<p>My safeties were San Diego state and UCSD (not a total “safety” but all the UC’s were easier to get into in 1990.) In hind-sight, I should have attended one of those schools. I was not so ready to live 500 miles from home. As it turns out, I’m not so well equipped for full-time city life. I needed solitude and natural places but really, I didn’t comprehend that about myself at 18. I went for prestige of college over quality of my major and was woefully disappointed when I walked in with twice as much experience as the graduating seniors. Had I stayed in my home town, I could have continued supplementing my education with the professional work I was already doing in that community. Instead, I left all my contacts and was then stuck with school projects only.</p>
<p>I mean, it all turned out. I don’t really regret my choices as it led me to a great relationship and life. I can just see how the safety would have given me a better education.</p>
<p>Slacker, I am responding. I don’t recall ever during high school discussions of a “safety college.” Most of my crew picked a couple schools, visited, applied and attended one of them. But we were all “full pay” and we all pretty much got into everywhere we (my academic group) applied. I guess if we had an unspoken one, it would be UofM as all of us pretty much applied there and were accepted there even if we chose not to attend…but without financial issues, there was no reason to “have” a safety school back in the early 70s if you were at the top of your high school class and your parents could afford college tuition. </p>
<p>We talked about reaches, matches or safeties. I had one of each. Brown was the match. Times certainly have changed! I was coming from a top all girl’s prep school in the days before Andover and Exeter had gone co-ed, but the men’s colleges had just started accepting women. Smart women were in demand.</p>
<p>I find it fascinating that students 30-40 years ago attended any school outside their state.
I attended a suburban high school outside Seattle and of the few students that went on to college, virtually everyone I can think of attended an instate public school or community college.</p>
<p>A decade ago, guidance counselors at my kids’ public school were still telling top students (n the top 1-2% of the class) that Penn could be their safety. (The school was and probably remains one of the top feeders to Penn.) At the best academic private schools – not all private schools, certainly – it was fairly common to have 10% of the class go to Penn (not always a double-digit number, by the way). Note that this included quite a number of legacy kids, recruited athletes, and faculty brats, and that many of them had applied to Penn ED.</p>
<p>I think that has changed sharply in the past few years. Penn has reduced the number of kids it accepts from the area overall – it still takes lots, but maybe a third less than it used to – and it has gotten much more discriminating. To illustrate: My kids were two years apart at the same school. In the older child’s class, Penn accepted more than 30 kids, half of them RD, and 27 attended (about 5% of the class). No one who was ranked in the top 30 spots in the class who applied to Penn was rejected. That wasn’t an extraordinary year at all; two years before, Penn had accepted even more kids. In the second child’s class, Penn accepted 17 kids, 12 of them ED. Two kids with single-digit class ranks and 2250+ SATs were rejected RD. That was the last year (2007) anyone was told to treat Penn as a safety, and the numbers have continued to decline since. In the past decade, city public schools have also been affected by a dispersal of good students among different, smaller high schools. Ten years ago, all but two of the ~ 70 students Penn accepted from city public schools came from one of three magnet programs (the two others were a recruited football player and a special case who was the best student his school had produced in three decades and practically a public figure locally). Now it is probably accepting city students from 10+ different public schools on a regular basis.</p>
<p>The situation at the private school feeders is similar. You can’t attend a Christmas party without listening to alumni parents whine about their high-quality kids not being accepted ED, and RD applications are very, very competitive. Certainly a kid near the top of the class at Lower Merion, Masterman, Haverford School, Baldwin, or Penn Charter who applies to Penn ED has a pretty good chance of admission, much higher than average, but that’s very different from being a safety.</p>
<p>I would not have been as it would have meant staying at home and commuting to a small, dilapidated structure for a year, smaller than my high school with fewer amenities, like practically none. Ironically, had I gone there, and then finished up at the main campus, I would have ended up at the exact same school as my DH would have, had he gone to his safety school which was his state flagship. I would have gone there as my dad got free tuition for the school as it was the named school for DOD at that time and he worked as an education consultant for them. My father wanted me to go to there locally for a year or two and assured me that he would have swung the cost of going stateside (we were overseas) for junior and senior years. I had no interest in the proposition and applied to schools with merit and that met need and got a full freight package, as did my DH to the same school. </p>
<p>Going to schools other than the in-state public university or community college was/is probably more common in the northeast, where the states are geographically smaller (so more out-of-state schools are “within range” for students and parents who set distance limits), and public universities and community colleges are less well thought of than in many other states.</p>
<p>The private school I attended in the northeast (sort of) sent many more kids to Harvard, Yale, and Williams than it did to our state flagship which was about a 20 minute drive away. My graduating class was about 110 people, and one went to the state flagship. Williams got six.</p>
<p>I’m a little sheepish about saying this, but my actual safety was Harvard, where everyone thought I had legacy status. (Both parents went to graduate school there, my grandmother had founded and run the local Radcliffe club, an uncle was on the faculty, and I had cousins there continuously from the mid-60s through the 80s. None of that would count now, but back then it probably did.) I would have been happy there, no question.</p>
<p>The state flagship is an interesting question. My brother went there. His academic experience was practically nonexistent, but that’s the kind of person he was. He learned a lot more in college about interesting ways to have sex than I did, and got a lot more practice at it, too. (He made more money than I did post-college, too, but that’s the kind of person he was.)</p>
<p>I was vaguely aware at the time that its faculty in my main area of interest was fairly strong, but I didn’t realize just how strong until I had spent a few years studying at another college, and by that time the department at the state flagship was hemorrhaging brand name scholars. I would probably have had a blast there, and gone on to a high-prestige PhD program (which means that my matriculation at law school would have been delayed by 4-5 years). I took courses there in a related department during high school. Finding academic peers at the undergraduate level would have been an issue, but I’m sure they were there somewhere.</p>
<p>As a most recent, I can use my D’s experience. She did not apply to a single school that would not accept her, 100% sure. She did not apply to a single school that would not consider a Merit package for her. Every single school that she applied, accepted her and ALL offerred Merit awards. However, they were significantly different. Also, financial side as important as it was, was not her highest criteria. At the end, she has chosen to attend at school that accepted her to their combined bs/md program and offerred full tuition Merit. By all means, school itself was safety as all of D’s schools. However, the bs/md program at this school accepted only 10 into their freshman class. In addition, Honors college where D. was also accepted, accepted only top 200 applicants. So, I do not know if one considers it “safety” or not, since UG was definitely “safety”, but the program itself and the Honors college were not (both ended up having primarily valedictorians with significant number of graduates from private HSs). Now, looking back, D. is extremely happy with her education and overall experience at her public in-state UG that was a perfect match for her in any aspects and catapulted her to be accepted at several Medical schools (including top 20s) as she decided at the end to apply out of her combined bs/md program.<br>
As a reference, D. has graduated #1 from the most regorous private HS available to us. She also ended up graduating as a top pre-med in her UG class and currently is a 4th year Med. student at private Med. School. All of her pre-med friends (form her UG) have been accepted at various Med. Schools and are still very happy with their initial seleciton of college.</p>
<p>If we’re talking my local public colleges back in the mid-'90s, heck no. </p>
<p>Back then, then CUNY system was still at its nadir in terms of resources, priorities, and being swamped with so many remedial and lackluster students that I would have felt just as frustrated as several older HS classmates who transferred out after 1-2 years in frustration. It was viewed by many good NYC area students back then…especially those attending the NYC Specialized High Schools as glorified 13th grade for students who had no better options. </p>
<p>This has greatly changed since the late '90s with the raising of admission standards, more funding, starting up of programs targeting above average/gifted students with elite U stats like Macaulay Honors, elimination of remedial programs in the 4-year colleges, and raising of general admission standards across the 4-year colleges. </p>
<p>In my case, going to the local public colleges would have also been more costly due to budget constraints in TAP* and CUNY system which meant I’d have paid more to attend to commute from home than to attend my private residential college on the near-full ride scholarship/FA package I received. </p>
<ul>
<li>Things got so bad some TAP scholarship recipients received checks for $0.00. Something which most of us felt was dumb and a waste of resources.<br></li>
</ul>
<p>Cobrat, City College in its heyday was quite the place. i think the CUNY system has been improving in the last decade, maybe last two, but I know a lot people my age who went City College who are quite impressive and they talk about those days when the standards were high and the calibre of students were way up there.</p>
<p>I was a B, C grade student in high school. No one ever talked to me about college. Not even my parents. It wasn’t until after high school my dad said “so what are you going to do now?” I don’t think they had any money. I was an art kid ( the term back then was “freak”) so I threw together a portfolio and was accepted to our local private and excellent art and tech school. I waited tables at a country club and made enough to pay for it. Decided to switch majors and transferred to a local catholic university all the time waiting tables.Picked this school because it was closer to home.This school i later found out was known for its difficult academics. $3000 bucks a year but I did it. Lived home and took over my moms car ( thanks mom). My schedule was five straight classes M,W,F if I could get it. I worked the other 4 days a week.</p>
<p>I had no idea there were cheaper alternatives. I never applied for student aid as I didn’t know it existed. Really.</p>
<p>If only I had had the Internet back then…</p>
<p>So I didn’t even know what a safety was. I also never expected not to be admitted.</p>
<p>Oh, and Hunt…after 40 years …not so interesting…</p>
<p>I am well aware of CCNY’s pre-1969 history as I heard and read a lot about that history from parents of K-12 classmates, especially HS classmates. Those same parents who were proud of their attending CCNY or other 4-year CUNY schools were the very same ones who would note their pre-1969 graduation year on their resumes and who strongly discouraged their own kids or those of classmates like yours truly from considering it for ourselves. </p>
<p>And considering the accounts of some older folks…including HS alums who attended CCNY/CUNY during the period when it went to open admission in 1969 and the '70s, it seems the academic rigor and general standards fell precipitously and was such many topflight Profs and students voted with their feet and went/transferred elsewhere. This only accelerated when the city abolished free tuition for city residents in 1975 due to the city’s financial crisis back then. </p>
<p>Also, the public antics of Professors like Leonard Jeffries(Bigoted Afro-centrist) and Michael Levin (defended use of torture, argued race and IQ are positively correlated genetically so Whites are superior to Blacks all around, and made arguments justifying homophobia…including discrimination against LGBTQ folks.) hardly inspired confidence in the institution. </p>
<p>Pre-'69, post-'69, and post 1999/early 00s CUNY/CCNY are like three totally separate institutions with the first being regarded on par with elite colleges and the middle being at the very nadir.</p>
<p>My parents insisted I go to the local regional university, so the question of safety didn’t really enter into it. In my HS class of 44 people (Catholic school) 38 of us at least started college and of those, 25 of us went to the local U. I was happy there and did everything I could to make it less like 13th grade, but I really think I missed out on a lot of personal growth by not being able to go away. </p>
<p>I know a number of folks my age or so, who had no idea about financial aid. A number of them were good students, applied to local private schools, and their parents and they paid. Full amount as they commuted. One of my friends said she was quite upset to learn of all the kids on financial aid and her father was emptying their savings to pay for her. That was what he thought was expected of him. A lot of parents so thought. </p>
<p>I had no idea until decades, a number of them, how financial aid worked. I puzzled how I got different aid packages. Had no idea that my package was part aid and part merit. In those days one could double dip and some of my offers were very generous that way. </p>
<p>No. My safety was a huge state school, and I was coming from a tiny private HS with 100 kids in the graduating class. I was nerdy and shy. I don’t even think the college I DID go to was a good choice, because even though it was prestigious and fit my academic interests, I never felt I fit in socially.</p>
<p>I grew up in a working class area in the Midwest and was applying for college in 1970. No one ever mentioned a safety school and few people applied to multiple schools. I was an honors student and among my peers–only two people went beyond the Midwest to attend college. The valedictorian went to Smith and the salutatorian went to Vassar. I went to the state flagship in another Midwestern state because my boyfriend was recruited to play football. (Stupid reason, but it was an excellent flagship school). </p>
<p>My safety was Goucher. I probably would have been fine and definitely debt-free, but I wouldn’t give up my time at my college for any amount of money.</p>