Was 2013 the Year of the Safety School?

<p>the matriculation of our school in 2012 is much better than every before. i havent heard anything about 2013 yet.</p>

<p>Several posters, including onesonmom, have mentioned the “strategy for students with great or even good stats is to apply to colleges which offer merit to those falling in its top 25% range.” Can any of you give me some ideas the best ways to identify these colleges? I’ve seen the list of colleges offering no loans, or no family contribution, but I can imagine everyone is trying to get into these now. We will qualify for some financial aid, but closing the gap with some merit money for my son who is a very good, but not great student (current GPA approx. 4.0 weighted, first SAT scores: 1910) would be ideal. I’m just not sure, when not looking at the ivy level colleges, how to know which ones are more likely to offer merit $.
Thanks for the detailed description of an Excel worksheet to organize search, onesonmom. We’ll definitely be doing all that.</p>

<p>At my school this year acceptances were absolutely everywhere. The kids in the 1-4 spots got rejected or waitlisted to all of their schools except for their two safeties. The rest of the kids in the top 15% were accepted to the same schools the top 4 were rejected and waitlisted to. The top 25% of the class as a whole got into random schools. Everything was all around weird this year.</p>

<p>It wouldnt surprise me if that were the case - I got waitlisted at my top three. Most my friends did as well. Looks like the college admissions process goes on for me…</p>

<p>It seems like every other year my school does really well with the ivies. Last year I think we had 8 go to cornell, 2 to princeton, 3 to yale, 3 to brown, a couple to the others.This year very few got into ivies (most who did applied ED), and it seems like a disproportionate amount of girls (just anecdotal observation). Only 3 guys, and none to HYP. But I still got into some great non- ivies and im really happy with my options, and I think most people feel the same way. I’m too good looking for yale anyways :)</p>

<p>Interestingly our college counselor said that this class (2013) just wasn’t as strong as last year’s, so while it may seem indiscriminate that the top school acceptances are missing, actually it is the top 10 or 12 kids that are missing!</p>

<p>I had done one of those online search tools to check the safety, match, or reach status at the schools I applied to while I was waiting to hear. My “match” school hasn’t even sent a letter of rejection or acceptance yet, but I was accepted at my “reach” school! I had seen this thread earlier and worried I wouldn’t get into either one.</p>

<p>my school sent 20 kids to Harvard alone this year…and we have a class size of less than 200. lol</p>

<p>^to put it into perspective, last year we only had 8</p>