<p>I'm at a list of 15 schools. I am interested in going and majoring in business with journalism on the side, but having trouble cutting down this list, unless I apply ED to NW or Cornell.</p>
<p>32 ACT (33 superscore)/95 avg and 7 APs</p>
<p>Please help in shortening the list to about 11</p>
<p>UC Berkeley
Target/Reach<br>
Cornell Univ
Reach<br>
U of IL Urbana-Champaign
Safety<br>
Indiana U Bloomington
Safety<br>
U of Michigan
Target<br>
U of North Carolina Chapel Hill
Reach<br>
Northwestern Univ
Reach<br>
Pennsylvania State Univ
Safety<br>
U of Pennsylvania
Reach<br>
U of Richmond
Target<br>
U of Southern California
Reach<br>
SUNY Binghamton
Safety<br>
U of Texas Austin
Target<br>
Tulane Univ
Safety<br>
U of Virginia
Reach<br>
Washington Univ in St Louis
Reach</p>
<p>I don’t think you need five safeties. Lose two of them. I don’t know where you’re located, but you’ve also got a lot of OOS publics where you’re probably not going to get much if any aid (if that’s a factor). The OOS fees at UC Berkeley are going to kill you. So unless you REALLY want to come to CA for school, I’d drop it. You’re also reach heavy (8 of 15, counting Berkeley). Drop another reach school and that should get you down to 11 with 6 reaches, 2 targets, and 3 safeties. You might want to drop one more safety and find another target, but that’s up to you.</p>
<p>You can start by running net price calculators on each school and eliminating those which are unaffordable. If any have large merit scholarships that could make them affordable, reassess reach/match/safety in terms of the merit scholarship, not just admission.</p>
<p>Three of your “safeties” (Tulane, Indiana, and SUNY Binghamton) consider “level of applicant’s interest”. Reclassify them as matches for admission purposes, since schools which consider “level of applicant’s interest” cannot be safeties (but you still need to check cost).</p>
<p>Eliminate any school that you would not choose over your safeties. Remember, your safeties must be affordable for sure as well as places where you will be admitted for sure.</p>
<p>Another strategy (which my DD is adopting) is to apply EA (non-binding) to your favorite and/or most affordable safety – one which reports decisions by December – or find a safety with rolling admissions. If you get in, there is no need to waste time and money applying to your other safeties and you can focus on your matches and reaches, knowing that you have “one in the bag.” If you don’t get in (meaning it wasn’t really a safety), you should still have time to apply RD to other safeties.</p>