it seems that getting in is only the FIRST Step, there is NO guarantee that you will get enough money to actually attend any of these schools. Money NEEDS to be a consideration, many excellent students apply to these competitive schools, so it is difficult to get in, much less afford them. Good Luck.
Thank you. Now I have a decent distribution of colleges in which I’m interested. However, how do I narrow it down further? Because now it just looks like a top-40 instead of a top-20 list, and it is still very top heavy. The criteria that went into this were: availability of financial aid, location, academic programs (like course offerings and such). What other things should I look at?
Harvard
Yale
Stanford
Columbia
Amherst
UChicago
Duke
Penn
Cornell
Brown
USC
Tufts
UNC-Ch
NYU
Case Western
BU
Tulane
UF
NCSU
Size (a big school will likely expose you to more opportunities, while a small school will give you more individual attention and instruction), campus (classic college campus vs. many locations dispersed throughout a city), and general atmosphere (is the school more liberal or conservative? How much of a party culture is there? Is Greek life prevalent?)
If you like NCSU, why not add UNC-W (great location although it’s not a city!) and/or College of Charleston (excellent merit scholarships, medium-sized, historical city)? If you want to leave the South and attend a large university, look for those with big merit scholarships: what about UMN-Twin Cities (good scholarships, too), UMaryland College Park, tOSU, UCincinnati, UMass Amherst?
UVA is slightly easier to get into than UNC-CH, because there’s a cap on how many OOS students can be admitted and those will mostly be legacies and athletes.
BU and NYU don’t meet need, and in fact “gap” a lot of students. You can try your luck but don’t count them in your list.
Your list is coming together and looks much better than at first, so you’re working very quickly - kudos to you. 