I was discussing safety schools with my neighbor - in my youngest’s case we felt that we didn’t find any safeties in terms of major, stats, affordability and location. The local CSU offer is admission but not in her major (biology), so then that’s really not a safety. Neighbor’s kid is thinking some kind of engineering, which seems to be just as impacted as biology. He is much more flexible in a major as he’s indicated he doesn’t really know what to major in or what he wants to do as an adult.
For safeties, you want to be at least above the average GPA/SAT/ACT scores for the CSU’s since admission is based on these factors. For impacted and competitive majors, if you are in the 75th percentile for Stats, I would consider these safeties. Google common dataset for each school of interest. It will breakdown the %enrolled based on GPA range, SAT/ACT scores at the 25th and 75th percentile. If looking at UC’s, UCR has a guaranteed admission program (GAP) as long as you meet the requirements and submit application by July before Senior year.
I was telling her that even if on paper comparing scores to what’s published, it’s still not really a safety if the school accepts you but you have to enroll under another major or if the CSU changed from being non-impacted to impacted from application time to decision time. Anyway, he’s a junior in high school.
That is true but for the CSU’s, your local in-service area school will give priority to their local applicants even with impacted programs. Younger son last year applied as a CS major with above average GPA and ACT score and used CPP as safety since it was our in-service area Cal State. He was accepted early with Honors. Yes there is no guarantee, but if check the most up to date Stats from these schools, you can compile a good list of safeties and matches. He was accepted to 6/10 schools as a CS major which is not only impacted but super competitive.
Nursing is highly competitive everywhere.
For most kinds of engineering, the CSUs which offer it are impacted, but some have very low impaction and are not additionally impacted for the engineering majors (e.g. CSULA). A few types of engineering are offered at non-impacted campuses and are not impacted for the major (e.g. engineering science / petroleum at CSUB, industrial engineering at CSUEB).
There should be some non-impacted CSUs where biology is not impacted.
It is critical when you apply to college that you include at least one school you can afford, are willing to attend and you know they will take you. If the applicant won’t attend a school - don’t waste the $55 (or $85) applying.
Safety is kind of a silly term. It causes kids to view that school as the worst possible outcome - sometimes a fate worse than death. Look at all the recent posts by kids doomed to mediocrity because they only got into UCR (or many other campuses). As you enter the process, understand, you just might end up with your last choice. It is not the worst case scenario. - Getting your list wrong and failing to include viable options and scrambling to apply late to UNR, ASU or your local CC is worse - though you’ll still survive. (getting hit by bus is worse too)
So much info is available now, there is little mystery about what it takes to be a contender for virtually any school via their Common Data Set. There’s nothing wrong with applying over your head for a school or two but, have realistic expectations. UCLA got nearly 90,000 freshman applications this year from top students in every corner of the globe, about 16,000 were admitted. Be honest with yourself about your chances of standing out in a stack like that.
CCs are probably the only true ‘safety’ but, the local applicant bar at most CSUs (2.4 GPA and 1000/1600 SAT) is pretty low. Most truly ‘college bound’ applicants have no trouble meeting them. (I’d question a sub 3.0 student’s ability to cope with the challenges of going away to college.) If your local school is SLO or SDSU, then your CC might be the only reliable plan B. As to major SLO is the only CSU that requires you to declare on your application. CP Pomona is the only one that considers your alternate major for admission. Everywhere but SLO, changing majors is an easy, quick process. If you don’t think you’ll meet the threshold for a particular major, pick another or go undeclared. The freshman curriculum contains enough GE - one semester undeclared won’t set back your progress.