Academically speaking, not financially, what makes a good safety college? I can pretty much understand what a reach and a match is, but I get confused on safeties. Is there a general rule of thumb as to where you should lie on the college’s SAT/ACT percentage range or how high the acceptance rate is?
IMO the qualities of a good safety school are: 1) You are pretty much assured of getting in (ex. you are above the average stats by a decent amount - maybe in or close to the top 25 percentile) 2) You can afford the school 3) You would be happy to attend.
Another option (instead of #1) is if you apply non-binding EA or rolling and get into a school by mid-December or so and it meets criteria 2 and 3 then that can be your safety.
From what I’ve heard from guidance counselors and my own research, you should classify a school as a safety when you are above the 75th percentile ACT/SAT score and are above the average GPA. If you google “School name Common Data Set” you can find all of this!
So if you google the common data set for a school and their 75th percentile ACT score is a 29 and you scored a 34, I would classify that school as a safety.
However, I would be tentative classifying any school as a safety that has an acceptance rate below 30-40%. Generally more selective schools care about more than just the numbers, so you can’t say they’re a safety based on just their common data set. For example, at Vanderbilt the 25/75th percentile ACT scores are 32/34. So if you had a 36 you are above their 75th percentile score BUT you really can’t classify a school as selective as Vanderbilt as a “safety.”
I also think that a safety should be a school that you would be happy to attend and can afford.
So I guess there is a “general rule of thumb” for less selective colleges as to whether they are a safety or a match for you, but at the end of the day you can’t really know for sure! Classifying safety schools isn’t really a science that you can precisely predict, but more of an educated guess as to where you may fall at a certain school. Good luck:)
safeties are
1-generally schools that have above 40%[ or so] acceptance rates- i.e. not highly competitive colleges
2- where because of your stats and gpa you have an excellent chance of acceptance -
3- a college you would be happy to go to and can afford.