You may feel a little behind in terms of creating your college list, but you are way ahead in terms of realizing the importance of a school being the right fit rather than chasing a particular name.
The list below is not short, but it’s composed of schools that have fewer than 10,000 undergrads and have a good number of physics majors in the most recent graduating class (either as a raw number or as a proportion of the undergraduate population). This list is categorized based on my very fallible sense of what might be your chances of acceptance. There are so many schools in the extremely likely category because you’re such a good candidate. The likelihood of admission is not necessarily a correlation to the degree of academic challenge that a university offers.
There is quite a range of schools here, however, so you can also start getting a sense of what things are important to you as you learn more about different colleges.
Extremely Likely (80-99+%)
- Allegheny (PA )
- Drew (NJ)
- Duquesne (PA )
- Florida Institute of Technology
- Ithaca (NY)
- Kalamazoo (MI)
- Le Moyne (NY)
- Lycoming (PA )
- Roanoke (VA)
- Salisbury (MD)
- Seton Hall (NJ)
- Siena (NY)
- Stetson (FL)
- SUNY Geneseo
- Ursinus (PA )
- Washington (MD)
- Washington & Jefferson (PA )
Likely (60-79%)
- Clark (MA)
- Clarkson (NY)
- College of the Holy Cross (MA)
- College of Wooster (OH)
- Lawrence (WI)
- St. Lawrence (NY)
- SUNY New Paltz
Toss-Up (40-59%)
- Franklin & Marshall (PA )
- Mount Holyoke (MA) – women’s college
- Rensselaer Polytechnic (NY)
- U. of Rochester (NY)
Lower Probability (20-39%)
- Case Western (OH)
- Skidmore (NY)
- Villanova (PA )
Low Probability (less than 20%)
- Hamilton (NY)
- Haverford (PA )
- Vassar (NY)
- Wesleyan (CT)