Creating Your Ideal University List: Safety, Target, and Reach Schools (and Much More)

Creating a university list, while exciting, can be tricky. To maximize your chances of acceptance to a school you truly want to attend, it’s important to think strategically about which schools you want on your application list. The ideal university list should have a balance of safety, target and reach schools! But that’s only part of the picture… To help you make your ideal list, Crimson Education strategist Brice Lee walks you through the steps to follow, pitfalls to avoid, and describes some powerful digital tools that can speed up the process.

Overview: The Three Essentials for an Ideal School List

Creating a balanced university list is crucial, but it’s not a simple process. Your college list needs to have the right number of schools with different levels of competitiveness and aligned with your most important goals, needs, and interests. Here are three strategic factors I recommend you keep in mind when making your list:

1. The X Factor. Did you know that by simply applying to more schools you can increase your odds for success? I call this the X Factor, because it’s true for pretty much all students, regardless of their other application strategies. For this reason, you want to apply to at least 8 to 10 schools. And, if you’re up for the challenge — we recommend applying to as many as 15 schools, or more.
2. Balance is critical. While you can make informed estimates as to how competitive you’ll be at different kinds of schools  — such as those ranked in the top 10 nationally, or top 20 nationally, and so forth — you don’t want to aim too low or too high. Aiming too low means never knowing if you could have gotten into a higher ranked school. Aiming too high, on the other hand, sets you up for a big disappointment if you don’t get accepted. This is why having a balanced approach is key.
3. Do the schools match your goals, needs, and interests? To state the obvious, you don’t just need to make a long and balanced list of schools — you also want to make sure the schools on your final list are strong matches for your educational goals and preferences. This means thorough research and careful consideration are important parts of the process.

Understanding Safety, Target, and Reach Schools:

In order to improve your odds for having offers from a range of schools, make sure your list includes a good balance of safety, target, and reach schools.

What Is a Safety School?

A safety school is where you have a greater than 75% chance of acceptance. These schools consistently admit students with lower test scores and GPAs than yours. While these universities may be chosen primarily because of your high chance of acceptance, safety schools should still fulfil all your criteria for your ideal school.

While a safety school may lie on the lower end of the scale for you personally in terms of academic rigor, it should still be able to satisfy your academic needs and challenge you intellectually. At a minimum, you should consider applying to 2 safety schools.

What Is a Target School?

A target school is one in which your academic credentials and grades fall within the average range of students admitted, often between the 25th and 75th percentiles. While admission at these universities is not guaranteed, these schools offer you a good chance for admission.

In other words, these schools are neither ‘easy wins’ nor ‘out of your league.’ They sit at the mid-range point of your university admissions goals. At a minimum, you should consider applying to 4 target schools.

What Is a Reach School?

A reach school (sometimes called a “dream” school) accepts candidates with academic credentials higher than yours. These schools are usually the ones candidates ideally choose to apply to even if they’re not very confident about getting admitted.

You can think of reach schools as ones where you see yourself having a less than 25% chance of getting in. Some top US universities, including the Ivy League, are considered reach schools for virtually all applicants, on account of their incredibly low acceptance rates.

When selecting your reach schools, try not to pick ones that stretch wildly beyond your academic range, but sit at the very top of this range. At a minimum, you should consider applying to 3 reach schools.

What Is an Extreme Reach School?

At Crimson, many of our students opt for adding one or two extreme reach schools. These are often schools that are ultra-selective, such as Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, Yale, or MIT.

These schools are often a reach for even exceptional applicants turning down many students with excellent test scores and impeccable profiles simply due to limited space.

Each year many Crimson students do manage to defy the odds, however, gaining offers from schools which seemed like impossibilities. So it's smart strategy to stretch yourself and aim a bit higher than you think reasonable, if you're up to the challenge of building applications that will resonate with admissions officers at some of the best universities in the world.

A Full-Proof Approach

The elegance of a well balanced approach is that you can aim high with confidence and really reach for a great school even if you’re far from sure you’ll get in — there’s no harm in trying after all, right?

At the end of the process, you can still be confident you’ll get offers from at least some of the schools on your list — schools you already know are a good fit for your interests across your target and safety ranges — even if you don’t get into your first choice.

How To Find and Categorize Schools for Your List

In this section, I'm going to walk you through the key steps and proven methods for making an effective and balanced college list.

To get started, you’ll be taking stock of your own goals and interests so you can find schools that meet your requirements.

Next, you’ll need to assess your own academic achievements and your extracurriculars in order to decide which schools fall into which category (for you personally), as safety, target, reach, or extreme reach schools.

By following these steps, you'll build a college list that really resonates with your individual interests and is also well balanced.

1. Finding the Schools That Best Match Your Interests

This may sound obvious, but the more attuned you are to the kind of schools you want to attend, the better your list will be, making it essential to slow down the process and really think about what kind of educational experience you want in college.

Questions To Guide Your Introspection:

• Do I prefer a large research institution or a smaller, more intimate college setting?
• Will I include liberal arts colleges among my choices, or not?
• Do I want to attend a school in a large city, in a quieter suburb, or in a more reclusive rural setting?
• What’s my major, and which schools have strong traditions and resources for educating students in this field?
• How much does school rank and “reputation” matter to me?
• Are any niche rankings important — such as finding the best schools for a specific major, for commitments to social justice, for highest earnings after graduation, or to benefit from a strong liberal arts core curriculum…?
• Is athletic programming an important factor — such as preferring schools with either Division I, II, or III programming in a specific sport?
• What financial aid commitments are important for schools I'm listing, if any — such as need blind admissions, or a strong track record in providing need-based scholarships, or public institutions in my state with discounted in-state tuition…?

Knowing What Matters Most

The questions above are just a guide. It's important that you find and list schools that really match your own personal priorities.

As our Co-Founder and CEO Jamie Beaton once said, "I’d go to Harvard even if it was on Antarctica… Factors like the weather… I just don’t think they’re that important. I think ultimately it’s about how the prospective school will set up your future, in your career, and in what comes next."

2. Categorizing Schools

After finding schools that match your personal criteria, you need to make sure your list has a handful of schools in each range: safety, target, and reach.

To categorize each school, you’ll need to compare your own applicant profile against average applicant profiles at each school.

Here are some important factors to consider:

As you compare schools on your list based on these factors, you can start to categorize each school as

• Reach School: Challenging or very challenging to get into with my achievements
• Target School: Well matched overall with my achievements
• Safety School: Likely to accept a student with my achievements

Don’t think of this as an exact science — it’s more like informed, educated estimations, but make sure your final list is realistic and balanced, with schools across a wide spectrum of admission requirements and expectations.

If you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed or start getting stuck, be sure to talk to your Crimson strategist.

Not part of the Crimson Education network already?

Check in with the college counselor at your high school for help with building your list. You can also request a free feedback session with a Crimson Education expert — for more personalized advice on list building, or to find out more about our team approach to helping students submit applications that really stand out.

Using Digital Tools To Build Your List Faster

Crimson offers two innovative tools that help students with their college journeys, and can help you speed up list building in particular.

1. The US College Admissions Calculator

The US College Admissions Calculator uses your current (or predicted) SAT scores or ACT scores to help you identify potential safety, target, reach, and extreme reach schools. Once you get your results, you’ll still need to decide which of the schools align with your interests and goals.

That said, the online calculator is free, it’s easy to use, and it’s a fast way to gauge how you’re likely to fare in the admissions process at different schools while discovering some high-quality schools you maybe hadn’t thought of.

2. AI-Assisted School Search

If you really want to save time and generate more potential matches, using our signature school match algorithm is an even better approach.

Part of the Crimson Education App, the School Search Algorithm (SSA), is a powerful software tool that automates the time-consuming list-building process.

Whereas the US College Admissions Calculator uses primarily SAT or ACT scores for reference, the search engine in the Crimson App uses more comprehensive criteria, including your GPA, academic rigor, and extracurriculars.

Filtering for these criteria, the tool helps you find schools that are a good match for your most important needs and interests in addition to helping you build a balanced list.

Because this information is already input into the Crimson App when you join the Crimson network, the SSA tool will generate a curated list of schools in mere seconds.

On the results page, you'll see the names of schools matched with your interests and preferences, along with information making it easy to quickly categorize schools for your safety, target, or reach ranges.

Benefits of Automated Search Results:

While you'll still want to make final decision about which schools to put on your list, the Results Page display puts all the most important data at your fingertips, including:

• The SAT/ACT score ranges of top applicants to the school
• The school’s overall acceptance rate
• How well you’re positioned to get accepted based on three key application components: test scores, academics, and extracurriculars
• The average annual net cost of attendance
• The school’s overall need-based financial aid profile, and more...

With all of this information neatly stored for you in one convenient display, you’ll much more quickly begin creating and then optimizing your ideal college list!

Strategic Tips & Insights for an Ideal College List

Whether you cast a wide net using Google and similar search tools, or you use the automated School Search Algorithm that’s built into the Crimson App, your initial list will be kind of like the rough draft of an essay — you’ll still be making some strategic decisions going forward about which schools to put on your list or leave off.

While the best advice possible requires a truly personal approach, what I can share are some general tips that can still be very helpful for most students:

1. Take Rankings With a Grain of Salt

Rankings can definitely help guide your decision making as you home in on which schools you most want to apply to. But remember, the rankings from major news outlets only go so far in helping you build a list — so be sure to take them with a grain of salt, with these tips in mind:

• Look at prospective schools through the lens of multiple rankings — national and world rankings, and rankings from different outlets. This approach gives you a fuller perspective on the overall reputation of the schools that most interest you.
• As an alternative to the more conventional criteria-based rankings out there, Crimson offers rankings using a cross-yield method for further comparison — see Crimson’s Top 25 US Colleges and Universities list.

2. Explore Targeted Rankings 

You can also explore more targeted rankings to search for prospective schools. Examples include:

• ratings by department or major, such as “best engineering schools,” “best STEM programs,” “best pre-law universities,” and so forth
• ratings based on tuition rates and financial aid, such as “best value schools,” or “best schools for need-based or need-blind financial aid” 
• ratings based on sustainable practices and eco-friendly values, such as “top green colleges,” or “best schools for sustainability”
• ratings for niche tiers in terms of reputation, such as “best non-Ivies,” or “southern Ivies,” or “best public research universities”
• ratings based on affiliation, such as “best Christian/Catholic colleges,” or “best historically black colleges”

3. Consider Liberal Arts Pathways & Dual Degree Tracks

Flexible School Options

Many liberal arts colleges offer great value in terms of small class sizes, appealing geographical settings, less competition for admission, and rich academic traditions. Coming in many shapes, sizes, and varying degrees of prestige, these schools also offer abundant options for safety, target, and reach positions on your list.

Pairing Liberal Arts Degrees with Other Degrees

You may want to consider specialized dual bachelor degree programs — often leading to a BA in liberal arts and a BS in a STEM field, such as engineering.  In these programs, sometimes called 3-2 programs, you earn two bachelor’s degrees over five years, studying three years at an affiliate school before transferring to the primary institution that accepted you, for the remaining two years.

In addition to their potential as “back doors” into highly selective schools and majors, these programs unlock the best of both worlds in higher education: open-ended inquiry in a small and intimate liberal arts setting for three years, and then you'll matriculate into a top-flight STEM program at a school like Caltech, Columbia, U Michigan, or similar research institution.

4.  Consider Often Overlooked Consecutive Degree Tracks

A variation on the dual degree program, consecutive degree tracks have a narrower academic focus. Instead of earning two bachelor’s degrees in five years, you earn a bachelor’s and then a master’s in a 3-2 or 4-1 program design (three or four years earning the bachelor’s degree, and one or two additional years in graduate courses).

To learn more about both dual degree and consecutive degree programs and schools that offer them, check out:

• Dual Degree vs. Double Major: Navigating Your Academic Choices
• Top Dual Degree Programs: A Comprehensive List for Ambitious Students

5. Leveraging Consortium Colleges

Some colleges co-exist as members of a larger consortium of colleges. The benefit? Acceptance into one of the colleges typically gives you access to courses, professors, and other resources across the larger consortium.

• The Claremont Colleges. A highly respected consortium of five undergraduate institutions modeled on Oxford’s college system, the Claremont Colleges include some highly competitive and some less competitive schools,  some with top credentials in STEM, others best known for their liberal arts offerings — and all of them located in a warm southern California setting.
• Barnard/Columbia. Women interested in Columbia, may want to put Barnard College on their list. Not only does Barnard have a great reputation, but Barnard and Columbia students benefit from inter-campus agreements. Though not a genuine consortium, the pairing offers similar benefits, with students allowed to take courses on the alternate campus. This means that by getting into Barnard you’re going to live and study in New York City and also access courses at Columbia.
• Five Colleges Consortium. This consortium is worth considering if you’re interested in smaller liberal arts colleges with strong reputations. The consortium includes Amherst, UMass Amherst, Smith College, and Mt. Holyoke College — all in western Massachusetts and including two of the oldest women's colleges in the country.

Top 5 Mistakes To Avoid When Make a University List

Adjusting Expectations

A final essential element for an ideal list is managing expectations so that your list is based on realistic aspirations. While a personalized approach with one-on-one counseling is typically the most helpful approach here, you may find some of the following tips apply to your individual circumstances.

International Students

If acceptance rates sinking to historical lows isn’t daunting enough, getting in to top-ranked schools can be even harder for international students. With that in mind, international students should aim high when making their college lists but also include an ample number of target and safety schools. This ensures you end the application cycle with offers and options you can feel good about if your first choice doesn’t work out.

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Majors

While software innovation drives innovation and economic growth, it’s also becoming a more “saturated” major. The result is that applying as a CS or CE major increases the “reach” factor on your school list. This is even more so for international students.

A school that might be a target school for you if you were majoring in let's say philosophy or art history, might need to be ranked on your list as a reach school instead if you’re majoring in CS or CE.

Unbalanced Lists

Essential to managing expectations is taking care to select outstanding safety and target schools, in addition to the attention you give to selecting your reach schools.

If your dream school — let’s say Harvard or Brown — has a 4% acceptance rate, do the math… That’s tens of thousands of students turned away for every one or two hundred applicants getting offers!

This means even very high achieving students should have a well-balanced college list, with at least 2–3 high quality safety schools, and 3–5 excellent target schools — strongly matching their interests and preferences. 

Consider the following real-life examples as a reminder that there are always "off-the-radar" schools out there that can be strong matches, even for your safety schools:

• Are you laser focused on computer science but can’t get into UC Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, or Caltech?... Then maybe Santa Clara University is a fantastic target or safety school — one with a beautiful campus and that puts you right in the heart of Silicon Valley and next door to Stanford…
• Is liberal arts your jam, but no way to know for sure if you’ll get into Amherst, Reed, or Pomona College?… Then you can still put UC Santa Cruz, Occidental, Whitman, or Wheaton on your list — all of which offer unique and outstanding settings, opportunities, and resources but with higher or much higher acceptance rates.
• Look for high-quality "value" schools — lesser known but offering strong academic rigor — such as Babson, Drexel, or Bentley, for example.

Final Thoughts

When it comes to applying to colleges, NOT putting the cart before the horse means taking the time you need to make a robust and well balanced college list that really reflects thorough research and thoughtful deliberation.

If done right, your final list will be one you’re proud of — showing your commitment to aiming high and dreaming big, while also being realistic and making every school count. We recommend you have eight to fifteen schools (or more) distributed evenly across your safety, target, and reach ranges — each school strongly aligned with your interests and goals and having features, resources, or offerings you’re particularly excited about.

Don’t forget that our US College Admissions Calculator can offer a good starting point as you look for ways to jumpstart your brainstorming process.

And, if you really want to use automation and AI to streamline list building while also unlocking additional insights, don’t forget to talk to your Crimson strategist about using the school search automation tools inside the Crimson App.

Not a member of the Crimson network yet and have questions?

You can still get free feedback from an expert Crimson counselor by signing up for a one-time free consultation. A friendly expert will be eager to hear about your college journey and next steps, while offering some helpful insights. You can also ask about our many services or learn about our team approach and why it’s so effective.

Key Resources & Further Reading

• Join our free webinars on US university applications
• Free eBooks and guides to help with the college application process
• How To Research Colleges: 4 Steps To Finding the Perfect School
• When Should You Start Working On Your University Applications?
• How Many Colleges Should I Apply To?