<p>Good news, bad news for those stats.</p>
<p>Good news: good chance for merit money as schools below the top 20.</p>
<p>Bad news: good chance for “Tuft’s Syndrome” waitlists at some schools in this range guarding their yield rate (e.g. WashU)</p>
<p>(IMHO, YMMV)</p>
<p>What about schools near Providence or Philadelphia? Providence College, Brown, Haverford, Bryn Mawr, Swarthmore, UPenn?</p>
<p>If she’s willing to look in Michigan, perhaps she would consider Oberlin? </p>
<p>What about the schools in the greater Washington DC area? It’s a little further south than the NE, but lots of choices there!!</p>
<p>EngProfMom: Yeah, no kidding. As I was listing all those items I noticed how Y fits all of them except #8! H and Y are really very similar and at the top of her list, well above all the others. It is really too bad word got out that they are good schools 
</p>
<p>She visited Swarthmore, loved it and may apply, but of course it is super competitive. She is not too keen on LACs (which includes all women’s colleges), partly due to their small size. I know consortia help with that, but still, the current search is for larger, less competitive schools that can round out her list. </p>
<p>This has been very helpful. We will research Tufts, Brandeis, Boston College, Emory, WUSTL a little bit more. </p>
<p>Is Carnegie Mellon strong in humanities? Somehow I thought it was mostly a science school since it tends to cluster with Caltech and MIT.</p>
<p>I’ve tried to get her to consider Hopkins with an open mind but the image of hassled ‘cut-throat’ pre-meds is just too strong. The Writing Seminars would be a very good fit with her interests. </p>
<p>Despite her affinity for the Northeast, we live far away and her schedule is very tight with E.C’s it is not going to be easy to visit too many schools before Jan 1st.</p>
<p>I’m not certain why the OPs daughter didn’t like the University of Chicago, because apart from that (and apart from it’s being a little far from the Northeast, but no farther than Northwestern), it is EXACTLY what she says her daughter is looking for. We are a family of two HYP-graduate parents and two children at Chicago (one just graduated, actually), and we could not be more impressed with the quality of the education, the quality of the students, the quality of the experience in general. Minus some of the sense of entitlement, and some of the attendance at football games, it is very close to what we experienced (and loved) in college.</p>
<p>Whatever turned her off is probably a lot less important than what should be turning her on.</p>
<p>That said, I don’t think there are lots of secrets about where kids who would be perfectly good fits at Harvard wind up if they happen not to get into Harvard (or its closest equivalents). Most of them don’t have acceptance rates 3-4x Harvard’s, but most of those kids don’t need that. Non-HYP Ivies. Duke. The set of private universities that includes Tufts, WUSTL, Chicago, Northwestern, Johns Hopkins, Carnegie-Mellon, Vanderbilt and Emory (maybe USC). NYU and BU. Top LACs. National public universities like Michigan, Berkeley, Virginia, UNC. Oxbridge.</p>
<p>Carnegie-Mellon may be spotty in the humanities, but it has an excellent creative writing program (Michael Chabon is its flagship alumnus), and also a first-rate theater program. It’s not all engineering and computers, although those are areas of real strength, too. Hopkins, in addition to creative writing, has an absolutely first-rate English department, and is very strong in history, international relations, and such.</p>
<p>I am not certain my daughter still wants to be a writer, but she did when she went to college. She loved Chicago (in the ambivalent, analytical way she loves anything), but at one point she said that if she were applying to college again, she would pay much more attention to Carnegie-Mellon, Hopkins, and Penn, none of which she applied to, and which she now thinks have the best writing programs. (Brown could have been on that list, too, but she DID pay attention to it and didn’t like what she saw.)</p>
<p>VP…I do think looking at Tufts, Brandeis, Boston College, Emory, and WUSTL are excellent options in the range you are asking about. Brandeis is a little easier and may be a borderline match/safety even. Matches would be good to have though such as the others. </p>
<p>CMU is not just science! I had a student apply last year for a double major in creative writing and music composition. In fact, my own kid applied for musical theater there which is one of the tippy top MT programs in the country. I think your D should explore it and see what she thinks. Has a campus, through the city is right there.</p>
<p>I did a search on College Navigator with these criteria:
– All states but South and CA
– UG population 5k-10k
– Selectivity 20-30%
– 4 yr bachelor’s granting public or private
– Suburban or Urban</p>
<p>Here are the hits:
Boston College
Carnegie Mellon University
Johns Hopkins University
Northwestern University
Tufts University
University of Notre Dame
Washington University in St Louis</p>
<p>All but ND meet your “suburb near a large city” requirement, although St. Louis is significantly smaller than Boston.</p>
<p>If you get a little less selective (30%-40%) but maintain a level of higher-test scores you can also throw in:
College of William and Mary
Villanova University</p>
<p>Of which Villanova qualifies for your urban/suburban requirement.</p>
<p>If, on the other hand, you go to 3k-5k UG population you add:
U of Chicago
Lehigh University</p>
<p>Chicago is urban, but not “very urban” like NYU.</p>
<p>That’s all there is out there given your stipulations. You’ll need to loosen up your requirements to find more.</p>
<p>May I add that I think its silly to dismiss Tufts because of alleged “Tufts Syndrome”. I don’t think it exists now, if it ever did (read the Tufts admissions officer in the Tufts forum here on CC) but, even if it did, why might this keep her from loving the school?</p>
<p>Despite the not in the south - I think anyone who likes Harvard and Yale ought to look at Rice. For the rest some obvious contenders:</p>
<p>Tufts
Brandeis
GW
Carnegie Mellon (really midwest imo)
Syracuse
Rochester</p>
<p>I also had throught of Lehigh (my own high achieving D’s safety school) but it is not that close to the city and the town is nothing like Cambridge. </p>
<p>I suggested CMU as the OP’s D is also looking at schools in the midwest after all (though originally mentioned Northeast I think).</p>
<p>I also thought of Syracuse but the city is not all that much and also her stats are so high that I think her match schools can be more competitive and even her safety school more so than Syracuse (nothing wrong with Syracuse!).</p>
<p>Also, if your D likes Cambridge, Tufts is in the adjoining town! A hop from Cambridge. </p>
<p>Disclaimer…I’m a Tufts alum and loved it. I went to grad school at Harvard.</p>
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<p>Soozie–only a New Englander would suggest that CMU is in the midwest! :)</p>
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<p>I was thinking the same thing. Except for being in the South, Rice fits the bill perfectly.</p>
<p>garland, I actually do not consider CMU the midwest !! LOL. I should not have worded it as I did but I was looking at mathmom’s post 28 where she said she considers CMU the Midwest. I had included CMU as it was in the Middle Atlantic states. Then, the OP, who had first said “northeast” (and I did not think of CMU as too far fetched in that case!), came back saying her D was looking at Northwestern, UMich, Macalaster, and WUSTL which are much further from the Northeast! I guess I was responding to mathmom and her “CMU is really midwest comment”.</p>
<p>Ah, I missed that. :)</p>
<p>Growing up in a city not unlike Pittsburgh, I thought of Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Buffalo, Detroit, Erie, etc., as a “near Midwest”. We had much more in common with people from Ohio and Michigan than we did with people from New York City or Philadelphia.</p>
<p>Well, okay. but when I went to school in Michigan, I was often told that that wasn’t the midwest, that the midwest was more like Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, etc. guess it’s just perception.</p>
<p>Hi all, thanks for comments and please keep them coming. Here are a few quick replies:</p>
<p>Yes, UChicago is a great fit (in theory) but our visit last summer was not too inspiring (to D). The tour guide and info session person only reinforced the “fun goes to die” reputation. She really wants to be around fun-loving people. UChicago also doesn’t seem to offer too much for a vocal musician and policy debater (hence, NU is a much much stronger fit on paper, though we still have not visited). The UChicago app is also time consuming and even though she loves writing, those prompts didn’t speak to her. So it is off the list for now, though not completely off the radar.</p>
<p>Rice: Looked into it, the reputation seems to be stronger in science/engineering and premed than in liberal arts/humanities. Residential colleges and music school are a plus. Not sure it would be better than UMich. Houston isn’t a deal-breaker though it doesn’t help.</p>
<p>We visited Brown, she did not like it for many reasons (I could elaborate at length but it would be a distraction). One strike against it is the open curriculum. The Chicago/Columbia core is actually an attraction.</p>
<p>Politically she wants diversity (as in not too “granola hippie” liberal). She also wants racial/ethnic/geographic and socio-economic diversity.</p>
<p>I guess the key is going to be UMich. She has yet to visit it. If she loves it in person as much as she likes it on paper (actually, online), then it would be a big relief. She would stop worrying about match/low match and reach a bit more.</p>
<p>The Midwest would be nice because it is closer to home. My original post only cited a preference for the Northeast and an avoidance of the South (really, the Southeast).</p>
<p>Like all teenagers (actually like all people), she has biases and is influenced by stereotypes. My own preferences would be different but she is the one who will attend so in the end she gets to decide. I welcome recommendations and arguments in favor of specific schools in this general category, even if they don’t fulfill the 8 criteria I specified in the opening post- I plan to share these posts with her and she can decide what compromises she is willing to make. </p>
<p>One southern college, a possible exception - anyone know how Wake Forest would fit for her? The only thing we know is that it is a strong debate school.</p>
<p>I trust that Duke is too competitive to be considered a match?</p>
<p>Thank you all!</p>
<p>Wake may not have the diversity she’s looking for.</p>
<p>If I may offer a gentle suggestion-- although visiting is great, it is not always the most predictive activity. Schools which could be a great fit get torpedoed because the guide is wearing a tube top or calls women “female students” or is from a town close to ours where we got a parking ticket once. (True stories all but not all at the same college!) You visit a bustling, active campus over July 4th weekend and it looks like a neutron bomb hit it. You end up with a couple of really obnoxious parents on your tour or in your info session who derail the conversation so your kid despises the school. Etc.</p>
<p>It is hard to get a kid to reconsider a college after it’s been placed on the “do not fly” list… so maybe you want to hold off on more visiting if your kid already has a very specific list of what she wants.</p>
<p>And a quick sidebar on size- your D may discover there are only two sizes of school- too big and too small. Anything else she needs to keep an open mind about. Whether a school has 1,000 or 4,000 in her Freshman class isn’t really going to matter… she won’t meet everyone over four years in either case.</p>
<p>Have you been to the Amherst/Northampton area? Amherst, UMass, and Hampshire all offer very different educational experiences to choose from. There is a 5 college consortium that includes Smith and Mt. Holyoke. Interesting, vibrant area with Northampton offering a large town/small city vibe.</p>
<p>Tufts has a pretty low acceptance rate these days. Your daughter would get in, I would think, for sure, so it could be on the list.</p>
<p>Oops, just read you are in the midwest. Macalaster, yes. UChicago and UMichigan. How about Lawrence? Is Oberlin too rural for her?</p>
<p>Another vote for Brandeis. </p>
<p>I was raised in NJ and now live in Texas, about four hours south of Houston. Rice is a fantastic school, of course, but the culture shock can be difficult. Houston reminds me not at all of Boston and Texas is, well, Texas. If she’s considering Rice, I would make sure she visits in September or October.</p>