What are your favorite safety schools?

College Search & Selection
21

<p>The point is not that they become less life changing.</p>

<p>It is that they are no longer being overlooked. The mission statement of CTCL is something along the lines of everyone knows MIT and Harvard are sweet and change lives, where else does …</p>

<p>It is really “More Colleges that Change Lives”. This explains why Stanford or Amherst is not a part of the list.</p>

<p>And they figure, if enough people are applying that the admit % is 30 or 40%, then people have figured out that it changes lives.</p>

22

<p>Have you read Loren Pope’s books?</p>

23

<p>Indiana and Iowa: prototypical college experince, with great college towns, bigtime Sports. Iowa smaller than every other Big 10 school except (private) Northwestern. Indiana is in Southern Indiana–campus is beautiful, and weather is a tad milder than other Big 10 schools.</p>

<p>Wisconsin: Nice consolation prize if you can’t get into Michigan or Berkeley. Also, Kansas, if you can’t get into Wisconsin.</p>

<p>Fordham and Villanova: Nice consolation prizes if you couldn’t get into BC or Georgetown.</p>

<p>Wake Forest or Davidson, if you couldn’t get into Duke.</p>

<p>Wesleyan, if you couldn’t get into Brown.</p>

<p>Colgate, if you couldn’t get into Cornell or Dartmouth.</p>

<p>U of Colorado…nice alternative to just about anywhere…great town, scenery, skiing.</p>

<p>Clark U. and Union College if you can’t get into the elite liberal arts colleges in New England, NY, and PA.</p>

<p>Furman, if you can’t get into Wake Forest.</p>

<p>Carlton, Oberlin, and Grinnell if you can’t get into Williams or Amherst. Kenyon, Lawrence, and Beloit if you can’t get into Carlton, Oberlin, or Grinnell.</p>

<p>Purdue, Minnesota, or Michigan State if you want engineering, and can’t get into MIT, Stanford, Michigan, Cal, Carnegie Mellon, etc.</p>

<p>Smith–much easier to get into than Wellesley.</p>

<p>Northeastern, if you have a thing for 45-degree angles and can’t get into Nortwestern.</p>

<p>U of Chicago, if you couldn’t get into Columbia U., and want to wallow in urban intellectualism surrounded by the downtrodden.</p>

<p>American and George Washington if you gotta have the political vibe, and Georgetown sends you the thin envelope.</p>

<p>Clemson, VaTech, Auburn if you can’t get into Georgia Tech.</p>

24

<p>Rutgers. Echoing some of the above posts…because I’m in state. Also, I like how it’s a big school and has a lot of different options. I’d be happy there.</p>

<p>Syracuse, and Lehigh.</p>

25

<p>

What’s the connection? Becoming more selective is the unavoidable result of publicity, such as appearing in Pope’s books. The only change in the schools is more applications, and thus a somewhat higher caliber of students. Is it that this higher caliber of students have their lives changed less than the former matriculants? Perhaps Pope expects that the next edition will list other schools, precisely because of the effect of inclusion.</p>

26

<p>TourGuide446: Some of those “X, if you couldn’t get into y” schools arn’t really safties unless someone is a really shockingly good student. More like lower reaches or matches, depending on the student. (I’m thinking about Wes, Carelton, and UChicago, esp).</p>

27

<p>Pope seems explicitly to put a thumb on the scale to exclude colleges from his list, no matter how good they are for the student who attend them, that are highly selective. And the only reason St. Olaf is as moderately selective as it is is that Carleton is across the river and up the hill in the same town.</p>

28

<p>favorite safety - University of Colorado Boulder</p>

<p>I’m a Colorado resident and I wouldn’t mind going here. Boulder’s a fun town. I’d just like to go out of state.</p>

29

<p>HeyThereKate and tokenadult, thanks</p>

30

<p>TourGuide446- Those look like step downs from the ones listed, but I can’t see them as safeties for the majority of students. University of Chicago is a reach for a lot of people, and Smith v. Wellesley doesn’t seem very plausible to me. Smith is considered the number one women’s college (although Wellesley is the higher liberal arts college) and is not exactly a safety. </p>

<p>As a step-down list, that’s really really helpful, but please make sure people understand that those are not guaranteed safeties at all!</p>

31

<p>Nor that liking one school means liking the other. Columbia was not to my taste, but Chicago was my first choice school.</p>

32

<p>Great point, unalove. Every school is going to feel different depending on the person. The individual tends to make college comparisons, well…incomparable.</p>

33

<p>Purdue - Instate, Engineering (my future major!), and I bleed black & gold</p>

34

<p>WesKid and Kate: I didn’t write post #23 with the thought that those mentioned would be safeties for “the majority of students.” According to your criteria, a list of safeties should look something like this:
Southern Mississippi
Hawaii at Hilo
Minnesota-Duluth
Southwest North Dakota Bible College</p>

<p>Applicants with different levels of credentials need different levels of safeties. When I wrote “X if you can’t get into Y,” I meant for X to be a match or at least near match. USNews ranks Columbia #5 in selectivity, and Chicago #24. That’s a significant difference, yet the schools’ overall ranks are tied at #9. What I was trying to offer was shools that are significantly easier to get into, even if their overall rank and/or overall experience they offer would NOT be significantly different. Colgate is quite a bit easier to get into than Dartmouth–no doubt some of that is due to Dartmouth’s Ivy League halo. But you’d have to pick a lot of nits to tell me the college experience and the level of education you could get at Colgate would be significanly lower.</p>

35

<p>Mine are Lawrence, Grinnell, and U of I.</p>

<p>Lawrence because, although I have no musical talent, beign able to walk around campus and hear lots of musical geniuses play would be a pleasure :)</p>

<p>Grinnell because I like the homey feel of the campus + it still has pretty good research opps.</p>

<p>U of I because I’m in state (even though I secretly hate it. It’s like…30,000 people too big and is dominated by frats, drinking, and football. Ugh!)</p>

36

<p>tourguide-- you can’t put chicago, davidson, furman, wesleyan etc as safety schools because they are very good schools and id say some ppl might not get into them but get into the ones you listed before them</p>

37

<p>Clemson- I’m instate. great campus, feels like a real community, and amazing football.</p>

38

<p>TourGuide: I never meant to suggest that we should be talking about safties for almost everyone, just that some of the schools you listed are safties for almost none. But since you have claified the match or near match thing, it makes more sense. The way your list read, I though you meant “if x is your reach, y might be a good safty,” which didn’t work. But yes, if you are actually good enough for a school like Columbia or Brown to be a match, a school like Wes or UChicago will probably be a safty (though UCHicago has a rally quirky app, so maybe not).</p>