<p>Just wondering. </p>
<p>Post the schools you considered safeties and/or low matches, and why you applied to them. It would be interesting to see if there's a correlation between choosing Columbia as a first choice school and choosing other schools as safeties.</p>
<p>my low match was NYU Stern, and maybe CMU Tepper....
im an international, so i didn't really have any safeties...</p>
<p>probably one of the douchebag-iest questions i've seen on CC</p>
<p>Erm, sorry? I honestly didn't intend it in such a manner. I thought that maybe kids applying to Columbia as a reach would apply to more urban safety schools than kids whose first choice was a place like Dartmouth or Princeton.</p>
<p>I also figured that if a lot of Columbia applicants liked certain schools that were a bit easier to get in to, I should give those schools consideration as well. </p>
<p>What did you find so inflammatory about my question?</p>
<p>lol @ shraf</p>
<p>I think it's a perfectly fine question. Better than 90% of the crap on here.</p>
<p>My safeties were Berkeley and UCLA.</p>
<p>Safeties: USC, Cornell, Rice, WashU
match (didn't have low matches, unless you count Cornell): UChicago</p>
<p>match: chicago, cornell, amherst</p>
<p>safety: georgetown, stern/nyu cas, cmu</p>
<p>in between: hopkins, northwestern</p>
<p>just because people go to columbia does not mean that it was (is?) their first choice.</p>
<p>Berkeley, UCLA, USC, Cornell, Rice, WashU being called safties?
hmmmm, maybe its time to reevaluate your definition of a safety.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Berkeley, UCLA, USC, Cornell, Rice, WashU being called safties?
hmmmm, maybe its time to reevaluate your definition of a safety.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>i whole-heartedly agree.</p>
<p>Yeah, I was going to say the same. I'm thinking my safeties will be University of Texas-Austin, Trinity College (CT), and University of Illinois. If I applied to University of Michigan as a low-ish match, I probably wouldn't apply UIllinois.</p>
<p>^um no, all those schools are easier to get into than columbia (except maybe cornell seas vs columbia seas), and if someone is a top notch applicant, those schools could easily be considered safeties. When I was applying I had comparable schools as safties.</p>
<p>confidentialcoll, of course those are all easier to get into than columbia, but isn't the point of a safety either a public school that seems to have a defined, statistically-based, admissions pattern or a private school where the given applicant has scores significantly above the school's average and the school isn't known as being specifically holistic and/or having Tufts syndrome? </p>
<p>Berkely, UCLA, NYU, et al could be safeties for top applicants, but picking Amherst as a low match or Cornell and Georgetown as safeties comes across as a bit arrogant.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Quote:
Berkeley, UCLA, USC, Cornell, Rice, WashU being called safties?
hmmmm, maybe its time to reevaluate your definition of a safety.
i whole-heartedly agree.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>At least for me, Berkeley and UCLA were safeties because they're very numbers-based admissions processes. If your scores and grades meet the formula, you're pretty much in. Soft factors don't matter much if at all (do you even need recs?), and you rarely hear of surprise rejections from people with the right numbers. This is different than the Ivies where even a 4.0/1600 could get you rejected from all them.</p>
<p>my prep school had strong enough placement that georgetown (among others mentioned) was a safety for a reasonable portion of the class. </p>
<p>the very top students had brown/penn as safeties and columbia/duke as matches, though my credentials were nowhere near their level.</p>
<p>Cornell and Hopkins were my matches, and I'm at Cornell now (although maybe I should have gone to Hopkins). So, I guess it's important to have them.</p>
<p>Trying to transfer, tho.</p>
<p>This is insane, Georgetown, Brown and Penn as safeties. People really don't think about what they put it in writing.</p>
<p>or perhaps your knowledge of college admissions is not as comprehensive as you believe it to be?</p>
<p>bellisima, I actually can see where lvilleslacker is coming from. The vals/sals of places like Exteter/Andover/SPS/Milton/(apparently Lawrenceville, presuming that that's what lvilleslacker's name is a reference to) are going to be some of THE smartest, hardest-working, most resourceful kids in the country. Even without significant EC's, bringing that kind of experience to a school would be valuable. Add in über-connected prep school college counselors who also help kids find "good" EC's, and Brown and Penn are actually realistic safeties.</p>
<p>^...yeah but for us NORMAL kids, that's not really good advice lol.</p>