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Fill Out a 'Safety School' Application
Everyone should make sure a safety school is on their application list. Here are some tips.
To be sure that you'll have at least one school saying "yes" to your application, you need to apply to a 'safety school'. This could mean looking no further than your local state school, or a private school with less competitive admissions.
With the surge in applications due to both a population bubble and students applying to more and more schools, admissions can be harder to estimate than ever. Don't get into a situation where you only apply to schools where you fit the average student profile (or worse, schools that are all 'reaches' for you). They could all say no - it happens...
Go to your prospective safety schools' Web sites and check out:
• The admission requirements. Make sure you pick at least one school where you are well within (or above) the average admitted student profile.
• The deadlines. Some schools have 'rolling admissions' where you won't have to wait until a specific date to apply because the school reads and approves or rejects applications as they are submitted. You can apply much earlier in the year and find out your answer in only a few weeks.
• The forms they require.
• The process for submitting transcripts, recommendations, and essays. (In fact, some might not even require essays!)
HOH Tip
• If admissions seem so unpredictable and the safety schools of the past are no longer as 'safe,' you should spread your risk by applying to lots of schools - that seems to be the current thinking. But here's what will happen soon if students apply to more and more schools insincerely and colleges' yield numbers drop: Colleges will be forced to be even harder on applicants and will need to gauge sincerity where they may not have done so before.
• Applying to five or six schools is reasonable and expected, with a few true safety schools and a few reach schools included. Apply to schools of the same genre (size, atmosphere, location, academic focus) that you want. If you want a small school, focus only on the small ones. If you want quiet, do not apply to urban campuses. Applying to the entire Ivy League is silly - they are quite different schools.