Re: is cornell considered a safety school
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18 Jan 2012, 23:07
To be honest, and I've heard from many admissions consultants, anything within the top-15 or so can't be considered a "safety".
In addition, some, rather, a LOT of the application process can come down to just pure, dumb luck. There have been people rejected from lower ranked schools only to get accepted by a top 3. The reverse is much more common. And some unlucky souls get rejected from anywhere. And to top it all off, while it's purely anecdotal, a legitimate concern comes in the form of 'yield protection'. e.g. if a school thinks that you are in fact TOO qualified, and you didn't show enough interest in your essays, they may reject you in that they think you will most likely be accepted and matriculate at another school, that the application to their school was an "afterthought" (Nobody likes to be thought of as the backup option, right?)
I think it's fair to say that just because you are above the target numbers for a certain school, doesn't mean you can call them a "safety". As a matter of fact, I think one should be careful not to be arrogant and think that one is 'above' any school, as the attitude may leak into your applications and cause you to put in a sub-par effort because their heart wasn't in it (thus leading to a rejection even in light of outstanding #'s). In an extreme example, say one has a 770 GMAT and a 3.9 GPA (way above the average for Cornell), but their essays read like the incomprehensible scrawl of a mentally-handicapped monkey...I think it's fair to say they're sorta SOL.
As for me, while it was difficult to do so, I thought of every application like it was my only one. It may sound cliche, but I think it's more dangerous to think that a school is a safety, the downside of that mentality could prove fatal.