Edited
I don’t get why you guys don’t approve.
There are 10 LAC’s he’s applying to. The average acceptance rate is 10%. If you add 10% up 10 times, you get 100%, so he is guaranteed admission to at least one of them.
What don’t you get? 
^^ :))
Adding to @urbanslaughter’s very valid point, athletes make up a much larger percentage at LACs than they do at Ivies given the student body size. Another factor that, if you are not a recruited athlete, adds to the difficulty in getting accepted at a LAC that isn’t apparent if just looking at percentages.
You don’t add up the selectivity and assume lightning will strike. Since these schools are holistic, you don’t just have the stats and assume. A kid could produce a flawed app and not get into his choices, despite applying to x number. And, what if those colleges get hundreds of apps that look just like him, all the same major, all from the same geo area, all similar activities? It’s not random.
Why not look at a LAC outside the USNWR top ten for a safety? Say Harvey Mudd at fifteen? The College has the added bonus of having SAT scores that are comfortably below no less than seven other schools in the nation.
Now Harvey Mudd is a safety? This thread is getting off the rails
Oh yeah, that 12.7% acceptance rate at Harvey Mudd makes it a safety. :)) :))
The sarcasm is dripping…
@albert69 I’d say that “flowing” is a far better description.
One CC poster did this back in 2009:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/687793-selectivity-ranking-national-us-lacs-combined-usnews-method-p1.html
Note that this combines LACs and universities in a single selectivity ranking.
Of course, some colleges may have moved up or down significantly since 2009.
However, the overall patterns probably haven’t changed too much. LACs were (and presumably still are) well represented among the ~75 most selective schools.
If you consider yourself an Ivy caliber applicant, then especially if you don’t live in a state with a top public flagship, LACs are indeed fertile territory for match if not safety schools (as long as they fit your budget).
The information is too out of date to be useful. For example, UChicago is almost a different school based on that methodology, and I know LACs are becoming more desirable to some students over the usual suspects, and not just as safeties.
I totally thought the title of this was a typo and that it would be a thread about someone applying to top 10 LACs and was looking for safeties that were good fits for those schools.
The admission rates to the top LAC are quite different from most of the top15 universities. Most of these schools are very small but still field over twenty varsity sports for both sexes. If you go and look at the ED rates it will seem like it’s much easier to be admitted but this is because almost all the athletes are recruited and are admitted ED. Without the athletic hook most of them would not be admitted. At schools like Amherst and Williams something like 40% of the students play varsity sports. At the larger D1 top schools the athletics is still a big hook but you have to be far more skilled in most sports and the athletic spots are a far smaller percentage of the overall class. The RD admission rates to Pomona and CMC were under 5% this year and not much higher at the other top LAC.
I’d say this attitude also goes on with many of the top research universities. It’s always jaw-dropping to me that some posters here will reference a top 25 university as their safety (inevitably after decisions come out, there are some who will be very disappointed).
I saw a poster once that referred to UC Berkeley as their “safety.” The person was accepted though, so I guess it worked for them.
^^ If I let my D do this, it would be the same chance of winning some lottery.
What about Bennington in VT? Isn’t it a top but relatively easy school to get into? Bret Easton Ellis went there too!
@SeattleTW, Bennington is easier to get in to (especially if you are full-pay), but no one would call it a top 10 LAC.
@albert69, Cal could be a safety (or close to it) for certain kids. Like all big state schools, they take in a ton of kids and may be more numbers-driven (less so than before, but if you’re really awesome in all aspects and don’t screw up the essay stuff, it’s hard to see Cal rejecting you).
The statistical relationship between colleges has varied in the short term, but particularly over the longer run. These are SAT scores as published in 1980:
Math
MIT: 730
Columbia: 680
Princeton: 672
Amherst: 670
Dartmouth: 665
Williams: 645
Chicago: 639
Reed: 635
Duke: 633
Hamilton: 630
Georgetown: 618
Virginia: 613
St. Lawrence: 600
Michigan: 590
Berkeley: 585
Vassar: 578
Bowdoin: 570
UNC: 564
NYU: 560
USC: 495
Verbal
Columbia: 670
Amherst: 650
Princeton: 632
MIT: 625
Reed: 622
Dartmouth: 620
Chicago: 617
Williams: 610
Duke: 593
Hamilton: 590
Virginia: 589
Cornell: 580
Vassar: 563
Berkeley: 553
Bowdoin: 550
St. Lawrence: 545
USC: 545
NYU: 540
Wisconsin: 534
Michigan: 520
UNC: 516
Also at this time the acceptance rate at Penn was slightly over 40%. (From a separate source, so I can’t make further comparisons.)
I won’t add much comment on these lists, other than to suggest that the “tiers” as they are commonly currently accepted on CC are barely recognizable from these figures. Reed showed particular relative strength. LACs in general are well integrated with universities.
(For those who don’t find this interesting, well, there are plenty of other posts to read.)
(Note: SAT scores were recalibrated in 1995. To convert to modern figures, add 98 points (CR + M) to an average score.)
(Sources: Preppy Handbook (satirical in tone, but the data is provided as factual); Images in Flux: Part 1, University of Pennsylvania Archives, 1980.)
(2boys: Readers may be interested in additional color.)