I am considering applying to - University of South Carolina, Auburn, TCU, and maybe Arizona as my safety schools. I am curious to see which one people think has the best reputation out of these or if there should be another safety school I should consider. I am applying to the business school but I don’t want that to affect the way you answer.
University of South Carolina, Auburn, TCU, or Arizona???
Reputation can vary from school to school within a university. South Carolina, for example is rated very highly for its international business programs.
Without knowing anything about your GPA, standardized test scores, ECs, etc., I would be careful about considering any of these schools as “safeties,” especially if you are an OOS student. A friend of mine who operates a college admissions preparation service told me that Auburn has recently rejected top quality students in favor of students they were more confident would accept their offer – that is, offers of admission were influenced by the desire for yield protection. For example, one student with a 35 ACT and 4.45 weighted GPA, and with good ECs, was rejected outright by Auburn; in this particular case, Auburn’s analytics probably indicated that this student was not likely to accept an offer of admission. So, the student was rejected.
That is a good point, but I believe I am in the range where I am confident I will get into these schools, but not confident I will receive financial aid. I have a solid GPA (3.8 from private school) and a 1400 SAT. Mainly I am just interested in any trends.
I would also throw College of Charleston into the list as well
A “safety” isn’t a “safety” unless it is affordable.
Which one of these is not like the others?
I obviously know there are many more factors that going into a decision, most importantly price, but I just want people’s opinions on CofC USC TCU and Auburn…
If you’re interested in the honors college, ASU’s Barrett receives heaps of praise and is sort of the national model for honors programs.
It’s impossible to rank your schools because they’re really all peer institutions. Plus, I have no idea what you value in terms of a college experience. For instance, I love college football, so a school like Auburn might rate high for me (though all of your schools except CoC have big-time football). On the other hand, the College of Charleston is a bit smaller, about the same size as TCU, around 10,000 undergrads. TCU is the only private school on your list.
See how difficult this is? There are probably people here, however, who have either graduate from or sent children to these schools, so here’s hoping they chime in.