<p>My D has her eyes on 6-7 colleges, but is not yet at the point where she will rule out any last minute additions. Her basic stats are:</p>
<p>GPA: 4.0 (97 on a 100 scale)</p>
<p>Class Rank: Not sure but in top 5-10% of NYS public school w/ 165 in her class.</p>
<p>Rigor: D has taken most rigorous schedule possible at her high school (and most rigorous of any of her classmates): 6 years of lab science, 5 years of math, 5 years of French, 4.5 years history/social studies and 4 years English. School only offers one AP course however.</p>
<p>SAT I: 1440 (760 CR, 680 M) Will take again Saturday
SAT IIs: 770 US History, 740 Biology, 730 Chemistry</p>
<p>ECs: Strong and focused (music, environment) but nothing of national note.</p>
<p>D hopes to major in biology or biochemistry.</p>
<p>D has certain criteria, including:</p>
<p>Not interested in Ivy League (maybe for graduate/med school but not for undergrad); looking for schools with 1500 to 6000 approx. undergrads; doesn't want to go to school east of Boston, north of a line from Hartford to Poughkeepsie, west of the Ohio/Indiana line or south of the Dismal Swamp;
doesn't want to go to school in a large city, but would like to be within an hour or so of a big city.</p>
<p>Do any of you have suggestions that D may have overlooked? I am betting the CC community will do a far better job of this than Counselor-O-Matic, but I realize that doesn't set the bar very high. Thanks.</p>
<p>Can you tell us her current list? It's hard to come up with colleges just out of thin air :).</p>
<p>There are lots of good schools that come to mind, especially LACs--Swarthmore, Haverford, Bryn Mawr, Vassar, Wesleyan, Oberlin, Kenyon, Trinity...on the University side, Carnegie Mellon, Georgetown, Boston College, Vanderbilit (not sure if that is too far south).</p>
<p>Edit: Oops. I guess the Uni's are on the big side, but except for BC, they all come close for undergrad (BC is 9000 ug)</p>
<p>Good thing she doesn't want to go to a school east of Boston, unless she's a really strong swimmer!</p>
<p>And I'm not sure what you mean - she doesn't want to go further north than Poughkeepsie or Hartford, or would she consider Boston & its western suburbs?</p>
<p>Clarifications -- advantagious, the schools currently on her list are: William & Mary (#1 reach), Wesleyan (reach), Lafayette (match), Kenyon (match), Denison (match), Washington (safety), Ohio Wesleyan (safety).</p>
<p>Chevda -- yeah, that wasn't too clear. She would consider metro Boston, but not northern New England or Upstate NY.</p>
<p>Well, since she's considering Kenyon, what about Oberlin or Vassar, which both get mention as Kenyon's overlap schools and are in the "high match" category? Both William and Mary and Wesleyan's overlaps are even bigger reaches, but Bucknell gets mention as a Lafayette overlap and it seems like a match with your daughter's stats. Boston College is also mentioned as a Lafayette overlap, but it might be too large for your daughter, with 9000 undergraduates. </p>
<p>However, I do have to say that your daughter's list seems pretty appropriate, although actually I would say that it is focused lower than is absolutely necessary--Lafayette, Kenyon and Denison are more like safe matches...their acceptance rate is too low to call them safeties, but your daughter's stats put her in the top 25% of their applicants and none of the schools have really low acceptance rates. Not that that is bad...I'm just commenting. If I were going to add some schools, I would add one or two high match schools, like Oberlin or Vassar. </p>
<p>Also, I'm not sure what school "Washington" is...there are pretty much a million schools around the country with the name Washington in them :)</p>
<p>in Maryland. Small LAC, 1350 undergrads in the Eastern Shore town of Chestertown. It reminded her of a mid-Atlantic version of home. She was also impressed with the students she met there -- both "staged" and impromtu.</p>
<p>Chevda -- Brandeis was on her list but has recently dropped after attending an information session and taking a tour (wasn't thrilled with the campus and dorms). She also toured Connecticut College and was annoyed about the way the adcom responded to questions from the science kids in the audience. The focus of the sales pitch was on the performing and visual arts and anything that interupted the flow was more or less brushed off. Too bad, I was very impressed with Conn College otherwise.</p>
<p>Tufts was actually a Counselor-O-Matic match -- the only one that made sense. The others were Dartmouth, UCLA, Wake Forest and Cornell.</p>
<p>Give Wake Forest a shot. It's small, stimulating, and I have yet to meet someone who doesn't like it. It's also an almost exact match for her stats.</p>
<p>Just thought I'd mention that the schools mentioned on this thread are all over the place in terms of how much merit money they offer, if that's a consideration.</p>