Hi, I am a rising senior from the Chicagoland area. I love Boston College because of it’s campus community. I’m looking for other east coat schools that have a similar feel without the Roman Catholic aspect. I have a 32 on the ACT and a 4.4 GPA with mostly honors and AP classes. What other schools should I look in to?
Colgate, Colby and Bucknell are non-catholic schools that come to mind. Perhaps Lehigh and St. Lawrence (not religious) as well.
What exactly do you like about BC? The size, location, sports?
Dartmouth? Wake Forest?
Tell us more about what it is you like about BC.
I like the size and how the campus is suburban and has a quad that public streets don’t intersect. I like the D1 sports and the high quality of education.
Wake, Princeton.
Lehigh comes to mind. Further south you have UVA, UNC, Wake, URichmond among other options. Tufts might be another good one to look at near Boston but it is D3.
Honestly, I’d suggest that you get your hands on some good college guide books (ex. Fiske, Princeton Review, Insiders Guide) which can likely be found in your HS guidance office or a library and start reading.
Since you’re from Chicago, you probably realize that you pretty much just described Northwestern, too. But if you didn’t, it is the hometown equivalent.
Vassar?
When you say “D1 sports”, does that include “top-tier” (i.e. D1-FBS) college football?
If it does, it will severely limit your options in the northeastern US. The northeast is great for college basketball, hockey, and lacrosse, but not so great for football. There only 11 FBS schools in this area, and most of them aren’t that good:
New England: BC, UConn
NY: Army, Syracuse, Buffalo
NJ: Rutgers
PA: Temple, Penn State, Pitt
MD: Navy, Maryland
Furthermore, none of them are really comparable to BC as both selective and suburban.
There would be more options if you included FCS football, like the Ivy or Patriot Leagues. FCS is technically D1, but it gets nowhere near the level of fan interest or media coverage as FBS football.
At BC, the Catholic impact on a student’s day to day life is extremely minor. Just keep that in mind if you can’t find a suitable substitute.