What are some common "safety" schools for top-performing math/science students?

Umich is a common safety school for people applying to Ivy Leauges

It isn’t an actual safety, though, for OOS apps. The admit rate OOS is too low for it to be considered a safety.

@cttwenty15 , you are a U.S. citizen, and it is possible the OP is not (he has not provided that information). The bar is higher for international students, so his results may not be comparable to yours.

It appears that the perception is trailing reality for the University of Michigan.

Since going on the Common App a few years ago, the acceptance rate has fallen ftom 52% to 26%. For OOS, it’s now about 21%. For OOS Engineering and CS, it’s much lower.

The days of Michigan being a safety for someone applying to Ivy League schools ended a few years ago.

OOS is difficult for UMich. The impression is that those with the very top scores will be rejected EA as they are only applying “as a safety”.

The OP first asked about “popular safeties” for high-stats applicants. Assuming that financial aid is not a major concern, I would add Tulane. Tulane has a non-binding Early Action option, and they will notify you by Thanksgiving. They are usually very generous with merit aid for high-performing students, but they also like to know that you are sincerely interested (applying for Early Action should suffice for that), and not simply adding them as an after-thought. I would normally suggest Washington U or Vanderbilt to a high-stat student as more realistic high-match/low-reach schools (they love 2300+ test scores), but they have become a little tougher on “shotgunners” who apply indiscriminately to top-ranked colleges. They now waitlist a lot of those applicants to preserve their admissions “yield,” but to keep their average scores high.
If you are an international student, you will need to familiarize yourself a little more with the admissions game here. It is different from other countries. You have not indicated that you will have any problem paying for college here. I hope that you are also familiar with price-tags for American universities.

The most common safety school for the high-stats math/science kids that I know was our state flagship. And when I say high stats, I mean these kids had incredible high school resumes. None of them ended up attending our state flagship, but almost 100% of them applied there early (EA to a public, nonbinding) in addition to SCEA/REA/EA at schools like HYPSM, Caltech, U Chicago, etc.

My son’s safeties were UTD and U Pitt. UTD has McDermott Scholars and U Pitt has some competitive full ride scholarship.

He’s a math major at MIT.

Can we see some data (test scores, GPA, interests) please?

I think the OP has left the discussions.
NO posts since 8/15

Data (summary): academically qualified for the top universities.
Interest: math/physics.

Would UCSB/UCSD/UCSC be good safeties? What about Stony Brook? What about Cornell? 30 kids from my school attend Cornell every year… What about Tufts?

It’s best to look at your high school’s naviance.

@jsm2015 I checked OP’s other posts and OP got a 2340 SAT: 800 W, 800 CR, 740 W (6/12 essay). Also went to USA Canada Math Camp for one summer and AwesomeMath Summer Program for two summers. No info on GPA or anything else.

UCSB/UCSD are not safeties. Too many top students are rejected by those colleges each year.
Are you from Calif?
If not, you’ll be paying OOS tuition fees for any Calif public U or college.

^^ OP has yet to tell us where he/she is from so that we can give the best possible advice, but it seems like he/she is from Canada

I think stony brook would be a safety, Cornell and tufts would not; admission to either is under 20%. And if a large number of kids from your school apply to either school ED & are accepted, these schools are less likely to take more kids from your school who applied RD. My older son was accepted to brown, penn and uchicago but rejected by Cornell & Dartmouth, both of which took 9+ kids from his school ED & rejected everyone who applied RD.

This is yet one more element in college admissions that an applicant can’t control for…you will have no idea how many of classmates are applying ED to a particular school on your list, and their admission may affect yours.

Cornell is not a safety, they have an approximate 15% acceptance rate, but that varies among their 7 colleges

Agree with what a lot of people have said.

If you want to prune your list a bit, CMU is awesome for CS. My son toured their physics dept and wasn’t super impressed. He’s looking at experimental though. With the math emphasis, you may be thinking theoretical, and he wasn’t considering it from that angle.

UCSB would probably be a “low match” in the terminology some use here–so not quite a safety, but better than a match. You’ll need essays and/or ECs that make you seems like a nice person, though. As someone mentioned earlier, the College of Creative Studies at UCSB could be a good fit for you; they have both math and physics majors. CCS is a separate application from the regular UC application.

My son is an international student, he intends to major in Math/Science. His safety schools he applied to are:
US schools
UCSD
Georgia Tech
Canadian schools
Waterloo University

he applied? as in last year? so where was he accepted??

“US schools”?? this is very vague. there are 4000 colleges in the US.