Can Northwestern Be a Saftey for me??

GammaGrozza
Mon, 17 Aug 2009 19:11:51 +0000

GG I would think that you meant a 3.7 GPA with a certain level of ACT score or SAT Score. Not anyone with a 3.7 GPA is going to get in - correct?



No, anyone with a 3.7 UW GPA (honors/AP classes) or higher has gotten in the past three years. I think the lowest ACT scores for people with a 3.7 is high 20s or so. 3.7 seems to be the magic barrier. Because lower than that some red starts to appear, depending on the test scores. Now, understand that my former HS is fairly difficult. A 3.7 is very solid, and this GPA commonly gets into the lower ivies. A 3.8 plus puts one into consideration for HYPSM, disregarding hooks and stuff.



A safety is an absolute - a definite - a 100% chance of getting in - NOT a 95 % chance of getting in.



Okay, Northwestern’s not a safety then. But is this really the definition of safety? If it is, then there really can be no such thing as safeties for the very top students who only apply to privates and the top few publics (which is very common). These schools use holistic admissions, and nothing is guaranteed. That’s why a 95% chance, or 90, or 85, or whatever would be a pragmatic definition. Under those definitions, Northwestern is and has been a safety for some people, especially in feeder schools like mine. So it depends a lot on how one defines safety, which will change from person to person.



But in people’s heads, is there really a material difference between those two probabilities?

Not really. But in forming an argument, these distinctions become important.



Your school apparently has done an excepotional job on Northwestern.

yes it has. So has arbiters. So have a lot of other chicagoland schools which feed into NU. There might be other feeder schools in different states, where the GCs are well connected in some way to the adcoms. So, I’d say that at these few schools, NU can be a safety (depending on definition). A good way to test this is to look on naviance, OP. If you see a TON of green and NO red around your stats, you probably have a fantastic chance. Is NU a safety? Again, depends on your definition.

If I made it seem like I was arguing something for the entire nation based just on my school, I apoligize. I originally posted because some people said NU could never be a safety for anyone (more or less). These absolutes are what I have a problem with. That’s why I try to qualify all my statements properly. If I didn’t, that’s my bad, and I’m sorry.