Not a safety. |
At this point, maybe they should just have named the school. It is an anonymous forum after all. |
Still not the type of school whose name you expect to be thrown around on a safety schools thread. I was thinking of California University of PA. I don't think "Cal" is a safety for any kid. |
It's not. It had a 11% freshman acceptance rate last year. Even for the most stellar, above all others candidate, it is at best a "target", never a safety. |
Haverford is in no way a safety. See the other recent thread about selectivity of SLACs. If I’m reading that right Haverford is actually more selective than even some other higher ranked schools. |
UVM received 28,000 applications this year, 33,000 last year, for freshman classes of less than 3,000. "Safety" is a relative. |
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In these types of threads, it would be useful to set the scene in terms of stats and what schools the child is aiming for before stating the safety. Safeties are relative, as are other factors, including whether the student is applying to a public school in-state or out-of-state. I've seen VA parents post about deferrals or rejections from VT for kids with stats higher than my kids' classmates in Maryland who got in (and the opposite for UMCP).
Among my own kids, safeties varied. One is very high achieving and was aiming for Ivies and MIT. He didn't get into any of those. His safety, which is not a safety for most students, was Georgia Tech, where he wound up having an amazing experience that he wouldn't trade for anything. My other kids have more conventional in-state safeties, like Towson, UMBC, and Salisbury. But believe it or not, my kids also know kids who were rejected from Towson and UMBC too, so they aren't safeties for everyone either. |
Haverford was not brought up as a safety. I believe a pp said their kid got into Haverford but not UMD, implying that UMD was not a safety. |
| Wisco! Although maybe not so much a safety anymore. |
Of course there is a lot of variation in what is a safety for different types of students. I think mostly what people are noting when saying a school is "not a safety" is the schools with very low acceptance rates. No matter how awesome your student is, a school with a sub 20% acceptance rate is not a safety, no matter what (well, unless your dad is the president or you gave the school $1M+) Georgia Tech's OOS admissions rate was 13%. It's great that your son got in but it was a target, not a "safety" and could easily have gone the other way. You think it's a safety now because it worked out. Same with anyone whose kid won the lottery-odds and now thinks that school is a safety. It's not. You got lucky. |
Actually, I didn't realize how low the acceptance rate for GT has gotten. My son graduated in the 2010s, and the admit rate has totally dropped off since then. On the other hand, I'm not sure that even now, admission would "be getting lucky" for a student with the same level of achievement in math during high school. |
| UVa |
OOS acceptance is about mid 30s now, I think that kills its safety status. |
| Our daughter is a first year at UVM. She was waitlisted at Kenyon and Fordham but UVM was not what I'd call her "safety" (that was Stone HIll). She's LOVING the school and Burlington. |
| Cal grad here. I can only wish our football team was good enough to be known… |