<p>In my second paragraph of post #240, I was considering a student who as an incoming “freshman” would be prepared to start in graduate level mathematics–so I was talking about an undergrad school choice, but for a student who is highly accelerated in an area.</p>
<p>Berkeley would be among the top choices for a graduate student in many fields, as would a number of other public universities that are research intensive. I wasn’t shifting to a discussion of graduate admissions–and definitely not down-rating any of the universities I mentioned in #240, in terms of grad school.</p>
<p>Jym626, I disagree. This thread is in large part about the 1-3% of incoming freshman who are looking for a safety that satisfies their accelerated work in an area. Some of the unhooked but strong candidates who already have done DE, MVC, etc., need a safety school to apply to, not just to find their tribe, but also to find courses that are challenging and furthering their concentration.</p>
<p>I haven’t read the whole thread so pardon me if this has already been addressed.</p>
<p>What would be better for this student who “can’t find a safety”? Doing a gap year and applying again? Staying home and working for the year and applying again…or finding some reasonable compromise and going to another college where surely they will find some like minded peers, and perhaps have super opportunities being at the top of the heap?</p>
<p>Looking back at the original post on this thread. </p>
<p>The safety must be “a sure thing in admissions and affordability”.
The safety must be “a school that the student wants to attend”.</p>
<p>The student is “dispirited by attending a school with a large number of lower achieving students”.
The student is “only satisfied with the type of student peer group found at super-selective schools.”</p>
<p>Seems to me that this student is not going to have a safety, not because there are no schools out there that could provide a sure thing in admissions and affordability, but because of the student’s mindset. </p>
<p>To paraphrase my favorite College Administrator (Dean Vernon Wormer): Dispirited and dissatisfied when life doesn’t hand you exactly what you want is no way to go through life, son.</p>
<p>Well we will agree to disagree, Ixnay. Sure there are students who have done programming or some other accelerated work, and may consider additional opportunities as they look at colleges. But, IMO, that is not the focus of this thread. If that were the focus of this thread, to speak to the 1-2-3% of incoming freshman with some extreme accelerated training in some area, it would not likely have gotten the traction it has. Again, JMO.</p>
<p>It’s not remotely about that. It’s been about social acclimation among smart / serious students and finding one’s tribe socially, not the presence of academic opportunities.</p>
<p>In my opinion, in almost all instances, it’s better for the student to settle for a less-than-ideal college and make the best of it. And to enable this to happen, the student needs to apply to a college that doesn’t met the idealized definition of “safety.”</p>
<p>I agree. I think a bright student aiming for the top colleges is unlikely to do something so spectacular between June graduation and December application due dates (earlier for EA or ED) that their results are likely to be different. Gap years are great for growing up, for getting a break from academics, and for learning a new skill (language learning in a immersion experience for example), but not really so great for getting better college acceptance results unless the original list was defective.</p>
<p>Safeties are by definition compromises. The trick is figuring out which safeties meet the most of your wants or have the least number of undesirables.</p>
C’mon. This thread was started to disparage the “picky” student who wants to go to a highly selective school. It wasn’t about finding a safety–it was about the idea that for some kids there is no safety because (supposedly) they don’t want to mix with the lowly. It’s just that when I point out that this picky student has a point, to some extent, people don’t like it.</p>
<p>Good lord, the perseveration is unbelievable! This thread isn’t about the student who is sooooooooooooo advanced that anything other than our very super special precious MIT or maybe a handful of other schools will suffice for his brilliance. </p>
<p>This thread is about bright students who desire a thick concentration of similarly-bright, very motivated, take-academics-seriously students (they could be serious / passionate about different subjects) to feel reasonably at home and make friends and have a tribe. This isn’t about the classroom. It’s very possible the classroom could be challenging (or challenging enough).</p>
I think for the large majority of students this is true. Its fortunate when a true “safety” is still a strongly desired school that a student would love to attend. That said, the large majority of students still apply to only a handful of schools, and are usually pretty content with where they enroll.</p>
<p>** And totally agree with PG’s post 255, and marians post above too.</p>
<p>Sure…the picky student has HIS point…but what would be better? Not attending college at all? </p>
<p>My DD applied to 4 safety schools and one reach. She got accepted to the safeties. No surprise. She is very bright and engaging. She was an engineering major, and guess what? She was NOT the smartest engineering major in her major…or her school. And she had plenty of bright students with whom to interact.</p>
<p>By the way…having a very high SAT score and high GPA does NOT guarantee that you will be the interactive type. Just saying!</p>
<p>I don’t think anybody has advocated not having a safety. I think some of us have just said that you might have to have a safety that you’re not crazy about. But since that safety that one kid isn’t crazy about because it’s not as academically challenging as his preferences is a school that other people happily attend, some people get their knickers in a twist about this as some kind of insult to the kids who go to the less selective school. Take a look back at the first wave of responses to this thread for this attitude.</p>
<p>Re jym626, #242: Actually, I think that the issue of a student who is ready to start graduate work in mathematics as an incoming freshman is spot on, as a response to the OP’s question. For such a student, there may be no such thing as a true safety. I suspect that only about 0.01% of incoming freshman meet this description.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, I think that a student can be happy with a sufficient number of like-minded students, and does not require a large concentration of them. As a result, I think that a top public research university makes a fine safety for anyone who does not specifically want an LAC experience. Actually, I think that the student might be surprised at the level of the experience obtainable at a UC Berkeley, UIUC, UMich, or UNC Chapel Hill, if the student is indeed academically oriented.</p>
Feeling VERY old, though …</p>