In your OP you mentioned safeties, which I think should meet three criteria. 1) Highly likely to accept the applicant, 2) Highly likely to be affordable for the applicant’s family, and 3) a school where the student would be happy to enroll and attend for four years.
If the NPC at a school asks for academic stats and indicates a minimum amount of merit aid that your D would receive, bringing the school within budget, then that school could probably then be called a safety (if your D would be happy to enroll there).
Since you titled this as Match My D, I’m going to offer a few other schools that she may want to consider, all of which I think would be extremely likely admits for her. Two are in Iowa, in part because she’s interested in political science. Iowa is a terrific state for people interested in American presidential politics because of the early caucus here. I also added two other New York schools that might be worth considering, even though they’re a bit larger than the preferred max size. One of them (SUNY Geneseo) would be guaranteed affordable, if the tuition at UIUC is affordable for your family.
Extremely Likely (80-99+%)
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Drake (IA): About 2700 undergrads. Unlike Grinnell (and Luther) this in a city, and for someone interested in political science and music, I think it could be a great place. I wrote more about it in this post.
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Gustavus Adolphus (MN): About 2k undergrads. About the same distance from Minneapolis as St. Olaf/Carleton. Strong academics and music.
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Ithaca (NY): About 4400 undergrads. Larger than the desired max, but strong academics, strong music program, I think the vibe will be just right, and students can cross-register for classes at Cornell.
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Luther (IA): About 1500 undergrads. If she’s not a fan of Grinnell because of its location, then this one might be off, too. But it has strong music and it’s in Iowa…which means lots of political campaigning by presidential hopefuls.
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SUNY Geneseo (NY): About 3900 undergrads. This is NY’s premier public liberal arts college and it participates in the SUNY flagship match program…meaning that tuition would cost not more than it would cost at UIUC (source).
Likely (60-79%)
Toss-Up (40-59%)
Lower Probability (20-39%)
Low Probability (less than 20%)
This map shows the locations of Ithaca and Geneseo in relation to the rest of your family’s planned itinerary (and Rochester that @overlyinvolveddad mentioned).
