General Advice / Critiques of College List, Safety & Target Suggestions

You’ve got a great list so far and good advice above. Just to add one thing: CS Rankings is a great resource for when you know the specific subfield and what research you want to do. Some notably missing options that could offer a good price:

http://csrankings.org/#/index?ai&vision&mlmining&nlp&ir

Unfortunately, many top options are public schools who wont offer you financial aid and those that aren’t you seem to have already included, but if you haven’t already looked there, it’s a good place to check.