How do you determine safety/ targets for your kid?
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Anonymous
Not OP, but this would be very helpful for us! We are totally lost when it comes to targets and safeties. Looking for academic rigor above all and if possible good music program. Slight preference to East Coast and preferably private/mid-size to smaller but not picky about location, size. 4.0 uw, private, 1580/36, major still not narrowed down (considering biochemistry, physics, or CS) |
Anonymous
With these stats you are competitive at every school. It’s still a crapshoot at the top 30 unless you have a hook. Safeties would be most schools outside the top 30. |
Anonymous
One way of looking at is by selectivity. For a high stats student, anything less than 25% acceptance rate is a reach. Targets would be more like 25-50% acceptance rate. Safeties accept more students than they deny. (Students with slightly lower stats might have to adjust accordingly.) |
Anonymous
NP. Safeties would be outside top 60 ish, more like 80s. Examples, in the 40s, schools like BU and Northeastern are nowhere close to safe. Santa Clara (50s) has a reputation for yield protection. |
Anonymous
basically our school doesn't use Naviance/SCOIR - or at least doesn't make it available for students and parents if the CDS is more recent, then it is not skewed by admissions pre/post 2021 HS grads/TO/COVID |
Anonymous
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Do HS use only one - Naviance or Scoir? How does a student get access?
(Our student is rising jr so we are way down on the admissions learning curve.) |
Anonymous
| When they are IN, it's a safety. Obviously. We concentrated on finding Rolling choices and EA first. |
Anonymous
How did you determine whether it was accurate? If it said your child had a 25% of admission, is it accurate if he or she was admitted or rejected? Did your child get into every school where chances were >50%? |
Anonymous
DS got scoir access January of junior year -- I guess about the time it's no longer used by the seniors (expect to hopefully update with their college admit info) |
Anonymous
Just noting that many schools require applicants to declare CS and that program is harder to get into. Your kid’s stats are great. I would think Santa Clara would be verging on a safety except for the yield protection. The student should apply EA and take the essays seriously. My DD with lessor scores (1490) was accepted (which I expected) but she was not STEM. They did not give much merit aid at all, which took it out of the running from my perspective. Here is how I would suggest using ED. For a school that is a top choice where your student is in the top 25% of stats and the acceptance is below 20%. Do not think that your student has a good shot RD, you kid has a good shot ED. Don’t ED a lottery school without a hook. It happens, but it is truly a lottery. |
Anonymous
| We used a combination of cds and Naviance (but not their “reach, match, safety” chancing, they all said safety which we knew was not correct), looked at last cycles acceptance rate for our school and scattergrams. For example Clemson should be a safety for my daughter based on stats, cds data, etc. but our school had 25 apply and 1 accepted less than 5% acceptance rate, and she was rejected. Also the VA schools had much lower acceptance rates on Naviance than cds at our nova school. So a combination of both worked for us. Accepted at all safeties, half of the match schools, and 1 reach. |
Anonymous
| Ask your school counselor how they make determination. They have data specific to admissions of other kids from your HS. College admissions officers know profiles of HS. Generic GPA isn’t as helpful without knowing your school’s curriculum (AP or not), grade inflation, etc. |
Anonymous
| Collegevine. |
Anonymous
We found Naviance most useful for DC1 who was mainly applying to big schools, mostly in-state publics, that get a ton of applications from our school. Results came in as expected -- didn't get into reach (it was a big reach that I thought was a waste of time application but it was the only reach so I didn't argue with DC about it) but got in everywhere else. For DC2, mainly applying LACs, our determinations of safety or not was mainly around acceptance rate. Her profile was a bit challenging because she had great test scores but inconsistent grades with a downward trend (all As in 9th, more Bs than As by 11th). She has ADHD. We generally focused more on GPA as the match with test scores as a bonus for potential merit aid. Budget meant any reach LAC wasn't going to be affordable anyway so her only reach was W&M. LACs that seemed to be "target" had admit rates in the 40-59% range. Got into those but not enough merit to be affordable. Safeties were generally acceptance rates around 60-75%. Accepted to all those with merit to match state Us. Waitlisted at her reach -- probably would have been accepted if she'd applied ED but didn't want to since she liked some of her safeties more. |
Anonymous
Just come up with a list and post it here and everyone will find fault with it - whatever it is! haha |