Before a student applies to college, they’ll put together a list of schools they intend to apply to. For most students, especially those who don’t have one very clear favorite school, I’ve always believed that it was best practice for students to approach this collection with diversity in mind. Students would do well to choose a series of schools they’ll apply to that can check a lot of different boxes. Big schools, small schools, public and private, Big cities, little college towns, reach schools and safety schools. And, any one school can check more than one of these boxes.
One of these might be more important than others though, and that is the safety school. When I listen to the list of schools a student will apply to, it’s the first thing I want to hear because I’m asking myself, “Is there at least one school on this list I’m pretty confident this student can get into?” If my answer to that is no, I’m worried.
Preparing for college takes a lot of emotional energy. For most college-bound students, where they go to college will be the biggest decision they’ve made so far in their young lives. Getting to a place where a student can make that decision takes lots of dwelling and thoughtful consideration. For this reason, I’ve always felt that finding out you didn’t get into any school you applied to is just about the worst position a student can find themselves in as they put their post-high school plans together.
The safety school is the solution to this. It is the insurance policy that guards against a student not having a post-high school option. Imagine a high school senior in a group chat with their friends who are talking about where they are going to college, what color scheme they’ll decorate their dorms in, where their roommate is from, and when their orientation is. Then, this student opens that last email from a college and finds out they’ve been denied from all the colleges they applied to. How devastating can this be to a young person’s psyche?
Students will probably receive this information well into their senior year, and that timing can make putting a plan B into place difficult. For one thing, it leaves little time for a student to spend time on that thinking and envisioning themselves on a given college’s campus. Also, students might have missed out on application deadlines for schools they could have gotten into had they only applied to them earlier. You can solve all of this by including a safety school in your first round of applications.
Of course, what counts as a safety school is relative to the student, and it's important to be realistic about what meets that definition for you. A quick way might be to google a college’s middle range of accepted scores and GPAs. If your numbers fall above this range, you can probably consider that a safety school. If your numbers aren’t there, a school might not be as safe as you thought, and using that school to check your safety school box might defeat the purpose of including it in your list in the first place.
