<p>Though I have already completed the college search and application process, I am just curious what schools everyone considers to be logical matches and/or safeties for those students who are competetive for and striving for the Ivy League and its peers(i.e. Stanford, Duke, U of Chicago, MIT, Swarthmore, Williams, Northwestern, and so on).</p>
<p>Your state flagship might be a logical safety.</p>
<p>For students whose stats equal those accepted to top tier, I don’t believe many “Matches” exist. I believe this because a 4.0, heavy AP/IB, 2200+ stat kid will always “match” stat wise to the top schools whose acceptance rates are low. The low acceptance rates make the process a reach. If you drop just a bit in stats, you risk an AdCom judging the app as a potential “yield risk.” You’ll see students on here come spring who have surprising results because of the need for some schools to protect the yield rate & thus maintain USNWR rating.</p>
<p>The “Likely” or safities for this group are public flagship (IS or OOS) that are strictly numbers (GPA/SAT) driven.</p>
<p>My D used both our state flagship (UNC-CH) and Tulane as safeties. While I don’t think you can take for granted that you would ge merit $ from Tulane, if your stats are in the upper quarter for HYPMS then you probably will. At least it worked for my D.</p>
<p>Some of the top, top students at my school safetied Berkeley. (There was one kid who only applied to Berkeley. -.-) There is a sizable number of students who safety UCLA.</p>
<p>I haven’t known anyone to safety anything higher than Berkeley, since the school has lower stats for its USNWR ranking. But, then again, I live in California and it’s probably not impossible…</p>
<p>Matches and safeties for students with top stats would be those schools that admit a significant percent of their applicants-perhaps 30% or so, to pick a random number - for which they can make a credible case that they would actually come if admitted.</p>
<p>when i was applying i used tufts, nyu, and emory as my safeties. im sure some people would say that was foolish but i got into all 3 and didnt have to go to any of them (and i wasnt even a top top applicant as i only got into 1 of the 6 ivies i applied to). so yeah, those are my suggestions</p>
<p>Your local community college.</p>
<p>I applied early decision so luckily I wasn’t put in the position to have to rely on matches or safeties, but I know that as a competetive applicant I struggled creating a list that wasn’t too top-heavy. Thank you guys for beginning to compile a list that other applicants could use (though I believe that the local community college suggestion was a bit absurd).</p>
<p>A “match” would be any school (other than top 20) where the applicant’s stats are at the 75% on testing and GPA. Such an applicant, barring truly pekid ECs and recommendations, should gain acceptance into at least half of such “matches”.</p>
<p>For an Ivy aspirant, that would be NYU, Wake Forest, Lehigh, Tulane, Brandeis, George Washington, Miami, etc. and a bunch of Public Flagships. LACs would be in the 10-20 range, such as Colgate.</p>
<p><em>edit</em> apparently “pekid” is a rarely used spelling of “peaked”, meaning weak or spent.</p>