Got rejected by Stanford EA--but life goes on! Does this list seem good?

[ucbalumnus]

@Darude

Emory
Harvard
John Hopkins
Northwestern
U Chicago
U Penn
U Rochester
USC
Yale

I’m just not sure now… what should my list be? Should I have more safeties? Are safeties really safe?

There are no obvious safeties on this list.

@lostaccount

I’ve never understood why a student who has no financial issues would have a long list of private target and reach schools but then would choose a large generic public university for their safety. If you like the attention and other perks that come with a private schools, and if you can well afford to pay for a private school, choose a less competitive private school as your safety.

The main problem is that many of the private schools which are slightly less selective than the top end of selectivity (e.g. University of Rochester) look at “level of applicant’s interest” and do not like to be used as “safeties” by students applying to the top end of the selectivity scale.

If the student wants to apply to such schools, s/he may want to play the “interest” game at them. See http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1626043-ways-to-show-a-high-level-of-applicants-interest.html for ideas.

Also, if one attends an actual safety, a large school may be preferable to a small school. A student at the top end tail of the distribution may find a reasonably-sized cohort of similar students at a large school (enough that the large school offers honors courses and other suitable academic offerings for the top end tail of the distribution), but that cohort may be too small at a small school.