Myth #21
“That college sucks! I’d hate going to school there but I think it would probably be okay as a ‘safety’. I mean, I suppose I could do it if I had to.”
I’d hate going to school there but it would be okay as a safety? It terrifies me when I listen to high school seniors and realize just how many of them say that line almost word for word. No . . . let me repeat that again . . . no! If you hate the college, it won’t be a good safety school. That’s not just a myth it’s a really dangerous myth.
You’re going to spend four important years of your life at college. You’re probably going to make some lifelong friends while you’re there. You’re going to mature into a person you will hardly recognize by the time you graduate. Many of you will even choose the career you’ll follow for the rest of your life. Another significant percentage of you will meet your future husband or wife at college. It’s a really, really bad idea to tackle all of these things at someplace that you hate.
Choosing an appropriate “safety” school is something that is often mishandled during the admissions process. In fact, choosing a safety school has been so poorly addressed by most students that many high school college counselors no longer even like to use the term! It doesn’t have to be that way . . . honestly.
The purpose of applying to a safety school isn’t to make a student’s life wretched during his or her college career, and it shouldn’t undermine their confidence or the opinion they have of themselves. Including a safety school isn’t supposed to crush their spirit or dampen their excitement about going off to college. No, a safety school application isn’t intended to do any of these things. It has a reasonable purpose, to ensure or dramatically increase the likelihood that at least one of the colleges to which a student applies comes through with a thick envelope that begins “Congratulations!”
Other than that, your criteria and selection process for choosing a safety school should be exactly the same as that for any other college making your final list. This is where most families make their mistake regarding safety schools. They begin with the idea that the student won’t really like it and probably won’t need it. There’s a tendency to ignore the safety school as if it’s some badge of disgrace and admission of failure. Since no one wants to address it, no one really pays any significant attention to it. I have some bad news. For a variety of reasons, every year, many students end up attending their safety school. Just because your safety school isn’t the most competitive school on your final application list doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be a campus which you will enjoy as a person and where you will grow as a student.
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