This spring I’m going on college tours with my family, but I’m not sure where I want to visit. I’ll most likely be visiting Dartmouth, Brown, and Duke, so I’m looking for schools around the East Coast (or on the way there from MI). I like mid-sized schools (4,000-15,000 students) that have a really nice, central campus (preferably not in the middle of a city). For example, I visited Vanderbilt last year and although it is in the middle of Nashville, the campus felt very enclosed and separate from the city itself. I also loved everything else about Vanderbilt, so schools like that would be great. Strong English programs are also good. I have pretty good stats (33 ACT, 3.8 GPA, honors and APs, pretty good extracurriculars), but I would appreciate a good mix of reach, match, and safety schools so I can be realistic. Thanks!
Reach: Havard, Princeton, Yale, Tufts
Match: Emory, Wake Forest, William and Mary, Rochester, Lehigh, Boston College
Safety: Fordham, American
Your ACT score is in the top range of the middle 50% of the most selective schools in the northeast. The strongest English programs are in the smaller schools. You are not going to find mid-sized schools here that measure up to you academically with a few exceptions. Dartmouth, Brown and Boston College are good choices but if you driving all the way from Michigan you would be foolish not to see and interview at Middlebury, Bowdoin, Bates, Williams, Amherst and Wesleyan, maybe even Colgate and Bucknell. They are smaller but having done this before students start off prefering larger schools and find things in smaller schools they like better. Ivy league admissions is a crap shoot and generally a numbers game. You have no chance to interview so you get to know them and vice versa. Also Ivy League undergraduate teaching quality is not that great. So keep an open mind about size especially if you plan on studying English. The east is dense with excellent schools so we don’t have the same attraction to Ivies as other parts of the country.
Agree with @lalalemma. Also look at:
Reach: Notre Dame, U Chicago, Johns Hopkins,
Match: Colgate University, Case Western Reserve, Georgetown, Villanova, Brandeis
Safeties: There are SOOOO many
Are you female? If so, Smith and Wellesley are smaller than your target (about 2500 each) but larger than many liberal arts colleges. Smith’s English department is excellent, and it’s in a small but very vibrant city, with a cohesive and very walkable, beautiful campus. Wellesley is in the suburbs of Boston, so its immediate surroundings are less interesting but the city is nearby. Lovely campus.
University of Virginia is on your way to Duke, more or less, a beautiful campus in a small city.
Duke has an odd split campus, so that some students live a couple of miles away and need to bike or take the shuttle to the main campus. May or may not matter to you.
Also add Holy Cross…you should have no issue getting in and the quality of teaching and its reputation is superb. It has a reputation for extremely challenging and rigorous academics and while Worcester won’t win any beauty pageants it is the second largest city in New England and a great college town.
Looks like you’re up to about a three-week New England/East Coast tour now. Rather than add to your itinerary, maybe you can provide some information about your economic situation? What is your approximate EFC? Are your parents willing to help pay for your education and if so to what extent? Some of those state schools, in particular, can be quite expensive for out-of-state students.
Agree with @hudsonvalley51 that this list probably needs to be narrowed, not expanded. Nonetheless, I’ll add one: William and Mary.
Holy Cross would be a good match-very strong academics, good school spirit, and strong alumni network.