College List Advice for full pay suburban public school applicant?

It’s going to be really hard to help you unless you let people know whether your parents are willing to pay the full amount that would be expected (that opens up highly selective schools that only give money for need, not merit) as reaches or whether your reaches will need to be the selectives that do give merit (more of which would likely be closer to matches for you, or at least somewhere between match and reach).

Likewise, knowing which fields in STEM and humanities you have interest in could matter. If engineering, many of the smaller colleges don’t have engineering programs.

Do you have a size preference for colleges? Larger ones would have a wider range of majors. What field was the research you did? Did you like it? That’s definitely something to highlight when applying to research universities. URochester would definitely be interested in it.