<p>soozievt: You assume once some one has made a decision to apply to a safety school than it is better than a match school. </p>
<p>No for DD that was not true, a match school is a better fit than a safety school. But according to her high school she had to apply to at least 3/4 safety schools.</p>
<p>She can only apply to a limited number of match school. But she planned it in the way that if worst come worst she didn’t get into her first choice match school, she still might be interested in her second choice match schools over first choice safety school.</p>
<p>And the same hold true for Yale as she would have attended her second choice Elite school over her first choice match school.</p>
<p>To me it looks a very neat and elite strategy and I was really proud of DD to execute it to the dot.</p>
<p>POIH…well, one thing I DO agree with you on is the visits and making these comprehensive in nature and visting the department and faculty in your intended major (if you have one). We did that at every school on both our D’s lists. I encourage everyone to do that. </p>
<p>But if Brown was not so great in your view academically for your D, why EVER add it to her list? If the schools on her standby list were not good enough, why apply? Of if they WERE good enough, why were they not on her original list? </p>
<p>You just said that Brown was comparable to you guys to USC and UCSD. Your D had USC and USSD on the list and so why did she need to apply to Brown if MIT and CalTech didn’t take her in EA? She had other schools in case of that scenario already. She didn’t need more. If Brown is preferable to USC or USSD, why not have had it on the list originally then?</p>
<p>My kid, also a top student, had 8 schools. 4 reaches, 2 matches, 2 safeties. </p>
<p>I’m not sure why anyone needs a standby list. If she wanted those standby schools more than some others on her original list…add them. If the standby schools are not that satisfactory, don’t apply to them ever.</p>
<p>By the way, it is unusual for a school counselor to insist on 3 or 4 SAFETY schools. Typically two safeties are enough (if one has reaches AND matches on their list). </p>
<p>Also, I never have heard of Rice as a safety school, given its acceptance rate is just 23%. For a top student, as I assume your daughter was, this might be a match school.</p>
<p>I continue to find this conversation fascinating. </p>
<p>Unless I am mistaken, the main contributors here have daughters about to start at MIT for UG and at Yale Medical School, or started at MIT Graduate School of Architecture a few months ago. </p>
<p>While the roads (pun intended) followed seemed to have been different, it’s undeniable that the attraction of the Ivy League or Ivies Plus remain very strong. However, it also shows that people do seem to understand that there is more than HYPSM for UG choices --actually a lot more. My personal perspective is that it is EXTREMELY easy to add Ivies and highly selective onto a list, but that is a lot more difficult to uncover the true educational gems that would offer the elusive best fit. In fact, I think that it requires little research to start with a top heavy list. Such lists do NOT need the information published by organizations such as the USNews.</p>
<p>One thing I will say is that I don’t see it so much that the Ivies or schools like MIT are attractive (not denying it though), but we are obviously talking about very strong students who are accomplished and it is not far fetched that such students will crave academically challenging and very selective universities for FIT and not just “attractiveness” of such schools. I happen to think there are far more schools than the Ivies or MIT that are challenging and very selective, however. But the schools being talked about here are within that realm as a subset and it makes sense for a very strong student to crave being with other strong students in challenging environments.</p>
<p>That is simply an issue of semantics. The poster who considered Rice a safety school could have declared that MIT and Caltech were safeties … on December 31. After all, aren’t safeties schools you are reasonably certain to be admitted and reasonably certain to be happy to attend. It seems that by the due dates for RD schools MIT and Caltech were indeed … safeties. </p>
<p>People do strange things and say strange things. Especially when strange strategies do work out for the best.</p>
<p>But POIH gave the college list his D was applying to without knowing the EA outcomes and categorized them by reach, match, safety. Rice was a safety on that list. He did not call MIT or CalTech a safety at that point in time. Yes, CalTech and MIT were “safeties” on Dec. 31 as she was admitted EA. But I’m going by the original college list POIH gave and how each school was designated. Rice was said to be a safety. I believe the GC also categorized these schools in this manner for the D.</p>
<p>For reference, from POIH’s post 248:</p>
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</p>
<p>I have never heard Cornell and Dartmouth called matches either. Very low admit rates. How can a 12% admit rate (Dartmouth) and 19% acceptance rate (Cornell) not have “reachy” odds?</p>
<p>True, you can call them whatever you want, but in my view, Cornell and Dartmouth are not a Match for ANYONE and Rice is not a SAFETY for ANYONE.</p>
<p>It seems that there is a parallel world where GC truly believe that Rice could be a safety for their strongest applicants. Interestingly enough, for the few for whom this could be true, there are early indications that EVERY school they consider is a safety. As a result of such early indications, there is no need to create lists of reaches and matches … those students DO know where they are going as it is their choice. This hardly seems to be story of POIH!</p>
<p>For the rest of the common mortals, considering Rice to be a safety is either delusional or obnoxious.</p>
<p>I actually remember the year very well, as it was made famous by the Yale Early debacle, which brought many to contribute massively to College Confidential. It is quite interesting how it worked out!</p>
<p>Yep, that was the year! It is interesting how it all worked out and everyone seems happy. For my D, she liked Brown and Tufts equally with Yale and so the Yale deferral and subsequent denial was not a big deal to her as she had no one single favorite school. </p>
<p>As an aside, my younger D, this year, was selected for something at Yale (I don’t want to be more specific as her identity would be known on a public forum given that there were press articles) and she spent time at Yale earlier this summer for this “event” and we (parents) went at the end of it, and she joked at the time, “well somebody in the family went to Yale!” (she never applied there for college) And thus, we were back on campus there recently, having originally visited twice with D1.</p>
<p>Oh, POIH, there is no need to make me more comfortable. </p>
<p>I guess the “classifications” must follow regional or local idiosyncrasies. Since I have never been tempted to learn the finer details of the UC applications’ system, shall I assume that there is a specific (and harder) application for the EECS at Cal that makes it more difficult to secure an admission? Is this similar to what happens at UT-Texas where many students can consider UT a safety because of an automatic admission, but have to consider programs in business and engineering as reaches because of a separate admission process. </p>
<p>However, in case there is only one admission process for all Cal’smajors, it would be ABSOLUTE lunacy to consider Rice a high safety and UCB a match, and representing that admissions at Cal are more selective than at Rice. It seems obvious that your daughter’s statistics would have made her a shoo-in at Cal given the rather pedestrian standards of admissions for in-state students. </p>
<p>Again, this might all be what I call idiosyncrasies. All I can say is that the way we view Rice in Texas must be different from what happens in Northern California. We see Rice as a highly selective school and Cal as one of the best public universities. But NOT one that is very selective for high stats students, including OOS students. </p>
<p>After all, nobody says that you have to be among the TOP students at a school to secure an admission. The full story is better told in the bottom fifty percent of admitted students, or in the non-freshmen admissions. Frankly, if the only safeties on your list should have been the … UC schools!</p>
<p>Yes, there is a separate admission to UCB EECS and you don’t have an option to say if not EECS give me other Engineering or College of Letter and Science. So it is much harder otherwise getting into UCB college of letter and science would be at par with RICE and UCLA.</p>
<p>The situation changed in 2008 which forced DD high school CC to suggest including USC/UCSD for a DD like student otherwise. UCB (L&S) /UCLA till 2007 were considered safeties. Still 35% of the DD High school senior class get acceptances at UCB/UCLA.</p>
<p>Oh please. A middle schooler is in no way capable of having meaningful opinions on wheat he or she will want 4 years from then. I am quite certain that your middle schooler heard HYPSM so much that she internalized it as the places she wanted to go, and it was reinforced by parents who just don’t see LACs as elite enough. They grow and change even through the visits. If you had asked my d even a year ago about women’s colleges she would have laughed – and now she has 3 on her list, one of which is early decision. My son’s selections are now taking an unexpected turn as well as we head into senior year.</p>
<p>I feel fairly confident in saying there are certain households, usually having a somewhat different cultural ethos than multi-generation American households, where the mantra of an elite education is the dominent theme. While I don’t personally agree with some of what I have seen in these families, it isn’t my place to say it is wrong, either. At least not in some absolute way, only in my judgement because I think it puts the kids at a disadvantage in other ways. That’s a different discussion, but when I hear what these families have left to come to America for opportunities, it is at least understandable.</p>
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