As an in-state student, would it be ludicrous to apply to UNC Chapel Hill as a safety school?
11th grade
class rank: 2/447
gpa: 4.0 unweighted, 4.7 weighted
sat: 1570 (800 math)
ECs: Vice-president of latin club, president of finance club, treasurer for model UN, captain of varsity soccer team, 3 Honors societies (tech, latin, and the standard one), Boy scouts (1st class scout), volunteer tutor for charity organization, debate team
UNC-CH is one of my top choices, I just want to know if I would need to apply to more safe schools. I am NOT asking if I will get in, I just want advice on whether it would be wise to apply to more safe schools or not.
2 answers
First, you should always have more than one safety school no matter what—ideally, you should have at least 3. And there are some schools that should really never be considered safeties even for the strongest applicants. UNC-CH is definitely one of them. You probably have a better chance than most, but I'd still say to have at least 2 other safeties you'd be fine with.
As for the reason for having multiple safeties, no school is a "guaranteed admit" for anyone unless they quite literally have a guaranteed admission program. An admissions officer might be having a bad day when they read your essay, or not see eye-to-eye with something that you say, and even for a student with perfect grades and stats, that can lead to a rejection. Every year there are students who get into Ivy league universities after being rejected from their state schools—it's not common, but it happens for a whole host of reasons. That's why you need to have several safeties.
You should apply to one more safety school just to be safe. Students with high stats get rejected from UNC every year.
A lot does depend on your school's history with UNC. What do typical stats look like for accepted students at your high school to UNC? Often, in-state schools will target a certain portion of well-known high school's classes each year.