I’d question those counselors…not the result.
There are lots of schools where many high stat students who exceed the ‘expected student profile’ don’t get accepted. None of those should be considered safeties…maybe high targets/low reach.
I wish more people would really figure out that a safety means basically guaranteed acceptance and affordability - not just the student exceeding the median ranges of accepted student stats.
No school wants to be considered the safety. They want to be the place the student wants to go and they want to be thought of as competitively as possible, which is why they yield protect in the first place – to appear more like the school students go to if they get in.
That said, there are thousands of colleges in this country and the majority of them admit the majority of applicants. Those just aren’t the schools the very competitive kids and parents who hang out on College Confidential are thinking of when they list their safeties. The objective true safety is the college that admits 75%+ of applicants. What is not a true safety is a college that admits 25-50% of applicants and where you/your student know a bunch of kids with way worse stats who got in. Perhaps it should be safe is objective stats were the only admission criteria, but they aren’t (in most case, excluding some state schools).
Yield maxing?
We had a school that sent a school poster with excerpts from my D’s essay. It was pretty cool.
“Safety” to us was at least one auto admit, rolling admission school, and schools with 80% acceptance rates or higher for our D’s intended major. (And where she was over the 75th percentile for gpa and test scores).
IMO being very very conservative with the safety list is essential.
Our feederish HS uses the Kickstart definition of a Likely, which requires both the applicant being in the top quartile of enrolled numbers AND an acceptance rate over 50% (using the rate for relevant residency status and restricted major/school as appropriate). One or the other is not sufficient.
This seems to eliminate most of the high numbers anomalies, although we also then tend to identify at least one Likely affirmatively known not to yield protect based on school experience, including potentially with SCOIR data.
D24 didnt get a letter from her ED school either. Seems super lame to me. These kids work hard, send them an actual letter so their parents can throw it in their baby book! 
Thank you @NiceUnparticularMan & @momofboiler1 for the very helpful info.
Thankfully S24 got accepted to his 3 safeties, but going forward with D26/28 with no counselors on staff I’ll be the main guide leading the way. Keeping these points for reference, much appreciated. 
Not exactly sure what you are asking?
When I see high stat students being rejected from a school (not waitlisted) I always assume that the student wasn’t a holistic match for that school, not that the decision was about yield management. If it was a yield management issue - waitlisting makes more sense…a GC could then contact the school and assure them they are the student’s 1st choice if that is true and the school could make an offer knowing they have a better than average chance of yielding the student.
Holistic schools are looking for more than stats and scores. They are making decisions not just on whether students can do well academically at their school but if they think each applicant who is academically qualified is the best match for the mission and institutional priorities of the school.
Agree - among other things, it puts the burden on the students if they have a bad teacher.
We have all the stickers and letters on her bedroom wall, Umass didn’t bother!
Us too! Rolling admission, auto admit based on stats, and enough history between our high school and the college that the fairly conservative hs counselor would say … 100% you are in. Those were S24’s 2 safeties.
Fun fact … those were also the only 2 schools where he was admitted to his major. So I am VERY grateful that his counselor suggested one of them and that we spent the time making sure he had safeties to love!
Interestingly, after a first round of visits he had an even safer safety on his list, but he didn’t like it as much. His counselor said if you really like your top 2 safeties, don’t apply to the super-safety. Leave a spot at that school for someone who needs that school in their list. I thought that was really nice of her to do.
D22 was a recruited D3 athlete. After extensive pre-read with the admissions office, coach told her 100% you are in (as long as you don’t drop in AP class). Our high school counselor still wouldn’t classify it as a safety and insisted she have a true safety she could apply to if something went sideways in December.
Any school that does any yield protection can never be a safety.
We had a very similar definition for our safeties and we still applied to 3 of them as we just wanted to be very sure. agree with being conservative for this.
You can download and print the PDF.
I think this comes down to knowing how to build a list - kids still don’t know how and many are letting their biases impact building a proper one (that school is beneath me, etc).
No one (or very few) get rejected from a safety. What they are labeling a safety never was.
At the same time, people get upset that they were rejected at a target - that can happen.
A lot will depend on when you applied, your major - and that it was a target, there was already a level of doubt but people assume that the target should also be an admit.
We JUST got some UMass stickers in the mail yesterday! We are in New England, so you may get some yet…
But it was such a long turn around that DH has moved on and tossed them in the trash. I said “What about D24? Maybe she wants them!”
Nope, she has moved on too. They probably should have sent the love sooner. (Honors college would actually have been the requirement for serious interest here, but I too have been kinda bummed by flagship acceptances. Will look forward to some swag on Admitted Student days)
UMass gave a really nice warm hat at the accepted students day!
Houghton University has the best swag I’ve seen. Hands down. There’s no close second, at least that we applied to.
Now that is cool. My C21 got a book with a bunch of swag and confetti (Reed) and some stuff from others, but I think maybe it’s mainly from the private or small colleges? I imagine this would get expensive. But a video would at least be nice. One school (Smith) sent us parents a letter telling us how cool our kid is when she was accepted early by surprise. I still have that letter even though they didn’t end up there. It did make it more difficult to turn down.
I love when they try and make it more personal. I am sure we will keep the poster even if my D doesn’t go there.
Another one we loved was a Harry Potter type scarf from Willamette. They send those to all accepted. It really is quite nice.