College List Advice for full pay suburban public school applicant?

Bryn Mawr or Haverford – both are part of a consortium and you have the benefit of a small college setting with the range of several colleges to branch out to. The consortium includes BMC, Haverford, Swarthmore and UPenn. Transportation among the schools is provided. BMC especially has STEM that is great for women, empowering of women, and yet you can attend classes with men – as Haverford is coed and they freely take classes at BMC. If you are premed as another person has speculated BMC has a postbac program with excellent credentials and so you’d be guaranteed excellent premed at the undergrad level too.

If you’re interested in engineering, H and BMC have a unique program with UPenn in which you begin your engineering at H or BMC (or both) and then you finish at UPenn. https://www.haverford.edu/engineering/41-program-university-pennsylvania BMC’s program is the same.

What I find especially nice about BMC and H is that they are top-achieving schools and yet the the community is purposefully not stressful. The Honor Code that both schools share and the community of personal responsibility that builds around that helps you achieve your goals with the minimum of stress.

BMC has merit in addition to need-based aid. I am not sure if you’d be a match but I think you would be. I don’t know if H has merit or only need-based aid.

Both schools are about 10-11 miles out of Philly – a quick train-ride away.