How do you determine a reach/match/safety school?

Venkat89
Wed, 22 Aug 2007 01:17:28 +0000

To get a general idea for my list I had a meeting with my college counselor. I go to a public school with 550+ kids in my grade so all I did was show her my list of like 20 schools (bunch of reaches, matches and safeties) with my GPA, SAT, and main ECs/awards. She told me I was basically guaranteed to get into all of my matches and safeties based on GPA and SAT of previous admits (all big state schools). After hearing that I cut down my matches and safeties to UMich and UMD(instate), expecting to get into Mich and get at least half tuition paid at UMD. I basically threw off like 5 other safeties/matches because I would much rather have gone to Mich or UMD over them. Then she told me about my reaches. After I heard that Brown was an instant crapshoot from my school I removed it from the list. I also took off a few other slight reaches like UVA (can’t remember the others). I took a list of like 20 schools down to fewer than 10 after an hour conversation.

If scholarships and stuff aren’t that big of a deal then you only really need one rolling safety and one rolling match (maybe EA safeties and matches too) so you can hear back from them by november or early december and not have to worry about wasting money applying to safety schools. That way you can focus on your reach applications and if you don’t get into your match school in december, you can send a few more apps to safeties and reaches over winter vacation. **Keep in mind, if you do that be 100% sure that you’re willing to attend your safety school because the big risk is that you’ll only get into one or two colleges and be basically forced to attend a school./b.