more than 25% have critical reasoning and writing scores 750 or above. While that doesn’t prove that >25% of applicants have a combined score 2250 or higher, it certainly seems likely that is the case. Of the applicants who submitted ACT tests (which included about 2,000 who also submitted SAT Is), 45% had 34 or higher, a score that basically corresponds to 2250. </p>
<p>JHS, I don’t understand your post. I estimated that the sum of 75th percentiles was ~2290 and given that the composite 75th percentile will be something less than that it is not clear to me why we would necessarily expect the composite 75th percentile to be 2250+ based on that. For example, it seems that the 75th percentiles for each section at Caltech sum to 2390 yet Caltech’s 75th percentile for composite is only 2340 (sources: <a href=“BigFuture College Search”>BigFuture College Search, <a href=“http://admissions.caltech.edu/applying/profile”>http://admissions.caltech.edu/applying/profile</a>). I’m far from sure the composite 75th percentile is 50+ points less than the sum of the section 75+ percentiles but I think it’s also reasonably likely. I also argued earlier that smoothness concerns complicate the conversion of ACT scores to SAT scores as your method would suggest % 2250+ SAT ~% 34+ ACT and % 2260+ SAT ~ % 35+ ACT which is obviously absurd.</p>
<p>EDIT: To be perfectly clear the data described in the post is for applicants to MIT and freshmen at Caltech hence the large difference in scores.</p>
<p>EDIT 2: The college board data aren’t data and are possibly a year or two old. However, unless Caltech’s SAT scores dropped it shouldn’t affect my analysis.</p>