<p>A school doesn’t have to basically say on it’s page “If you’ve got these stats, come on in!” for it to be a safety, as I feel like a pretty limited about of schools are that blatant about it (even if they follow such formula) and the ones that do might not even be remotely attractive anyway. </p>
<p>The OP may want to be a bit more nuanced about it, but their guideline sounds about right. A safety school should be a school that student can reasonably expect to get into. Since the majority of admissions are not guaranteed (I had a friend in high school who got accepted to Notre Dame but rejected from a much much lower ranked public school in the state), as CuriousJane suggested, picking a school with rolling applications is a good bet.</p>
<p>To some extent picking safeties is harder. It’s easy to dream ;)</p>