Agree with @soxmom on this. It depends what your definition of love is. By the end of this process schools will slide up and down the love scale, especially after decisions come out.
I think some of the distinction between reach and safety has to do with number of applications received. At schools with 20,000, 30,000, 40,000 applicants it becomes hard to cut through the clutter when there are so many similar applicants. At schools where the number of applications is much lower, there are just less of those high stat applicants and easier to stand out. So Grinnell, even with a low admit rate could be safe as the application pool is only around 6k. If your naviance says it is safe than a good chance it is.
@homerdog, the advice we had from our CC was that Grinnell was a safety for S17 particularly because we are from the Northeast. Grinnell isnât very widely known outside the Midwest, so (for once) being from the East Coast actually helped. Same was true for Carleton and Macalester, to be contrasted with Oberlin which, for whatever reason, is much better known on the East Coast and so your application wouldnât stand out as much.
FWIW, we did a drive through of Dickinson â could only visit on a Sunday, when there are no tours, and unfortunately it was raining, so D19 didnât even want to get out of the car. But not in a bad ânot even bothering to get out of the car because I wonât go hereâ way; instead âyup, it all looks good to me, this can be my safetyâ way. The campus is charming â cute little small town, main street goes right through the middle of campus, which is very leafy and green. New dorms being built (or renovated, I wasnât sure), library looked very nice. We have a family friend whose daughter just graduated from Dickinson in June, and she had a wonderful experience there (including a great semester abroad in Copenhagen). This girl was pretty quiet and shy when she started there, and she really burgeoned during her time at Dickinson (more so than just the passage for 4 years would suggest).
I am loving this discussion. My S19 has a list. A list, that if you do the whole âreach, match, safetyâ thing is pretty well rounded. But, we donât talk about any of the schools in those terms. Itâs his list. And heâd be happy at any of them, because we presented that way all along. He has visited Ivies, super selective LACs, other LACS, and giant state schools, including directionals. I know it is a perception thing, but we are super careful to have his list be just that, his list.
@gallentjill brings up a good pointâthe slackers at your local high school arenât going to be your kidâs college classmates pretty much anywhere, no matter the safetiness or reachiness of the school. Less than 70% of all high school graduates go directly to college (and that doesnât account for those students who drop out late junior or senior year of high school, which is a small but not tiny percentage), and just barely over 80% of those continue for their second year of college.
Basically, if a student doesnât want to be around high school slackers, collegeâany college!âis an excellent place to go. And if theyâre still around at college, they probably wonât be the next year.
DS takes a dual enrollment math class now in his safety school (our state flagship) and I think this experience significantly reduced his wish to study there. The professor is actually great, but the students are not at his level. I know there are some very strong students from his school now studying there, but Iâm not sure they create a community in the way AP/IB students in his HS do.
@KatzHerder I appreciate that youâve been able to pull that off. I would love to have done that but I know that just wouldnât work here. Kids talk about elite schools every stupid day at school. S19 would have to have had his head in the sand for the last two years to not know which schools have lower acceptance rates. Just on our block we have parents and kids who have graduated from Cornell, Northwestern, ND, Wash U, Princeton, Dartmouth, U of Chicago, Michigan, Williams, Bowdoin, and Carleton, Purdue, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan State. Thatâs one block with ten houses. I think I got them all. And why do I know where everyone went to school? I donât know! But weâve lived here for 18 years and they all have as well and I just do.
Thereâs no way for S19 to make a list and be clueless. I think itâs hard on these boards to appreciate each otherâs personal circumstances in this process. We arenât all coming from the same place.
We know many smart and motivated students (including my nephew) who are at our state flagship and as I said before it is an excellent choice. Although there are probably a number of reasons my S19 is hoping to not go there, Iâm guessing that one of them (he hasnât said this) is that it wonât feel special enough and I do think he would like to go out of state. However, when I have looked for out of state safety options that would definitely give as much money, in the end we always find a reason not to have it on the list. When dealing with financial constraints itâs definitely more difficult to find a safety one can love. However, I still find it funny that some on other threads are so insistent on having a safety on the list that that a kid loves. Weâre dealing with teenagers here. How many of us would really tell other parents, âWell you should just make your kid want to work harder in school?â âWell, you should just tell your kid not to like video games so much?â âOh, your kid shouldnât want to spend so much time with her boyfriendâ. Some(most?) kids are stubborn. Their brains are going to be maturing for many years to come. Theyâll figure things out, maybe the hard way. As much as I point out the positives of certain schools, Iâm definitely not going to be successful in making my kid âloveâ things he doesnât. But I do keep serving him vegetables. 
@elena13 I wish I could like your post 3 times! When I started posting on this site, I thought I had it all figured out. My D ended up loving a safety school so why couldnât everyoneâs kids? Just start by finding the right safety and there wonât be any pressure in the college application process. Why hasnât everyone else thought of this! In retrospect, I think it was a very happy accident and not some stroke of brilliance on our part. And I certainly donât think any family shold feel pressure to find safeties their kids love.
Sometimes it really bothers me when safety schools get a bad rap. My son honestly only applied to safety schools, not because he wanted an easy route but because those were the schools he likes, the schools he felt he would have the best pre-vet experience at, the ones he got the best deals from. He is in his sophomore year. He has been challenged, his teachers have been good (except maybe one), classes not too big. High academic achievers in his honors classes and his non honors classes. No one disrupted or slowed down any class he was in. Met his gf that was valedictorian of her hs and very smart. Enjoys his social life, enjoys the big sports. The student body is happy, the faculty seems happy. It is just a pleasant place to be. Sometimes safety schools have great programs. The agriculture/animal science/pre-vet track at this school is competitive and not easy. Easy access to the vet school is also key. The pre-med programs are also good. He hates it when people ask him why he didnât choose a more prestigious school. His school is great! He has met the CEO of a major national corporation that knows his name and will chat with him. Safeties are not all bad and if your student ends up at one it can be awesome!
I think at times I lose track of the concept that college is a stepping stone and not an end in itself. A college is good if it is a good launch pad to the life my kid wants. That launch pad can come in many forms. The point is to find a good place to continue the journey, not to force a destination.
Excellent discussion going on and as I read I found many people making the points I wanted to make so I wonât repeat that.
Many have made the point that it is really not about classes with similarly bright students but similarly motivated students. No one wants to be in a class with a bunch of students who donât care about learning.
But at an elite school you can also run into kids whose parents helicoptered them into that school through shear force of will and/or money. These kids face freedom (and booze/drugs) and class is a minor annoyance to be endure to keep the purse strings open.
Or you run into the student who has spent their entire life in an upper or upper middle class bubble and is shockingly ignorant of what life is like for others. This kid may have off the charts book smarts but their lack of real world experience with genuine diversity slows the class discussion down in much the same way that a lower IQ kid might slow it down.
These kids are no where near the majority at elite schools just like kids who donât care about learning are no where near the majority at most safety schools.
We lucked into Dâs safeties by visiting schools far from home. I didnât tell her they were potential safeties, just visited and let her form opinions, just as we did at every school. These were schools that kids from her high school would not know or think of applying to, for the most part, so her mind was open to them. Some she liked, others not.
I did make the mistake one time of referring to a school as maybe a safety, and she was shockedâŠshe had liked it a lot and didnât see it in that light. I nearly killed off a great school in one stupid move. It stayed on the list at her guidance counselorâs insistence, but it never fully recovered its original shine in her mind.
I have learned my lesson and donât use the terms safety, reach and match with any others on her list. Well, except as a cautionary means of managing expectations on the reaches, so she knows to keep those in perspective and maybe a bit emotionally removed.
At our school, kids are told by the gc and other administrators not to talk about schools in terms of safeties. Why? Because one kids safety may be another kids dream school. (School is big on manners). But they sure do talk about schools that are reaches for all a lot!
So âsafetyâ has become a pejorative in some circles, eh?
Vaguely reminds me of the Ivy League chants of âState school!â used against CornellâŠ
Agree with @Homerdog - I havenât labeled the schools anything, but my daughter looks up the admission stats and sees sheâs in the 75th+ percentile at some schools, and sheâs âlabeledâ it herself. Plus they do discuss constantly at school. Only thing I have done is to lower her expectations to the reach schools!!
@wisteria100 yes, same at our school. It think it is well advised. The kids here seem to have taken it to heart and are more humble and careful.
If applying ONLY to academic safeties, is EA enough to express serious interest and intent or would you select an ED school if it is offered? Iâm wondering because of the yield protection mentioned a few pages backâhow real of a concern should that be?
@hviewer I agree about warning kids about the big reaches. I think Iâve muttered the words âlottery ticketâ a hundred times in the last six months. S19 gets it. And thereâs no guarantee that he would prefer his big reaches anyway since we havenât visited. In the slim chance heâs accepted to any, we will go and Iâm still not convinced he would like them better.
I worry about this as well. We are doing EA wherever possible, as well as visiting and interviewing if offered. I think if the school is a true safety (>60% acceptance rate and student is above the 75%) this shouldnât be much of an issue. But I worry anyway. I think what is more common is that students label a school as a safety simply because their stats are comforably above the 70% without considering the acceptance rate. So, for example, Brandeis is not a safety for anyone regardless of their stats because its acceptance rate is only around 30%. Same for a place like Muhlenberg. Its tempting to call them safeties, but in reality, they are merely likely matches.