<p>Son: 3.6uw/4.0w, 1940 SAT, 29 ACT, 7 APs - Salisbury U & Roanoke College</p>
<p>Daughter: 4.0uw/4.4w, 1970 SAT, 34 ACT, 6 APs - Salisbury U, Juniata College, Hobart & William Smith</p>
<p>Funny , one of my daughter’s safeties is now her older sister’s first choice for grad school.
I see a lot of people getting offended when this topic comes up…as if it was a contest</p>
<p>We’re all being very polite.</p>
<p>Perhaps newbies would be helped by listing schools students actually attended to demonstrate relationship of safety to desired school, not to brag.</p>
<p>I was conscious of not wanting to use this thread to brag (not that the schools are Harvard impressive), but I now think maybe it would be more helpful the other way.</p>
<p>So perhaps a format of Safety: Chosen school:</p>
<p>would help with ideas of how to choose a safety. Just a thought. I’m interested in everyone’s thoughts on this.</p>
<p>GPA: 4.0 SAT: 2190
Safeties: Goucher, Dickinson, Delaware, Bryn Mawr
Attending: Swarthmore</p>
<p>Would have been thrilled to attend all safeties but Delaware.</p>
<p>mythmom, I hear what you’re saying. It would definitely be helpful to newbies to have specifics. I was keeping mum about the schools to keep more anonymous. My son was interested in larger schools, preferably with Division 1 football and preferably in warmer climates.</p>
<p>Safeties: an out-of state top 10 public university and a large, urban, east coast private university
Attending: mid-size top 20 private</p>
<p>ST.Andrews in Scotland .She was accepted in Sept. of her Senior year -rolling admissions .</p>
<p>Daughter has 33 act score and 3.98 unweighted GPA and applied to Fordham, Northeastern, Delaware, and American as safeties - got into all of them (Honors programs and merit at all) and is going to Northeastern. She never thought of them as safeties and they were all places she liked (however, she would not have considered attending any without being in their honors program.)</p>
<p>For our D, safeties: University of Vermont, University of Rochester
safety/matches: Bowdoin, Colgate, Middlebury, Amherst
matches/reaches: Carnegie Mellon, Brown, Dartmouth, Columbia</p>
<p>In the end she got into 8 schools(including both safeties) with 1 WL and 1 rejection
and will be attending: Columbia.</p>
<p>To actually answer OP’s thread, D chose her safeties because of the distinct communications between her and the schools as it was made quite clear that the schools wanted her to attend and she wouldn’t mind doing so if she had to; for location(UVM) and program/major(Rochester). Both schools ended up offering her merit aid and honors programs.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t advise considering Bowdoin, Middlebury or Amherst as safety/matches.</p>
<p>YMMV</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>It’s not a contest. Different kids have different needs and qualifications. </p>
<p>One student’s first choice may be another student’s safety. That’s exactly what happened in my family.</p>
<p>My son’s first choice was his sister’s safety school. The school in question was the University of Maryland at College Park, for which they were in-state. He ended up there. She ended up elsewhere. Good outcomes for both.</p>
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<p>How could any top 20 LAC with acceptance rates as low as they are be a safety/match for ANYBODY? I’m sorry, all top 20 LACs and all top 20 universities are reaches. For anyone.</p>
<p>Female from Michigan with 3.98 UW/4.17 W and 2260 SAT/33 ACT. I had two safeties: one was my mother’s alma mater, Michigan Technological University; the other was Saint Mary’s College of Notre Dame.</p>
<p>DS - 30 ACT, 3.8ish GPA 23rd/63 class rank, no AP’s (only Honors and Physics at CC sr. yr.)</p>
<p>Safeties - Hartwick, Ithaca, U New Hampshire, Juniata</p>
<p>Low matches - Allegheny, Hobart William Smith</p>
<p>High Matches - St. Lawrence, SUNY Binghamton</p>
<p>Reach - Bates</p>
<p>He was accepted at all schools. Also got money from all ranging from $15K-41K/yr except from Binghamton. </p>
<p>Attending Bates</p>
<p>We probably had too many safeties on list in hindsight. We were very unsure how his stats would be looked at given low rank, no AP’s, etc.</p>
<p>"I wouldn’t advise considering Bowdoin, Middlebury or Amherst as safety/matches.</p>
<p>YMMV "</p>
<p>Neither would I. Perhaps using the, “safety/match,” label is ill-advised. I wouldn’t call those schools safeties in the traditional sense(academically/economically) what I merely meant to write was that we were fairly sure she had a good chance at acceptance to those schools(that is in the specific case of our D) and I guess I know that safeties should be as close to a “slam dunk,” as possible and Pizzagirl is right as those schools are nobody’s “slam dunk!” I didn’t mean to insult anyone by expressing that the way I did . . . in retrospec it appears arrogant and that’s not me, my bad.</p>
<p>Older s’s safety was Ga Tech. Younger s’s “safety” (I dislike that word/label when admission rates are in the 20’s) was Tulane, which he attended with 2 wonderful scholarships, making the cost cheaper than our state flagship or tech school. He just finished his very last (ever) exams yesterday (unless he goes to grad schoool at some point). Time sure flies.</p>
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<p>Not necessarily. From my D’s high school, classes of 2009-2011, Vanderbilt University (#17): 48 applied, 25 admitted; the two highest-stat non-admits had 31 ACT, 3.4 GPA; and 34/2.7. Everybody with a 34 or greater ACT or a 3.5 or greater GPA was admitted.</p>
<p>So I’d say that for high-stat kids from her school, Vandy is at least a match.</p>
<p>And maybe next year will be the year that they decide they aren’t interested in packing their freshman classes with kids from one particular high school in Illinois and they’d like a little more diversity than that.</p>
<p>Thing 1: 3.7ish uw, 2300, NMSF, fairly lopsided. Accepted at Pitt (rolling) in September, then at the University of Chicago EA. Blew hot and cold on Pitt based on reports from friends there. Without the Chicago acceptance, would have applied to BU (which looked like a safety based on stats). Also applied to Oberlin which, while not a safety exactly, was a pretty good bet as a match. Oberlin was the what-if-I-don’t-want-a-large-urban-university? safety.</p>
<p>Thing 2: 3.9ish uw, 2330, BWRK. Michigan, rolling admission, with substantial merit. Before Michigan came through, planned to apply to two of BU, Toronto, or McGill as safeties.</p>
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<p>I haven’t seen the figures from this year (the figures I cited were 2009-11), but I know anecdotally that a lot of kids got admitted - one with a full ride (or full tuition, I don’t know which), which he turned down for another school.</p>
<p>But your point is well-taken. Until the year before last, Northwestern was a match for high-stats kids from her school (2009-10, 83 of 158 applicants admitted). Then a new director of admissions took over - last year, only 14 of 88, and anecdotally, this year is just as grim.</p>
<p>So its ok to report anecdotal information to support an opinion? Finally annasdad relents on his “provide evidence” insistence. Or at least its ok when he does it.</p>
<p>Agree that even if a top school has taken a large number of students from any given HS in the past, there is absolutely no guarantee that this will continue in the future. Totally agree with pizzagirl. DS was able to consider Tulane a “safety” b/c he had received his acceptance in October. If he hadn’t he would have pursued other options. He was offered the U of A “full ride plus computer/summer monies, etc” scholarship, so might possibly have considered it as a safety option.</p>