<p>I've been looking for safety schools, and I was wondering if you'd consider this a safety school for me..</p>
<p>Some basic stats:
Sat I: 600 CR, 740 M, 690 W (retaking in oct, hoping for 2200)
Sat II: USH - 750, BIOM- 730, taking sat chem and math ii in nov
GPA: 3.90 unweighted</p>
<p>I have leadership in various clubs, varsity sports, work experience, etc</p>
<p>Anyways, what do you think?? target or safety?</p>
<p>A few kids at my school (which is just outside of Rochester) use UR as a safety but they have top top top stats (2300+ and 4.0, competitive for HYP). I wouldn’t recommend using it as one, especially with that critical reading score, which is at URs bottom 25th percentile. </p>
<p>I will be attending UR next year and I did not consider it a safety; I had a 1430 SAT, 32 ACT (34 superscored),3.8ish GPA (94), 2 SAT II’s over 750, and some substantial extracurriculars. You shouldn’t either. </p>
<p>What about your in state public school? Some public/private universities that might truly be safeties that immediately come to mind are BU, Syracuse, Villanova, Binghamton, Geneseo, Rutgers, Maryland, Delaware, the list goes on…You should probably have a “financial” safety too.</p>
<p>Target. There isn’t a large quantity of schools that are better than uofr, and they are all going to require better statistics. I have many friends with better qualifications that couldn’t get in to better schools. I’m not saying don’t apply to better schools, but you shouldn’t make any future plans based on admission to them. UofR would be an appropriate target for you.</p>
<p>You need to understand college admissions a little better.</p>
<p>At the “top” level, admission is largely a lottery: very high numbers of applicants, most with similar records, very few admitted. You apply and hope. It helps to be a minority - not Asian, not Jewish. It helps to have multiple legacy connections because the school sees that as leading to more dollars in donations over time. It helps to be rich because the schools want money. It helps if you have an odd story. It also helps if you have an interest that matches what the school wants, as in liberal arts schools typically have relatively fewer engineers apply. It helps to be from someplace where they get relatively fewer applicants because geography is, for some reason, considered diversity.</p>
<p>Geographic diversity is valuable because students from different areas have different cultural experiences and expectations.</p>
<p>D2, for example, always thought that when someone said they’re “Indian” the proper response was “What tribe?” since her high school was 15% Native American and had only had a few Asian Indians–who were referred to as Asian and not Indian. Also here, Anglo (meaning native English speaker) is a major cultural classification and refers to both Caucasian and African American individuals. </p>
<p>Different way of perceiving the world.</p>
<p>I understand the argument but I don’t buy it. For example, my high school has kids from all over the world with dozens of languages. I know one Boston high school has over 60 languages. You get negative credit for coming from this kind of diverse background, from knowing actual Buddhists and practicing Hindus and Orthodox Jews. Instead, a kid from a sparsely populated area where an Irish Catholic is an oddity is considered as adding diversity. That’s nonsense. I’m not speaking to your kids or to any specific kids but how is it diversity for a kid to come from a suburb in a less populated state than a city in a more populated state? The latter has more applicants and that not only is a hurdle but counts as a diversity negative. Why is that fair? Because that definition of diversity benefits you? </p>
<p>There are many things in life that aren’t fair. You can score very well on the PSAT in New York or MA and not be a semi-finalist when your score would be at the top of the list in more than half the states. Why do they compare by state? If they mean to provide incentives for education, why reward lesser achieving states by rewarding lesser achieving students than those in states with more competitive, better scoring educational systems? </p>
<p>Even apart from the phoniness of geography, doesn’t each kid have his or her own story?</p>
<p>As for benefits, what about the negatives? How many kids come to schools with bad impressions of minorities - of all kinds - because they’ve never met them? You have likely not been asked what kind of food Jews eat. Or when an Indian friend was asked if he missed Colorado because of course all Indians come from Colorado, even those from India. To some degree, the point of geographic diversity is to penalize one form of diversity in favor of a specific, defined form of diversity which tends to be uninformed about anyone other than people just like them. Maybe it’s laudable to expose people who don’t know much about other people but why penalize the people who do?</p>
<p>The real reason for geographic diversity is money and influence. Schools, particularly the prestige ones, want to be known as national and international. They want to point to their reach. They believe that pays off in the end because they then have a network that reaches further. This network is useful within academia and for fund raising. Institutions are highly interested in self-perpetuation, in what is good for them. Yale is opening in Southeast Asia because they want the Yale brand to be valuable in a growingly rich area, one where they can perhaps wield influence and where they reap money and potential hires.</p>
<p>U of R is definitely NOT a safety for you. While your GPA is very good, your SAT scores are nothing so special for Rochester. You don’t really list your EC’s but since you have leadership I’ll assume that they are pretty good. I still think you have a very good shot of admission but your stats are still well short of making U of R a safety for you. Good luck!</p>
<p>UR is a school that wants to be loved. So if you’re going to use them as a safety, you have to make them think you love them. Visit, interview, focused essay, etc. </p>
<p>Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using CC App</p>
<p>Target plain and simple. What is your intended major/interest? Any strong geographic/school environment preferences. Perhaps we can help suggest safeties, but need to know your interests.</p>