How do you choose "safe school"?

LSATaker

do you see the ranking or specialization?
Within what rank is acceptable?
Such as...within 100, 50, etc.
If below this ranking should I wait for another cycle?

danielznelson

It depends on so many factors, including your personal goals, ranking amongst other schools in state, et cetera.

A lot of those schools are still good schools. It just depends on what you want to do. If you live in Nebraska and want to stay in-state, for example, University of Nebraska would more than likely be your best bet. If you intend to work in a particular region, having a safe school of a lower ranking won't help you if that school is in an entirely different region.

cam

I think of safety schools as those being where you have a solid/likely chance of admission based off of your GPA and LSAT, ideally your GPA and LSAT are at or above the median as well as being located in area that you would want to practice/live.

lsatblitz

At or above the 75th GPA and LSAT is what I consider safe.

SherryS1

I always thought the general rule was:
- Safety: 75th+ percentile for both GPA and LSAT.
- Fit - In the middle 50 percent.
- Reach - At/below/near the 25th percentile

do you see the ranking or specialization?

I think if you're very interested in a specific niche, then it's worth it to look up specialities. For example, Vermont is apparently an "it" school for environmental law. If you're interested in going into big law, rankings matter more.

To echo @danielznelson, my admissions counselor told me that outside of the top ten, employment and reputations are largely regional. I did my legwork and went through school disclosures and other data on my own to see where people were hired. Though the data is a bit skewed because people in a given area often want to stay there, hiring is very regional:

- Very few people from schools like UCLA or USC ended up on the east coast and vice versa.
- UT Austen, a T14, barely sent any grads to NY or DC.
- Top NY big law firms hired from top schools but Fordham, a regional school that's second tier, had a larger number employed at these firms than some of the top ten.
- Some lower ranked schools - such as UC Irvine - had very high clerkship placement rates due to strong local ties. Even assuming they were only at the state level, I was surprised to see they beat out some of the top ten when comparing percentages alone.

danielznelson

@SherryS1 said:
Safety: 75th+ percentile for both GPA and LSAT.
- Fit - In the middle 50 percent.
- Reach - At/below/near the 25th percentile

Definitely the rule I at least went by for determining what my safe schools were.