<p>I have not been able to find a definite description of a reach and safety school. If a school accepts 25% of applicants and your student is at the 75th percentile is that considered a match? And, if the acceptance rate goes higher the. That would be a safety? Please advise! Thanks!</p>
<p>Overall acceptance rates are not reliable indicators. The individual student’s credentials, as well as other factors, can affect the individual student’s chance of admission. Reach/match/safety depends on the chance that the given student is accepted (with enough scholarships and/or financial aid if needed):</p>
<p>Safety: 100% certain chance of admission and affordability.
Near-safety: 90-99% chance of admission and affordability. If no 100% certain safeties, have three or more near-safeties in the list to minimize the shutout risk.</p>
<p>Note that many schools have different admission buckets, so that overall stat ranges can be misleading. For example:</p>
<ul>
<li>In-state versus out-of-state for public universities.</li>
<li>Different levels of selectivity by major or division.</li>
<li>“Hook” categories where admission standards are lower (small schools with relatively large athletic programs may have a substantial portion of the admit class as recruited athletes).</li>
</ul>
<p>How can a student determine their chances? What is the best measure to use? Naviance?</p>
<p>There is no such thing as 100% safety unless you count Community College. Rolling admission is better I think.</p>
<p><a href=“Updated list of schools with auto-admit (guaranteed admission) criteria - Applying to College - College Confidential Forums”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1562918-updated-list-of-schools-with-auto-admit-guaranteed-admission-criteria.html</a> lists schools with automatic admission criteria, so a student with the needed stats would find such a school to be an admissions safety (of course, affordability needs to be checked).</p>
<p><a href=“http://automaticfulltuition.yolasite.com/”>http://automaticfulltuition.yolasite.com/</a> lists automatic big scholarships (which presumably come with admission). A student with the stats for an automatic full ride would find such a school to be an affordable safety.</p>
<p>Of course, the student must like the safety.</p>
<p>And for some who live in states where CC’s are well-worn guaranteed pathways to good universities (I have in mind CA and VA residents, for instance), a 100% safety may not be need. Even for folks who don’t go the CC route, there’s nothing wrong with taking a gap year or trade school or doing something else for a while before applying again.</p>
<p>I am sorry for this question but…how does a student select a match? WhT criteria is commonly used? Naviance?</p>
<p>Most people who have access to Naviance from their HS use that to judge their student’s chances. If your stats are in a spot on the graph where most kids got acceptances then you can consider that a match.</p>
<p>@FaubulousWu, we used stats in the way you are hoping to. Here is how we looked at it:</p>
<ul>
<li>Safety: Schools with greater than 40% admission rate, my kid had stats (ALL scores) at 75% or better, we could afford for sure, my kid would want to attend, and my kid had shown significant interest (mattered to the school) – visited, gone to presentation at her high school, signed up for emails, stopped in at college fair, etc. Had two of these schools. Both my kids ended up with lots of merit from their safety schools (but we hadn’t counted on it).</li>
<li>Match: Schools with greater than 20% admissions rate, my kid had stats at least at 50% point (ALL stats), my kid wanted to attend, had shown interest, and we understood the cost situation via the net price calculator. Had 3-4 of these per kid. My high stats kid got merit at all of her match schools that offered it (again, not counted on, but we knew it was possible).</li>
<li>Reach: Admissions rate lower than 20%. I have two kids, stats varies. The one with high stats got into all of her schools, including her 3 reaches, small merit at one. The one with good but not great stats didn’t get into one reach, was waitlisted at the other.</li>
</ul>
<p>We used Naviance to round the probability of admissions to the nearest 10%. Then we considered (10-30%) a reach, (40%-90%) a match, then (100%) a safety. We also used a bit of common sense. For example, under these conditions, my D1 (HS class of 2010) could have used Northwestern as a safety, but common sense dictated that it would have been foolish, aside from the fact that she didn’t want to go there. </p>
<p>Sure enough in later years, people in her Naviance neighborhood were denied at Northwestern. </p>
<p>IMHO, the best safeties are rolling admissions schools that will admit you early. D1 applied in September and was admitted in October to Wisconsin. That first admissions relieves a lot of stress. </p>
<p>D2’s first admission was Wisconsin also, but she applied Nov 1 and was admitted around 12/5. The key is to apply so that you will have an admission before the deadline for applying to other safety schools. </p>
<p>I am far more conservative. I think it is insane to think of any school that in the top 25 or so or USNWR and / or has an acceptance rate of 20% or less as either a match OR a safety. They are reaches. For everybody. I don’t care if your kid is Einstein. Treat them as reaches. </p>
<p>I would add that a large state in-state school where admissions is based on formula and your scores are considerably higher than average could be considered a safety.</p>
<p>Thank you so much, this helps tremendously!</p>
<p>I think people have different ideas of what a safety/match/reach is and probably largely has to do with your personal risk tolerance. </p>
<p>I have low risk tolerance so to me any school that admits fewer than 30% of its applicants is a reach, After all, that’s more than 2 out of every three applicants. And that’s regardless of what my kids’ stats were. Likewise, for me, a safety has to admit at least 70% of its applicants and my kids’ stats would need to be in the top half, preferably in the top 25%. The exception is kind of school mentioned above, where admission is guaranteed for certain stats and your kid has them.</p>
<p>For both of my kids, we chose one safety where they got accepted (with either rolling or non-binding EA) before the end of December. That way we knew he/she didn’t have to apply to schools which fell below that one on their list.</p>
<p>Most of the schools my daughter is interested in have rolling admissions, so we are also using a different strategy for her than we did for my son. We’re going to put in three rolling admissions apps early, and based on the results, she will either apply to more schools which are down a level, or put in a few more reaches.</p>
<p>I never worried about match schools. I made sure my kids had a couple of safeties they were willing to attend. I made sure they applied to some schools with EA or rolling admissions. Then we applied to whatever schools looked best to them. Each kid got into one school early and applied to at least one other safety so that they would have a choice in April. </p>
<p>My younger son had lopsided scores so it made everything except the super safeties feel like reaches. In fact he ended up doing better than expected, but he had scores in the top 25% in CR and bottom 25% in math at the three reaches that accepted him. </p>
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<p>It is not insane to use Naviance data to estimate your chances of admissions. </p>
<p>Harvard was a match for my D1. She didn’t want to go there, but about half of the people who applied in her Naviance group in the upper right corner got in. That rounds to 50%. Nobody from our Massachusetts public school has gotten into Stanford in years. There is some regional bias. Harvard has said that they want to educate the next generation of local leaders. That’s the only explanation that I can think of. </p>
<p>The place where this stuff really matters is in choosing schools to apply to and the number of schools. If you are using Naviance data with a significant number of data points, and you can estimate the probability of admission to within 10%, and we’re just talking about the probability of admissions (ignoring FinAid or merit considerations), then if you have a list of schools ordered in preference, you can calculate your probability of attending by multiplying the probability of admissions by the product of the probabilities of rejection for all of the more preferable schools. </p>
<p>When that is done it becomes clear that there may be reaches that have such a low probability of attendance (<5%) that they are not worth the effort in applying. You might also find, as my D1 did, that the probability of admission was high enough on the most preferred schools, that it made no sense to add another reach with a low probability of admissions (and thus attendance). </p>
<p>The tool is very valuable in determining where to focus your energy. </p>
<p>I agree with you about not using these schools as safeties. But in our approach, the words “match” and “reach” have no meaning, except to say don’t fall in love. </p>
<p>The estimated probability of admissions provides more useful information. </p>
<p>I guess I’ll beat my usual drum on how many of each category a students should have.
A safety is a school that you’re sure you’ll get in, you know you can afford, and you’re at least willing to attend. Personally, I think you should have at least two of these so you can have a choice if the matches and reaches don’t pan out.
A match is a school that applicants like you usually get into–so you should have three or four of them, because people like you don’t always get in.
A reach is a school that applicants like you get into, but most applicants like you don’t get in. This includes pretty much any school with a single-digit admit rate (in my opinion). If you are really interested in attending a reach school, I believe you should have more than two or three of them, because you can’t predict which ones will accept you and which ones won’t. Just how many? As many as you think are a good fit, and for which you can prepare the applications effectively. Six? Eight? That depends on you. You probably will start to skimp on some of the applications if you try to do too many.</p>
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<p>I agree with Hunt and Pizzagirl - be conservative.
In my opinion, Naviance can only tell you so much - keep in mind, this is only a plot of SAT score and GPA.
Yes, our kids would have been in the upper right area where the “theoretical” chance is > 50% for all those uber schools. However, I suspect that, in reality, they will always be in the same 50% reject pile for all these schools due to their slacker high school career.</p>
<p>We have acquaintances with kids in a good school district which is predominant Asian. Many of them are successful people who tend to be tiger parents and their kids usually have very high stat (> 2300 on SAT, perfect or near perfect GPA with bunch of APs). Years after years, it is not uncommon to see these kids totally shut out from elite college acceptance.</p>