<p>Perhaps one of the keys to finding a good safety - one that the kid will be happy going to, should that be the outcome - is to do a good job up front of defining exactly what it is the kid is looking for in a college - before starting to look closely at specific colleges - and then look for a range of schools that meet those requirements.</p>
<p>In our case, DD said up front, if a school had Russian, she would consider it. Beyond that, everything was negotiable. As it turned out, we visited six schools (and applied to eight), and although she had kind of a rank-order one to six, said any of them would be at least okay.</p>
<p>Of course, this strategy won’t work if the prime requirement of the student (or the parent) is “a college that will impress my/our friends.”</p>
<p>Well, um, of course. No point in throwing applications at the wall to see what sticks and then choosing later, only to discover that the choices are either unpalatable or don’t offer the major the student wants. Most safeties are not “schools that will impress friends/neighbors”. Thats a bit ridiculous.</p>
<p>Might depend on which friends and neighbors. A top 8% rank student in Texas gets into any Texas public university (though perhaps not necessarily into a specific popular division like engineering at Austin), some of which may impress the friends and neighbors.</p>
<p>Why suggest that others are choosing schools for their kids to impress friends? That seems judgmental. Living in the Norteast is different from most of the country. We have great privates and not as good publics as other parts of the country. The landscape is very different. It may look like social climbing to others and not be that at all.</p>
<p>S could only consider schools with Classics Programs and majors. That narrowed the list.</p>
<p>Well yes, thats true, UCBalumnus. I the case of Tx, guaranteed admission to their top, I think its now 8% not 10% students, is to schools that are target schools for others. As I mentioned, my older s’s safety was Ga Tech (which was confirmed by his college counselor as a safety for him and he was admitted though didn’t attend). Its certainly a target school for many, but my point is, he didnt apply there for the reason Annasdad snarked about,
and likely the Texas students didnt use that as a criteria either.</p>
<p>ACT: 32
SAT: 2030
GPA: 3.88 UW
Western WA U, has rolling admissions, admitted to Honors program. COA about the same as our EFC. With merit would have ended up costing less than half of our EFC.</p>
<p>Kid #1: SAT in top 1%, GPA in top 20%, safeties: UCI(with Regents), UCSB.
Kid #2(Junior): SAT in top 1%, GPA in top 1%, possible safeties: UCI, UCSB, Santa Clara, U of Alabama, McGill, and LSE.</p>
<p>There actually have been threads where students were in conflict with their parents where one or the other is much more prestige-obsessed. E.g. student wants to go to a lower prestige school or did not get into a higher prestige school and gets berated by “overbearing tiger parents” for being a “worthless disgrace”, or student wants to go to a higher prestige “dream school” that is too expensive after financial aid.</p>
<p>There was also the thread about $140k for the prestige difference between two unnamed schools, neither of which had a whole lot of prestige anyway after being revealed.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>On the other hand, it does seem common to see (for example) NJ resident students who want to go “anywhere but Rutgers” or NY resident students who want to go “anywhere but SUNY”, as if the state schools were as radioactive as Chernobyl in 1986, even though the state schools would be reasonably good academic and financial matches or safeties for them.</p>
<p>Yes, UCB, there are those tigerparents who would sooner die than have their kid attend any school without massive name recognition, but in those cases often the parents might also just shrivel up and die if their kid had to even attend a “safety”, no matter <em>what</em> school it is. In this case, and I totally agree with mythmom, the comment made about selecting safeties to impress friends was a very judgemental and condescending one. Totally uncalled for.</p>
<p>I was <em>almost</em> tempted to consider Oberlin a safety for my son because of his stats and a very strong legacy connection and he did get in RD with a nice merit scholarship, but I would have been a wreck waiting for that, so for my mental health it was better to have a couple of EA schools. He ended up getting in to all 10 schools he applied to and attended Grinnell, a great fit for him.</p>
<p>** ahem*** annasdad-- that very same poster, AstrosJake, a HS junior, said THIS in that post you cite. Nice selective editing you did, since they are fine with him going to a CC for 2 years first!!
<p>This is certainly true in some social circles in the Northeast, but there are also plenty of people in the Northeast for whom the college decision is based on - what can I afford, what’s close to home, and couldn’t care less about the neighbors. The Northeast consists of more than just upper-middle-class / lower-upper-class professionals, AND those upper middle class / lower upper class professionals in the Northeast aren’t as different from UMC / LUC professionals in other parts of the country as they’d like to believe. Really, Winnetka = Scarsdale more so than Scarsdale = middle class areas of NY/NJ.</p>
<p>There will always be prestige whores, both parents and students. That is completely besides the point in this discussion about safeties. This thread is NOT about <em>prestige</em> safeties. In the $140K vs state school thread, the choice was between Lafayette, which tat OP considered a <em>prestige</em> school (many others did not agree) and Rowan, a state school. She ultimately said her kid chose Rowan because IT WAS A BETTER FIT. Please, PLEASE stop twisting these threads to be about your personal agenda.</p>
<p>I think this is like the mommy wars when stay at home moms and moms working outside the home pit themselves in an unending debate about the merits of each choice. Same with prestige vs value. My only point is to question why we need to cast aspersions on other parents and call them prestige whores. The other camp could be called cheap misers. I’d rather assume both sets of families are making sound, albeit, different decisions.</p>
<p>My kids refused to consider schools west of the Hudson. Their choice, not mine. Does that make me a northeast snob? One grudgingly agreed to apply to U of Chicago. The other was adamant. It’s their education.</p>
<p>Only one SUNY even has a Classics major. Not a good set of options who read THe Aeneid in Latin 3 times. OTOH both are going to Stony Brook for grad school and living at home. I wouldn’t be more gratified if it was Harvard.</p>
<p>It’s just too easy to judge without knowing the whole story, and there is a zelousness.ro point fingers I don’t understand.</p>
<p>Oh. obviously DS changed fields from Classics.</p>
<p>If Ivy / Elite is a must for some majors, it makes no sense whatsoever for others.<br>
D’s circle of friends at her private prep. HS did not discuss the topic. D. herself never checked any ranks of any colleges. She had applied to certain programs that require very high stats and was accepted to 3 of them, all at state schools. She was happy to have choices and looking back has chosen the perfect UG for herself. All of her schools I suppose were safeties as she has graduated #1 in her HS class. It has never occurred to her to think about UGs this way though. She would not understand discussion on this thread. You choose where you want to be. if rank is criteria #1, then go to the highest ranked UG. If other criteria is important, then choose based on that criteria. It was straight forward. D. did not get into her #1 program, although she received an awesome Merit package from this college. So, she happily went to #2 on her list. If she did not get to #2, she would have gone to #3…etc. They were not listed in rank order at all as she did not check any ranks, strictly in D’s personal preference order.</p>
<p>DD (HS Class of 2010) had 3.6 WGPA, 26 ACT (27 Superscore). handful of APs</p>
<p>Safeties: Towson, URI (Rhode Island)
Happily Attending: University of Delaware</p>
<p>Going to be harder for my DS, HS Class of 2013, who is a higher stats kid. I don’t really trust what Naviance or Common Data Sets show are his matches. Safeties (and early notifications, like Tulane) are going to be key.</p>
<p>I haven’t called anyone a prestige whore, nor has anyone else on this thread. Nor have I passed judgment on those who consider prestige to be the most important selection criterion. I just commented that the safety selection strategy I proposed - figure out what’s important first, then find schools that fulfill those important-to-me criteria before locking in on “dream schools”, including on the list at least one solid financial safety - won’t work for those parents and students who put prestige high on the list - because as PizzaGirl points out, the high-prestige schools aren’t really reliable safeties for anyone. So if prestige is what floats your boat, I’m not out to drill holes below your waterline - just to caution that come April, you could well be looking at nothing other than unappealing alternatives.</p>
<p>Those who value prestige often have enough sense to realize that they have to choose a lower-prestige institution as a safety school.</p>
<p>I know plenty of young people who applied to the Ivy League and other prestigious schools who used their flagship state university as a safety. One of those kids was mine. Such kids recognize that their safeties are less prestigious than their top-choice schools. Prestige may be what floats their boats, but they have enough common sense to realize that if you don’t have a solid safety, you’re on the Titanic.</p>