<p>Add a safety. You’ll sleep better.</p>
<p>UMD has a sizeable contingent of folks from NY, too. The three summer math programs and Mandelbrot will DEFINITELY get the admissions folks’ attention – but have a true safety just so you can sleep at night.</p>
<p>Berkeley is DEFINITELY not safe if you’re out of state, even with her amazing SATs and grades. The UC system is undergoing SERIOUS budget cuts and admissions are completely schizophrenic. Expect surprises.</p>
<p>I think she should add at least one much easier school to get into on to her list, maybe even one that offers Early Action. She probably won’t end up going there, but having an acceptance from EA in December really helps keep the stress levels down come mid-March (or so I’ve heard.)</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>Definitely have a safety. You are NOT bound to make it into one of those schools. Here is a thread from Andi about his son’s journey:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/192395-no-acceptances-one-kids-story-year-later.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/192395-no-acceptances-one-kids-story-year-later.html</a></p>
<p>To respond to the OP, my rule of thumb has always been the second page of USNWR for National Uni’s or LAC’s, for anyone in the top 15% of students in the nation.</p>
<p>For your daughter, I would highly consider trying for Penn State Schreyer Honors Program as a safety, along with the one offered by UI-UC.</p>
<p>I stand by my previous post, but if you think for peace of mind she must apply to safeties, make sure she goes with safeties she wouldn’t terribly mind attending. There’s no point in applying to a school you wouldn’t like to attend.</p>
<p>My D is a college freshman this fall and has very similar stats as yours. We had quite a few colleges that overlap with your list as well. I have a junior in HS and that’s the reason I am following posts on CC so I can stay up to date and be ready next year. My suggestion is to add at least one safety. In our case, we had several so our D can feel she has choices. SUNY Stony Brook is a well known school in the sciences, Case Western and Tulane are good privates that give decent merit for someone with her stats (they were our safeties and they came through with great offers).</p>
<p>We sometimes miss the concept of a safety. A safety is one particular where you are assured of admission based on your record. </p>
<p>A safety is not the accumulated possibility of admission of at least one school from a list of selective schools. If you list includes 10 schools, all of which your student has a 50%+ chance of admission, you have no safety.</p>
<p>Chal is correct that a safety must be a school the student is willing to attend. Otherwise, it’s not a safety, just a waste of application $.</p>
<p>Tulane is great. They really offer a lot of money (they want good students after Katrina,) and their application is very easy for someone with her stats.
What sutprises me is that she’s not applying to HPYS or AWS with those stats. She has a chance…</p>
<p>I got to admit - I’m spooked on New Orleans because of Katrina. D doesn’t want to apply HYPS; she thinks after touring Harvard that too many people attend because they want o say they went to Harvard rather than actually going to Harvard; didn’t take four years of one foreign language so can’t apply Princeton; thinks if Yale gave George Bush C grades, they must have serious grade inflation; and didn’t like Stanford. I don’t know what AWS stands for…</p>
<p>H - People seeking prestige is true of many schools and many things that she will face latter in life. If it was my kid I’d try to emphasize that she should try to determine whether or not it’s a good place for her, and not place so much weight on what other people do.</p>
<p>P - 4 yrs of FL is a recommendation, not a requirement.</p>
<p>Y - She might want to think again. My D did a year at a top Public (alleged grade deflation) and is now at Y; she’s premed and while very happy at Y, sometimes laments how much easier it would have been to get top grades if she’d stayed at her old school. </p>
<p>AWS = Amherst, Williams & Swarthmore</p>
<p>[Full disclosure: my D is in Bush’s residential college. As a non-Bush fan, she wasn’t too thrilled when she first heard, but it did give us lots of ammunition to lob at her ;); and a year later she loves it, because it really has nothing to do with Bush or any other individual who has lived or gone to school there.]</p>
<p>“thinks if Yale gave George Bush C grades, they must have serious grade inflation”</p>
<p>You’re getting close to not being taken seriously.</p>
<p>There’s a lot of good advice in this thread - maybe you ought to focus there. Or your daughter could do some research and see that the better student won both the 2000 and 2004 elections (which really doesn’t say much for any of those three now does it?)</p>
<p>If George Bush got C’s at Yale, he must have had a lot of cash to pay for all of the people out there that did his homework for him…</p>