@zoe.ggirl
Emory has lower stats than Tufts I think, so Tufts may be harder, but the two schools may just look for different things and certainly have different strengths where Emory is on a different level in terms of research prowess. Also, since you are aiming for selective privates (or publics) and say you want to do science, please get ready to perform or study hard, especially if pre-health. I almost do not recommend going to one if you think you will have to almost too carefully craft your course schedule and professor selection to get by. If you have to severely water down your education to succeed, then these places are not worth the money (and yes, people with better stats than you even do this. Why pay 65k if you want or feel the need to dodge the challenge that supposedly makes the degree worth paying so much more than others). These folks may have enjoyed a public (as in a non-“elite”, but competitive public) honors program better (less financial stress, good courses, more lenient grading because honors courses are much smaller on average than counterparts at a top private, more hand-holding as they are standouts at the school, whereas at top publics and privates, an honors level student is a dime a dozen and basically all students are theoretically capable of honors college level work). If you foresee a research type of career or something else with STEM that will allow you to take some risks and be academically challenged, then many selective privates that shine in certain sciences like Emory could be really good for you (you can take courses that challenge you and even introduce imperfections to your transcript without lots of damage to grad. school prospects, get great mentoring, and also get access to cutting edge research with folks at the very top of their fields). The humanities and social sciences are excellent and there are many options for even freshmen who want to hit the ground running. You could start Voluntary Core experience for example. If not, many more ambitious freshman are allowed to ascend to 200 to even some 300 level courses in a discipline early on.
If you really only want privates (which would fall in that population range), consider places like Brandeis! It will not give the same infrastructure but will offer an excellent education and will likely offer research opps in a similar fashion to good and very elite LACs. Liberal Arts Colleges are actually more effective at sending STEM students to STEM graduate programs due to differences in curricula from larger research universities which must run things based upon efficiency in most cases (usually top research universities offer excellent advanced or “take next level class up” options, but you don’t have much AP credit meaning you would need to go through the traditional intro. classes which can be rigorous but are generally a very “meh” experience even at top USNWR ranked national unis).
*The interesting thing is that I have seen students like you that were not perfect performers in all academic aspects in HS (like maybe they had a low SAT or something), but ended up doing very well at Emory and did take the bull by its horns and chose to challenge themselves and ended up doing well, even if there were some bumps in the beginning. One such person was a Millennium Gates award winner and she was concerned her SAT would shut her out but likely all of her EC accomplishments, awards, and GPA and gained her admissions (she was from a rough background as well so character counted to), and she truly did enjoy learning and she joined the Voluntary Core classes and said she really appreciated the challenge, got to improve her writing a lot, met other cool profs., etc Note that she was pre-health so also was doing key pre-health courses like chemistry. More of a renaissance woman she was. Usually most pre-healths who are not double majoring outside of science take humanities and social sciences just for GERs, and will exclusively take those that guarantee GPA protection (believe it or not, there is an English teacher for example, that attracts primarily pre-healths, and is aware that he does, and does end running a soft course, so student expectations can affect behavior of the instruction), but this girl who would typically be considered a “weaker” applicant said “screw it, I would rather get an education”.
Evaluate if you fit that type of bill and what exactly you would do if you went to a place like Emory or Tufts and then figure out where you want to apply and give it a shot.