Even if your resume is Ivy League, you have to prepare for the possibility you won’t be headed there. Not getting into an Ivy doesn’t mean consigning yourself to academic inferiority, though. There are many amazing schools outside the Ivy League where you can get in and get a top education.
The best true safety schools for Ivy applicants are ones with acceptance rates above 50%, graduation rates above 80%, and freshman retention rates above 90%. Ideally, they should also have high rankings in publications such as U.S. News. Several universities and liberal arts colleges fit these criteria, including the University of Wisconsin, University of Illinois, and Whitman College.
Table of Contents
- How to Find Good Safety Schools for Ivy Applicants
- The Benefits of Going to a Safety School
- The Bottom Line on Safety Schools for Ivy Applicants
You have the grades (valedictorian, thank you very much). You have the scores (1590 — damn that last problem in the math section). You’ve logged thousands of volunteer hours. Senior class president? That was you. And we can’t forget the mobile app you built for the local pet rescue. If anyone belongs on an Ivy League campus, it’s you. Right?
Crazy as it sounds, thousands of students like you get rejected from Ivies every single year. It’s a numbers game. Ivy League schools get massive stacks of applications. Nearly all are from kids with stellar high school grades and off-the-charts scores. They simply don’t have room for everyone, which leaves many falling through the cracks.
If the Ivy League doesn’t pan out, you can always look to Ivy-adjacent schools like Duke, Northwestern, and the University of Chicago. But those aren’t much easier — all have acceptance rates under 10%. To ensure you’ll have somewhere to attend college in the fall, you need a few true safety schools. This guide describes what they are and how to find them.
How to Find Good Safety Schools for Ivy Applicants
To find good safety schools for Ivy applicants, you first need to understand what “safety school” really means. Well-meaning people will throw out names like Tufts, Vanderbilt, and Emory as Ivy League safeties. But those schools aren’t safeties for anyone. Sure, they’re marginally easier to get into than most Ivies. But they suffer from the same problem: too many qualified applicants, too few spots.
You should still apply to schools like those, assuming they interest you. It never hurts to have more options. But none should be your safety school.
A true safety school is one you’d be shocked if you didn’t get into. It doesn’t mean it’s guaranteed, but it’s highly likely. That way, by applying to several safeties, you can almost assure you’ll get into at least one.
Questions to Begin the Safety School Search Process
Before you build your list of Ivy League safeties, consider a few questions. Your answers will help you whittle your list down to the schools that make the most sense.
- What do I plan to major in?
- What size school do I want? (For reference, Dartmouth has about 4,200 undergrads, while Cornell has 15,000).
- Would I prefer a city (Columbia, Penn), suburban (Princeton), or rural (Dartmouth) campus?
- How do I feel about Greek life? (Dartmouth, the frattiest Ivy, is 60% Greek; Brown is less than 10%).
- Do I want to live on campus for most or all of my college career?
- What geographic regions would I consider? (The upside of not going Ivy is that you can broaden your search!)
- Acceptance rate of 50% or higher.
- 75th percentile SAT/ACT score lower than your score.
- Six-year graduation rate of 80% or higher.
- Freshman retention rate of 90% or higher.
- U.S. News & World Report ranking of top 75 (for national universities) or top 50 (for liberal arts colleges).
What Are Some Good Safety Schools for Ivy Applicants?
Using the criteria defined above, here are some solid safety school options for the typical Ivy League applicant.
National Universities
- University of Wisconsin—Madison
- University of Illinois—Urbana-Champaign
- The Ohio State University
- Purdue University
- Syracuse University
- University of Washington—Seattle
- Penn State University
- Rutgers—New Brunswick
- University of Connecticut
- Fordham University
- Southern Methodist University
- Texas A&M University
- University of Massachusetts—Amherst
- University of Minnesota—Twin Cities
- Clemson University
- Virginia Tech University
Liberal Arts Colleges
- Whitman College
- Sewanee—The University of the South
- DePauw University
- Furman University
- Dickinson College
- Union College
- Rhodes College
- Gettysburg College
If you’re tempted to scoff at some of the names on these lists (“You expect me to go from Yale to there? You must be crazy!”), keep in mind again that these are safety schools! They’re not your first choice. They’re not even your backup choice. Some of them might not even be the backup to your backup choice. But they’re all great schools with great (albeit non-Ivy) reputations.
Suppose you’re one of the unlucky ones whose top options and even second-tier options don’t pan out. Ending up at one of these schools is better than ending up at no school because you didn’t apply to any true safeties. And you never know — after a year you might decide your Ivy rejection letter is the best thing to ever happen to you.
The Benefits of Going to a Safety School
If you end up at one of your safeties instead of your Ivy League top choice, you might be tempted to think of your college as the place you landed by default and not consider that there are actual benefits of going to a safety school. These include:
- You can be a big fish in a smaller pond.
- You’re more likely to get noticed for your talent and ability.
- The cost is often far less.
- They tend to be less of a pressure cooker. You can excel academically and still enjoy college.
- They might be a better fit for your personality.
- Good safety schools are all over the country — and abroad. The Ivies are all clustered in the cold Northeast.
A study conducted by economists Alan Krueger from Princeton and Stacy Dale from Mathematica Policy Research compared students who attended Ivy League schools to students who got in but chose to attend less-selective schools. They found no statistically significant difference in post-college earnings or career success between the two groups. The researchers concluded that what makes Ivy League graduates successful isn’t the degree itself but the innate intelligence, curiosity, and work ethic that allowed them to get there. The same traits possessed by the students who chose to go elsewhere — and by you, too!
The Bottom Line on Safety Schools for Ivy Applicants
You want to be at an Ivy League school. You deserve to be at an Ivy League school. You should be at an Ivy League school. But what we want to happen and what should happen isn’t always what does happen. That’s why it’s important to expect the best but prepare for the worst. And if the worst is that you end up at one of these safety schools instead of at an Ivy League school, just know you’re still in a pretty fantastic spot.
