<p>^That’s why I have no patience with trying to figure out exact odds or worrying about the definition of match vs reach. If you get rejected from all the schools you thought were matches, all that matters is what your safeties are. You never know what will happen. The year my son applied to RPI it got published in Newsweek as one of the 25 new Ivies. The number of kids who applied went up by a lot, and the acceptance rate plummeted. I think it was still a safety for our kid, but someone who thought it was a match for them, might have been shut out by it’s new popularity. I thought my oldest had a better than 50% chance of getting into Harvard. I was probably wrong, all I know is he did get in. But we never, ever considered it anything but a reach. </p>