The conventional wisdom is to apply to a mix of reaches, matches, and safeties, with an awareness that even if your statistics make you a ‘match’ for a school that admits fewer than 30 percent of applicants, your acceptance odds may be more like your odds for a reach school. Safety schools would be those that admit more than 30 percent of applicants AND where your statistics put you comfortably into the top 25% of admitted students. Most importantly, a safety should be a school to which you truly would enjoy going if you ended up there.
But this year’s admission cycle results postings on CC are scary. It seems like a lot of students are getting waitlisted from their safety schools, perhaps due to ‘yield protection.’
Most people seem to have somewhere to go, but it is easy to imagine a scenario where a student gets rejected from ALL their schools, because their safety assumed they would not attend if accepted! In some cases, applicants on College Confidential had attended campus tours or even interviews at their safety, “demonstrating interest,” and were rejected anyway!
Is there such thing as a safety school anymore?
How can you be assured of having somewhere to go to school, and preferably having a choice?
I always recommend that people apply to at least one rolling or non-binding EA school that is a safety they like and that appears affordable so they can have at least one good acceptance in hand by December.
Lots of schools don’t practice yield protection. Look at their Common Data Set to see if they consider interest or not. The problem might in fact lie with the student calling a school a safety when it actually has a fairly low acceptance rate and practices yield protection. (Ex. Case Western)
Agree with post #1 - Always try for rolling and non binding EA admissions in your safety range. Try to have one acceptance in early so have an option. Even if it’s not your number one choice, as the other decisions start to roll in you will be assured in knowing you have a stand by.
Yes. Some schools have automatic admission or scholarships based on applicant stats, with no consideration of “level of applicant’s interest” or other subjectively graded aspects of the applicant.
I do not think a true safety school for anyone has a less than 50% acceptance rate.
I have seen a lot of alleged “crazy, scary, unpredictable, etc…” results this admission cycle. I think a few factors are at work here. What seems to be happening is that more kids in the “average” excellent category are putting in more apps than ever, because they are worried about getting shut out. But what I have also been seeing is that those same kids are putting in more apps to more selective schools. They arent putting more apps into less selective schools. They are thinking that schools with acceptance rates in the 20%-40% range are matches, and they aren’t assessing their list realistically.
IMO, schools in the 20-30% acceptance range are low reaches. They are still very difficult to get into. Schools in the 30-40% range are possibly matches, but not a sure bet at all. And of course, there are many different factors that make one kid’s match another kid’s reach.
I really think the root of this is that people are panicking because they know that ever more applications are being submitted, when in fact the pool of students is actually decreasing.
I have yet to see a post in which a student has been shut out of all their schools with acceptance rates in the 40% and above range. If anyone has seen such a post, please link it here.
ETA: Not that my kid did eveything perfectly, but one thing she did do right was apply to a broad range of safety, match, and reach schools. Of the two safeties, one was instate and pretty much a guaranteed admit, based on stats, the other had a 58% acceptance rate, and she showed interest. Ultimately she got into 2 safeties, 5 matches, and 2 low reaches. The schools she applied to followed the parameters I have listed above, based on her stats. She was denied at a low reach and two,high reaches. She could have easily eliminated two of the schools she applied to. My son will hopefully be applying to no more than ten, and we will stick to the same parameters.
“It would be nice if colleges broke down the admission rate by SAT or ACT.”
It’s not a breakdown, but each school’s Common Data Set presents the statistics (usually including SAT and ACT scores) of the previous entering freshman class. The scores of applicants will generally be higher.
The issue, like so many have pointed out here, is not properly defining safety. It can’t be stated any better than @123Mom456 did. I always say it has to be a school you KNOW you’ll get in, you KNOW you can afford, and then, in a perfect world, would be in the running for your top choice. Too many parents and students have grossly overestimated the certainty of their admissions. You can only KNOW you’ll get into a school that by definition is non-selective.
Every year, parents crab about how their kid didn’t get into their safety for ME, when they got into several UCs. The school, Cal Poly. The acceptance rate to ME…14%. That the heck are they thinking?
UT Austin apparently has a lower than 50% admission rate overall. However, it is a safety for Texas applicants in the top 7% of their high school classes (100% admission rate) who are applying for a non-selective major (auto-admit applicants for selective majors may get admission to the campus but not major). On the other hand, it is probably a reach for all others (only 18% of Texas non-auto-admit applicants and 27% of non-Texas applicants are admitted, according to https://admissions.utexas.edu/explore/freshman-profile ).
What this means is that it can be important to consider different admission buckets within the same school. The Texas public auto-admit versus non-auto-admit is one example. Selective or competitive majors or divisions are another example, where a school may appear to be a low match or safety for a given student based on overall admission stats, but is really a reach for the selective or competitive major that the student is applying for.
There are plenty of safety schools around. Many are open admissions or admit anyone who meets a stats level or aren’t interested in playing the yield/acceptance rate game (because they’re admitting 80% and aren’t looking to move up in to the USNews top 40) but for some reason, a lot of kids don’t look at those places even though there are some gems there and they come in all sorts of varieties (cozy LACs, big-time sports with honors colleges, etc.).
Also, UK/Irish Unis also don’t play the yield game. If you’re a full-pay American who meets the required minimums, you have a very good shot of being accepted in to any UK/Irish uni program other than Oxbridge or LSE. Also mostly true with Canadian Unis.
And yes, a school with a 30% admit rate certainly can’t be considered safe. A school like that still would have plenty of high-stats kids to choose from.
For a true safety, you’d need to look at the types of colleges I listed or ones with an admit rate of 50% or higher.
Yes, @ucbalumnus makes an excellent point that can be applied to many state schools. Also consider the school’s policy regarding in-state vs OOS. UT Austin fills 75% of seats via auto-admit but then another 10-15% come from holistic review Texas residents (ranked public school students outside top 7% plus private school applicants, homeschool, non-ranking public schools if there are any, etc), and OOS students are left competing for just 10-15% of the available spots. So that 40% overall admit rate becomes much much lower for OOS students. 27% per @ucbalumnus above. Some state schools are more welcoming of OOS students (e.g. Alabama, OU, UNM) and some are even less welcoming than UT Austin (e.g. UCLA, UCB). It’s important to know where your student fits into the picture and know that the overall acceptance rate can be quite misleading.
As an example, we are Texas residents. S18 is top 1%, likely NMF, 1560 SAT, multiple STEM ECs including CS-related. UT Austin is NOT a safety for him because he’s going to major in CS. It’s a good bet that he will get in but it is not a sure thing. UT Dallas, which doesn’t limit the CS major enrollment, is a safety for him because he definitely will get in, he loves it, and we can afford it even if he doesn’t make NMF. A true safety.
It also depends on what you want to major in. Many schools with moderate acceptance rates will have lower acceptance rates for majors they are stronger in. You may be a strong student for UIUC but Computer Science might be a reach. If you apply late to Purdue Engineering you might discover yourself rejected or waitlisted regardless of your scores because they’ve fill their class. I have seen a number of posts that I thought “I don’t think safety means what you think it means”. Most of their safeties I would classify as matches.
