I am going to share with you examples of Safety, Match and Reach with three colleges we selected for my daughter. Hopefully, they will illustrate what each type is and how we evaluated each school on her list.
We researched schools that have the major my daughter was interested in, Mechanical Engineering. She had a list of things that she wanted, some were negotiable and some were not. She wanted to attend a small to medium school with less than 10,000 - 15,000 undergraduate students. She wanted to be able to do research, to have options for study abroad programs. She was hoping to minor in Asian studies and learn Mandarin, so having these programs were also important to her. The Engineering program had to ABET certified. Most of these where her “must have” priorities for schools. However, she also had other preferences like having a closed campus, being in a warm climate, and having various other clubs and activities that were of interest to her.
The “Safety” School. One of the schools we selected was Baylor University in Waco, Texas. It offers her major and minor and is a smaller school in a warm climate. It does not have a swim team, which was one of the activities my daughter was hoping to participate in during college. However, it offers other things that were of interest to her and the engineering program is ABET certified. We found that finding schools in warm climates that were small was challenging, so Baylor was a great fit. I classified it as a “Safety” based on how likely she would be accepted to the school. The first thing I looked at is College Boards (www.collegeboard.org) information on Baylor Student’s average SAT and ACT test scores as well as acceptance rates for the university.
A Safety school is a safety if you are likely to get accepted, would like to attend the school and can afford to attend the school. If any one of these three conditions do not apply, then you do not have a Safety school. For example, my daughter’s SAT test scores were in the top 25% of all three of Baylor’s SAT scores range for Critical Reading, Math, and Writing. She would therefore be in the top 25% of all applicants applying to Baylor. Baylor for the year 2011 historically accepted 40% of it’s applicant pool according to College Board. When I was researching for my daughter, this number was a bit higher (more like in the 50 or 60% range) but due to the higher number of recent applicants, their current number dropped to 40 percent. MY preference for a match school would be 50% acceptance or higher. Anything lower, and my child is at risk of being rejected. So during my time of evaluation, I calculate that my daughter has a pretty strong possibility of being accepted to Baylor University, because again..the acceptance rate noted on College Board (2010?) was over 50 percent. The last criteria for a true Safety school is “college affordability” and I will address evaluating affordability in future posts. For now, keep in mind that a Safety school is NOT a Safety (or Match or even Reach) if you can not afford to send your child there regardless of if they are accepted. This seems obvious, but really it is a very common problem that people don’t consider.
Finding a Match School. A “Match” means finding a school that will place the applicant in the fifty percentile score range on SAT or ACT scores. All of your child's other requirements and preferences still hold true. So for my daughter, we still need a good engineering program meeting all of her requirements and perhaps a few of her other optional needs. Among her options, we select Case Western Reserve University, in Cleveland, Ohio. It is ranked in the top 40 Nationally. There are a large variety of engineering programs available including Mechanical Engineering, it offers her minor and has a Division III Swim Team. One nice feature is a “open door” policy, meaning that once a student is accepted, they can focus on any major and minor the university offers. She is not being accepted into a specific school but into the university, so should she decide to change from Mechanical Engineering to say for example, Business, she can do that without having to re-apply to the School of Business. A small detail, but one that will allow her flexibility should she need it. Again, not something that we were necessarily looking for, but definitely something that my daughter considered when evaluating the university. Notice that CWRU does not meet one of her preferences, the warm climate! This where you have to prioritize what you are willing to compromise, again, almost every college or university will not meet ALL of your student’s wants but it should meet all of your student’s needs!
Our evaluation of Case Western Reserve University as a Match school. My daughter’s SAT scores fall in the middle range with CWRU. For example, CWRU’s 50% Math scores range from 650 -740. This means that 50% of students that have been accepted to CWRU in the past had a math score in this range. Students above the 740 score are in the top 25% and students with math scores below 650 are in the low 25%. For your student to have a MATCH, they must fall in the 50% range. My daughter’s score is 690 for math. When I look at Critical Reading and Writing, I see that her scores in those two areas are also within the 50% range. Equally important, when I look at the percentage of students that are accepted to CWRU, I see that the university accepted 51% of all their applicants in 2011. For a Match school, I would like to see around 40% or preferably higher. Remember, even with these evaluations, there is no guarantee that your child will be admitted! So CWRU will be my one of my daughter’s “Match” schools.
The last school to consider is the “Reach” School. Families will vary on if Reach schools are necessary. Why? Because by definition, they are difficult to be accepted to and are a gamble or risk for the applicant. So, if your child may not get accepted into a reach school why bother to apply? Well, if your student is interested in attending an Ivy league school...they are ALL reach schools! Does your child want a challenge to see if he or she can get accepted to a top tier school? If he or she has taken challenging classes, has excellent grades and wants to work with other exceptional students, it will be natural to want to apply to a few of these type schools. There are many schools that are elite (meaning that they accept a small percentage of students from their applicant pool) that are not Ivy. In fact, due to the Common Application (www.commonapp.org) many schools that were in the past relatively easy to be accepted to are now becoming very difficult to gain admittance. Another reason these schools might be desirable to an applicant is that most (not all) also meet 100% of financial need for low income applicants. My opinion is that students need to challenge themselves. If they don’t submit an application, they will never know if they would have been admitted to that “prestigious” school. However, if your child feels uncomfortable about the high possibility of receiving a rejection, than a Reach school may not be the best option to add to the college application selection.
For those that want the challenge, a Reach school is a school that may be an academic stretch but at the very least IS and admissions stretch. A Reach school still must be a good academic match in regards to the programs they offer. For example, my daughter choose Rice University in Houston, Texas as a Reach school. Her SAT scores were still within the 50% for Rice's admitted students. Example, Rice’s math SAT score range is 680 to 780. My daughter’s math score is again, 690. So she meets the 50% range at the very low end. However, this is where Rice is Reach school for her, because it only accepts 19% of the total number of applicants! The combination of the lower 50% SAT score range and the low acceptance of students makes Rice University a Reach school for her and would for most applicants even if they had perfect SAT or ACT scores AND perfect grades. The lower the number of accepted students, the higher the chance that an applicant will be rejected. However, I have seen homeschooled students accepted to these schools the same as any other type of student.
So here is how it works. Together, you and your college bound highschooler need to select a mixture of Safety, Match and Reach schools. I say together, because being affordable will be the parent's responsibility assuming everything else is being left to the student to decide. Remember, the college or university must offer a degree that your child is interesting in pursuing, you need to know enough about each school to make an “educated guess” on if your child would/could be accepted, AND they need to be financially affordable should your child get accepted and decide to attend. It might (or might not) surprise you to know that many students select schools, apply and then after they are accepted, really had no interest in attending. Students often apply to schools that don’t offer the major they are interested in studying. Students and parents often select schools that are not affordable. Students and Parents often select schools without considering the cost, or impact of location from home. These are just a few of many things to consider when selecting schools.
You should now have an idea of how to evaluate Safety, Match and Reach schools. The next question should be, “How many?” How many schools do I select in each category? My opinion is that there is really no "one answer fits all." For example, many students of traditional public or private high schools, the school places a limit to how many colleges and universities a student can apply. For other students, it is based on how many applications you can afford or how many applications you want to complete. My suggestion is to make sure that your Reach schools do NOT outnumber the other two types of schools! You should really have a solid number of Safety and Match schools. I can not stress this enough!
I hope this gives you a place to start and evaluate colleges and universities. Even if you decide to just focus on Safety and Match schools, this should give you one way to evaluate the likelihood of your students acceptances. Don’t make the process more stressful or work than you need to but do make informed decisions and try to enjoy the process!
