Do you know of any situations where student got into "reach" schools but not safety schools?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Happend to both me and dh. Met at Stanford in 87. Neither of us got into our safeties. Mine was Franklin & Marshall and his was Haverford.

Stanford wasn't nearly so selective back then, though was it? Not sure it would have been considered more of a reach than Haverford at the time. Seems like Franklin & Marshall has always yield protected--I've heard similar stories about it through the years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Happend to both me and dh. Met at Stanford in 87. Neither of us got into our safeties. Mine was Franklin & Marshall and his was Haverford.

Stanford wasn't nearly so selective back then, though was it? Not sure it would have been considered more of a reach than Haverford at the time. Seems like Franklin & Marshall has always yield protected--I've heard similar stories about it through the years.

Lol, Haverford and Standford have never been close academically.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Happend to both me and dh. Met at Stanford in 87. Neither of us got into our safeties. Mine was Franklin & Marshall and his was Haverford.

Stanford wasn't nearly so selective back then, though was it? Not sure it would have been considered more of a reach than Haverford at the time. Seems like Franklin & Marshall has always yield protected--I've heard similar stories about it through the years.

Stanford has been a reach since reaches became a thing, and yes, certainly in the 1980's.

[Anonymous]

Stanford schmanford. The question is whether F&M and Haverford have ever been actual safeties. Students were accepted to Stanford (reach) while rejected from F&M and Haverford: res ipsa loquitor. (The answer is no, they were not safeties at the time PP applied in the 1980s.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PSA, schools that yield protect SHOULD NOT BE considered safeties BY DEFINITION!!!

Schools with <50% acceptance rates are NOT safeties.

People rejected from "safeties" did not actually have safeties.

This question is OT, but how in the world are we supposed to find out if a school yield protects? This obviously isn't something that they put forward on their websites!

Look over last year's discussions (e.g. on college confidential) to see whether high-stats applicants are sometimes among the rejected or among those deferred in the early round.

This does not typically happen at schools with higher acceptance rates (say, >70%). Yield protection seems to be more of an issue in the middle ranges (say, 40-55%).

Example of a school that yield protects: Santa Clara U. Overall acceptance rate approaches 50%. High-stats applicants are routinely rejected if they don't show demonstrated interest and/or a good fit with jesuit educational ideals. Another important note: the overall acceptance rate at a university may not be indicative of the acceptance rate to a particular program or major. Engineering (CS specifically!) and business are often more competitive than the school's overall stats suggest. Some schools publish separate stats, but most do not.

Less-selective state colleges and lower-ranked privates tend to admit more on stats and less holistically (i.e. less on subjective factors) and accordingly make for more reliable safeties. Look to the back quarter of the top 100 national universities or just beyond the top 50 LACs.

Exactly. I see this so much from parents that have attended Ivy/Ivy-caliber schools that don’t quite understand how admissions work at a lot of public universities. They may just see a relatively high acceptance rate with lower median stats and assume that their kid will easily get in... but then get blindsided by rejections. In many cases, they didn’t realize that high demand programs such as engineering and business have higher admissions requirements than the rest of the university. For Michigan, there’s a whole different set of standards applied to our-of-state students in general and their engineering and business programs are extremely selective regardless of residency. I went to Illinois and the admissions ranged from valedictorians with a 36 ACT routinely getting rejected from the computer science program while people with middling grades and an ACT in the mid-20s would get into the agriculture program. You would never see that at all from the overall college admissions data that’s found on most sites. The overall admissions stats are pretty worthless for most major public universities - you have to look at the specific program admissions stats instead.

[Anonymous]

What the hell is with the Michigan haters on this forum? It's so random and weird.

Every school yield protects, by the way.

Also, kids don't make decisions solely based on the selectivity of the schools they get into.

[Anonymous]

Got into USC, WashU, Pratt, Tulane, Clemson, not VA Tech so who really knows

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Got into USC, WashU, Pratt, Tulane, Clemson, not VA Tech so who really knows

were you applying for engineering? Had you finished calculus in high school when you applied?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Got into USC, WashU, Pratt, Tulane, Clemson, not VA Tech so who really knows

were you applying for engineering? Had you finished calculus in high school when you applied?

Architecture and yes to Calculus.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What the hell is with the Michigan haters on this forum? It's so random and weird.

Every school yield protects, by the way.

Also, kids don't make decisions solely based on the selectivity of the schools they get into.

Not every school yield protects. Michigan does it. UVA doesn't.

[Anonymous]

Reasons for Safety Rejections:

#1. Gender Balancing
#2. Intended Major Balancing
#3. High School Quota Already Met.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Reasons for Safety Rejections:

#1. Gender Balancing
#2. Intended Major Balancing
#3. High School Quota Already Met.

#4 Student unlikely to attend/lack of demonstrated interest

[Anonymous]

There is also a timing question. Applying to a safety when you apply to a reach is one thing; waiting until the day before an admissions deadline for a safety is another. If you send your app that required no work on the last day, the school may not look as favorably on the application because it may perceive (correctly) some indifference.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What the hell is with the Michigan haters on this forum? It's so random and weird.

Every school yield protects, by the way.

Also, kids don't make decisions solely based on the selectivity of the schools they get into.

Not every school yield protects. Michigan does it. UVA doesn't.

That's ludicrous - what data do you have to support this? Your one or two anecdotes from personal experience don't count as hard science

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What the hell is with the Michigan haters on this forum? It's so random and weird.

Every school yield protects, by the way.

Also, kids don't make decisions solely based on the selectivity of the schools they get into.

Not every school yield protects. Michigan does it. UVA doesn't.

That's ludicrous - what data do you have to support this? Your one or two anecdotes from personal experience don't count as hard science

The reverse is true. Random people declare some conspiracy by colleges to deny their top applicants because they aren't aware of how competitive a school is. There is no data to support widespread yield protection.