“Safety school.” It’s the taunt Harvard and Yale students hurl at each other at the annual football game. It’s the way students describe the bottoms of their college lists. While it should feel comforting—”safety” is literally in the name—the idea of actually attending a safety school is, to most students, well…scary. This raises a couple questions, namely: what actually is a safety school? And how do you avoid ending up at one?
Reaches & Targets & Safeties (Oh My!)
When building a list of schools to apply to, it’s standard practice to divide colleges into three categories. A “Reach” is a school you’re unlikely to get into; either you’re below the GPA/SAT/ACT range, or your resume is unlikely to impress admissions officers, or both. Sometimes, this category is further divided to reflect that there are also “Long Reaches”; if a Reach is shooting for the moon, a Long Reach is shooting for Uranus. Underlying the decision to apply to a Reach school is the idea that, despite being underqualified, you might get lucky—but that since this is unlikely, you shouldn’t waste your application time (and money!) by applying to more than two or three. More on this in a moment.
A “Target” school is looking for students like you—your qualifications are typical or slightly above-average for an admitted student. Conventional wisdom says that these should make up the majority of your list. At any given Target school, your odds of getting in should be roughly 50/50, even if the school itself has a lower (or higher) acceptance rate, since you are likely to be in the middle of the applicant pool. For schools that are slightly more ambitious, the term “Hard Target” is sometimes applied. In any case, relative to a Target, you are qualified.
Finally, the dreaded “Safety” schools. Nowadays, you’ll often see them called “Likelies”—as in, schools where you’re more likely than not to get in. These are schools for which you are overqualifed: colleges that want you more than you want them. While this can be flattering, it also carries the implication that you can do better.
What’s Wrong with Safeties?
College is not just a four-year commitment. With your skills, your network, and yes, the name you say for the rest of your life hanging in the balance, the thought of ending up at a school that feels like a back-up plan—to you or to your peers—can be terrifying.
In fact, even Target schools can feel like a let-down for many students. Consider a student with a weighted GPA of 4.2 and an SAT score of 1330 who plays a D1 club sport. You might imagine a student-athlete with great grades and a strong score could expect to end up at a selective school, like UCLA or Georgetown. However, these are Reaches: such a student would not even be in the 25% percentile of admitted students at UCLA, while they’d be below the SAT range at Georgetown. For an A student like this, Targets look more like Cal State Long Beach, Clemson University, or Purdue University. Of course, you probably know students like this who have gone to selective or even elite schools, and would have been unhappy to land at a so-called Target. In an age of hyper-competitive admissions, for many young people (and their parents), the only acceptable outcomes are statistical gambles.
In this world, getting into a Safety school is little cause to celebrate. Many students are excited about their first acceptance—if nothing else, they’re going to college!—but would be disappointed to actually attend that school. In fact, it’s not uncommon for students who only get into their Safeties to end up taking a gap year and reapplying.
Why You Don’t Need Safeties
So why apply to Safeties you don’t want to go to? The hard truth is: you shouldn’t. While many less selective schools don’t require essays or an application fee, sending off an application is still a waste of valuable time that could have been better spent improving your other essays, putting finishing touches on your passion project, or catching up on The Bachelorette. And spending money on an application for a school you’d never go to, or even writing an additional essay, definitely doesn’t serve you.
“But wait!” you cry. “What if I don’t get in anywhere else?”
The beauty of a Safety school is that it’s as close to a guarantee as you can get. And there are many schools that promise more than their acceptance rates might indicate. If you’re excited about taking the creative writing courses that made the University of Iowa famous, the 84% acceptance rate won’t automatically make it a backup plan. If you want some surf and sand during your four years, the University of Hawaii’s high acceptance rates will be the last thing on your mind. Finding even one or two such schools where you’d be happy to end up eliminates the prospect of getting in nowhere.
And if there really are no schools that are both safe AND appealing? Look again. The California community college system offers guaranteed transfer to some of the most elite universities in the country (i.e., the UC schools). They’re also much more affordable than spending two years paying out-of-state tuition at a school that doesn’t excite you, with no guarantee of transferring somewhere better. A good litmus test before adding a Safety to your list? Ask yourself if you’d choose it over a College of the Canyons→UC Berkeley pipeline, for instance. If the answer is no, you can feel confident moving on.
So Where SHOULD I Apply?
Just as you only need one or two Safeties to be reasonably certain of getting in somewhere, when it comes to Target schools, more isn’t always better. If you apply to six schools where you have a roughly a 50/50 chance of admission, that’s like flipping a coin six times and hoping it comes up tails at least once: your odds of getting into none are only 12%. Of course, this method requires being really honest with yourself about how you compare to students who get into that school, or working with a college counselor who is; make sure you’re close to or at the top of the GPA and SAT/ACT ranges, and have extracurriculars that will stand out. But just as having five safety schools you don’t want to go to is no better than having one you’re excited about, filling your list with Target schools that feel like letdowns may not add anything. Choose a handful that feel like good fits for you.
As for Reaches, these schools often require the most effort, for potentially no reward. After all, there’s no lottery to give the lucky-but-unqualified a chance. So why bother writing all the long, quirky essays and paying the (often exorbitant) application fees?
If you add value, there’s a chance a school will be looking for you. Maybe you have a niche interest, or a unique background; maybe your personal statement will be one admission officer’s favorite, and they’ll fight tooth and nail to have you admitted. Don’t let the odds dissuade you from applying to schools where you believe you would be a good fit—as long as you have some way of demonstrating that in your application. But to get into one Reach school, you may need to apply to several; don’t assume your dream school will coincidentally be the one college in America that really needs to admit a gymnast who plays the tuba. Whatever you bring to the table, give several colleges (that are within reason, given your GPA and activities) the opportunity to invite you to take a seat.
Takeaways
Getting into 20 schools you’d never attend leaves you in the same place as getting rejected from the top 20 schools in the world: your mom’s basement. Instead of dedicating a significant portion of your list to Safety schools, look for just a couple schools that are exciting, but not as competitive. That way, your odds of liking the school you get into are 100%.
