Safety School For Top 30 School Applicant

I’m looking at applying to Duke ED as well as Vandy for ED II (assuming Duke says maybe later or no thanks) and a bunch of misc Top 30 RD schools if none of my ED’s work out. Of course with the unpredictable nature of these school’s admissions, I really should have a back up in mind. Additionally, I am graduating early (after my junior year, I’ll be 17) because I’ve taken all the courses my school has to offer and my school doesn’t have any dual enrollment programs (that’s a whole different story if you want to counsel me on that let me know lol) so I REALLY should have a few safeties in case the top 30 doesn’t understand why I’m graduating early.

My stats:

4.0 unweighted. 4.3 weighted as of now, will increase next year with more AP’s

1440 SAT (730 CR 710 M). Yes, this sucks. I don’t really have an excuse other than I took it for the first time. I’m studying a lot harder and hope to boost especially my math score and get into the 1530+ range.

Haven’t taken my SAT II yet, but I’ll take them in June. I’m taking Physics, Math II, and Spanish

Upon graduating I’ll have:

6 years of Math (including AP Calc and Stats)
4 years of English (including AP Lang and AP Seminar)
3 years of Spanish (all honors courses, my school got rid of AP Spanish this year but the Spanish I’ll take next year will be an accelerated class covering both Spanish 3 and 4)
4 years of Social Science (Including APUSH and AP Psych)
8 years of Science (including AP Bio, AP Chem, Physics (my school doesn’t have an AP or honors), Biomedical Sciences and Medical interventions, plus some prereqs)

I started taking HS courses in middle school. These will be on my transcript and are factored into my GPA. That’s why I have over 4 years of things. And also why I ran out of classes to take at my school.

I have a decent amount of ECs including starting my own nonprofit (focusing on neuroscience and music), Spanish Club (founded by me) some theatre and choir things, academic competitions with awards at the state level and studying languages. I feel like although this assortment feels random, it ties into my “applicant identity”-- a neuroscience prospect who ties in linguistics and music.

I intend to study neuroscience and linguistics. If my safety school doesn’t have that, I can probably make due with a psych or cognitive science thing with some sort of foreign language minor. I intend to go to medical school after college

My only hook is that I’m a latina (Puerto Rican) and a legacy at Northwestern and Boston University.

I live in Indiana but I really don’t want to go in-state. I understand those would be the safest schools for me, but I really dislike Indiana and I’ve visited most of the in-state schools and just couldn’t see myself there.

Money isn’t an issue for my family either.

I could really use some safety recommendations, thank you so much for any advice you can give me!!

First, we ought to set some ground rules for what constitutes a safety. I think the following should apply:

  1. A safety has an overall admit rate of at least 50%. You could live dangerously and start at 40%, but the higher the rate, the safer it is (generally). And remember that admit rates are almost always higher in early rounds vs. RD; and for state schools, almost always higher for in-state vs. OOS applicants.

1b. If you are considering a school with direct admission to departments/majors, take those admission rates into account as well, if you can find the info.

  1. A safety is a school where your stats (scores, GPA) are at or above the 75th percentile.

3.A safety is affordable. Run the NPC. (you’ve said money is not much of a concern, but others may read this…)

  1. A safety is a school you like that satisfies (at least) most of your preferences.

You can get recent admit rates (even by round…) and stat ranges by checking a school’s Common Data Set.

You should probably still apply to your state flagship – you really want to have options for sure in the spring, no matter what else happens.

In general, you may need a larger school to get the linguistics major (doesn’t tend to be a major at most LACs that I’ve seen).

When you say money isn’t an issue, do you mean that your parents are able and willing to pay a quarter of a million for your undergrad education? That definitely opens up options. What about med school, if you end up getting in? It is very expensive – have your parents said they will pay for that? Or might they help out if you keep your costs down for undergrad?

I don’t feel like there is much to go on in terms of what type of school you like. I guess Vandy & Duke (to me) both have a kind of “bro” culture feel to them. Is that what you like? Do you want Greek life? What did you specifically dislike about Indiana – whatever it is, does it also rule out other Big 10 schools?

I’d suggest you pick a couple of safeties, and really research them to make sure you would attend if those are the acceptances you end up with. Admissions were tough this year. A lot of top students got shut out of top schools. Honestly, you need some matches as well as safeties – if you just have top 30 schools and a safety, you better love that safety.

Syracuse might be a low match for you. Macalester is a match – much smaller than your other choices, but they have linguistics and neuroscience, I think. But it feels nothing like Duke or Vandy – very different vibe. Union College is a LAC that feels more like Duke or Vandy (significant party opportunities there), and has linguistics (again, much smaller). Also a low match, I think.

You may want to take a look at some of the LACs just below the top 4 (Swarthmore, Amherst, Williams and Pomona) which tend to be slightly easier to get into than the research universities, yet offer an exceptional education. These would include, among others, Haverford, Carleton, Davidson, Wesleyan and Middlebury. Barnard, the women’s college of Columbia University is also a relatively easy way to get into Columbia (as is the Columbia College of General Studies).

With a year less of HS (and ECs) than her peers, and solid but not fantastic test scores, I would still call those schools reaches or in some cases high matches.

^ As a URM, assuming she gets her SATs above 1,500, they should be very achievable matches. Agree, they are not safeties.

If we’ve learned anything this year, it’s that admissions are harder and more unpredictable than ever. Kids are stunned that they got rejected from a match or waitlisted at a safety. So, I’m impressed and glad that you’re asking about safety and match schools! With your interest in Vandy and Duke, take a look at UNC-CH, Brandeis (not big on greek but excellent neuro), Wake Forest, UVA,Univ Washington. for matches and your state uni, Univ MN, Ohio State. (just checked for Unis with good linguistics, since most large schools have decent Neuro). There are LOTS more options, but this list is considering Vandy & Duke as your barometer.

@intparent is onto something: assuming you like Duke and Vandy – and they are similar in many respects – we could look for far less selective schools like them to comprise a list of safety options.

You mentioned applying to other top-30s, so I’ll assume you’d be willing to go outside the South.

So – safeties (or low matches) with a good sports vibe, decent party/Greek life:

  • Florida State
  • Alabama (merit money)
  • Ole Miss (merit money)
  • West Virginia U
  • U of Nebraska-Lincoln
  • U of Oklahoma (merit money, I believe)
  • South Carolina
  • Clemson
  • U of Houston
  • Oregon & Oregon State
  • Washington State
  • Arizona & AZ State
  • Auburn
  • U of Memphis
  • Louisville
  • Cincinnati
  • Texas Tech

→ Basically, relatively less selective flagships and other publics with big-time sports.

Private schools:

  • TCU
  • Syracuse
  • Baylor
  • Tulsa

Some peculiar choices in the above post – I don’t see many similarities at all between Duke and Vandy and a commuter school like Memphis, nor do Baylor or TCU strike me as terribly similar. I do like some of the other State U suggestions, particularly Florida State and Alabama, both of which can be generous with merit aid.

Rhodes feels in many ways like a smaller version of Duke and is much more undergraduate-focused in biology, neuroscience, and psychology. It doesn’t offer linguistics, unfortunately. Your stats would make Rhodes a safe match.

My tippy top stats lad used Pittsburgh and U Alabama as a safety. They are both rolling notification, so you’ll know early on if you’re accepted or not.

With a desire of a Cognitive Science major, I’d suggest sticking with Pittsburgh (of those two). At the time (my guy has graduated by now), U Alabama didn’t have any similar major, but you could see if things have changed.

FWIW, even with other acceptances, Pittsburgh ended up being his second choice as they’re a pretty darn good school for it. (He went to U Rochester for Brain & Cognitive Science - pre-med and is in med school now. Had he needed to use U Alabama as his safety he’d have switched his major to microbio - another interest he had.)

Many matches and most safeties will be big state universities.
Schools listed below have good programs.

High Match / Low Reach
UCLA
Michigan
USC
NYU

Match
UT-Austin
UM-CP
Ohio State
Brandeis
URochester

Safety
Indiana
UMass Amherst
Colorado - Boulder
Hawaii - Manoa

Many other directional state universities or flagships are admission safeties (more or less) and have linguistics programs. I can’t think of any other private schools I’d consider safeties that have programs as strong as those listed above. The Syracuse “Linguistic Studies” program might work. As far as I can tell, very few LACs even cover all the basics (phonology, morphology & syntax, semantics) let alone
a few specializations such as historical, socio, and computational linguistics in much depth.

The following site has a 50-college run-down including descriptions of programs at some of the schools listed above.
https://www.greatvaluecolleges.net/rankings/linguistics/
(I don’t know how they came up with that ranking - Berkeley for example deserves to be much higher than #34 - but if you ignore some of the ordering, it seems to be a pretty good list.)

Thank you to everyone for putting so much care into looking at options for me!! I really appreciate the wonderful advice I’ve been given. I came in to this pretty lost and now with every comment I get an ever better sense of what I’m doing. Y’all are excellent!!

If you like Duke and Vandy and money is not an issue, look at SMU in Dallas. It is another school in the south with a gorgeous campus. SMU also gives out good merit scholarships.

If you are in-state, you really REALLY should have Indiana on your list as a safety. Absent scholarships, it will be your most affordable option and it unquestionably will have any program you want. Indiana is a very good school, with numerous nationally excellent departments, that has its ranking pulled down by very open undergraduate admissions standards. It is also a large school, so you really should put aside concerns about what high school classmates are doing, or about what the Greeks on campus are doing, and know you can find a niche there.

After Indiana, advice like above for U Pittsburgh, U Alabama, U Kansas, etc., should be followed to pick a second or third state school with guaranteed admission standards.

I am of the belief that you should spend more effort, early on, nailing down your safeties. In the current/emerging admissions climate, reaches are actually dreams, and many matches are actually reaches or appear arbitrary and capricious (due to concerns about yield or demonstrating interest). No LAC, in my opinion, should be considered a true safety—admission is always nominally selective, the numbers involved are (relatively) small, and issues about demonstrated interest and yield concerns could affect you. Most LACs do not have spectacular endowments, and face financial pressures to meet their yield targets, etc.

In addition to some of the suggestions above, another match might include University of Wisconsin – admissions for out of state students can be unpredictable, but it is a little easier than Michigan and about $10-15k less a year in tuition than Michigan. There is no merit for OOS students though. We are in Indiana, and my kid wanted out of the state, and chose Wisconsin. Minnesota Twin Cities and Iowa were two others he liked a lot, but he just loved Wisconsin.

IU for an instate kid, with automatic merit, plus chance at Cox or Wells scholarship with all the perks that go with those – access to research etc., is not something to disregard lightly, especially for someone considering med school. Put in an early application in late August/early September to get that early acceptance. Big sports, prominent greek life, good weather (as compared to the rest of Indiana – a lot of similar qualities as you’d find at Duke.

Okay, suggestions of UNC-CH, UVA, and UT-Austin, Michigan, and UCLA
as any kind of matches are misguided. Those are reaches from OOS. UWisconsin and UWashington are high matches.

Truely Safe: automatic admission for your stats, affordable without aid other that federal aid and/or state aid guaranteed for your stats and/or merit aid guaranteed for your stats by the college/university itself, offers your major, is a place you will be happy to attend if all else goes wrong. Find a couple of these, apply early, and get them in the bag. There are threads on autoadmits at the tops of the Financial Aid and College Admissions forums. Many of the autoadmits are big state Us with broad academic offerings so you would be able to put together the program you want.

Pretty Certainly Safe: has admitted every applicant from your high achool with your stats in recent years. Get this list from your guidance counselor. I expect your home-stats public Us will be on it. However, these might not turn out to be affordable, so run the numbers past your parents before you get too excited about them.

Do you want to go to college right away, or do you want a year off the academic hamster-wheel? Think about that too. Nothing wrong at all with a gap year.

And just for kicks, check out your options at the womens colleges. Some would have merit money for you.

Suerte!

Would you consider doing something like the Residence Honors Program at USC? Entering college a year early can have very unexpected challenges. With a program like this you will be with peers but in a college environment. Perhaps other schools offer similar programs that might be worth looking into.

http://dornsife.usc.edu/resident-honors-program/

I think it’s safe to assume Swarthmore would be loathe to repeat the mistake it made with Obama by rejecting a URM with so much obvious potential, although as @prezbucky and others have said, none of the top LACs are safeties for anyone.

I would suggest Binghamton. Please look at the Freshman Research Immersion Program in neuro. It is one of 4 such programs in the country: