<p>My SAT score is 2280, all my SAT IIs, APs, grades, etc. are good enough to give me a shot at any college. Heres my list of colleges that ill be applying to so far. </p>
<p>Massachusetts Inst of Technology
Stanford University
University of California-Berkeley
California Institute Technology
Georgia Institute of Technology
Cornell University
Princeton University
Johns Hopkins University
Virginia Polytech Inst & State University
Rice University
University of Michigan
Columbia University</p>
<p>Are there any from this list I should replace with another college that might be better at science/engineering?</p>
<p>You might want to drop Virginia Tech. Carnegie Mellon would be a good one to add, I agree. It is a very good list for someone with your credentials. Which engineering specialty? Is Novokujbysevsk in Minnesota?</p>
<p>lol its in Russia, but ive never been there...I live in VA. Could I consider Umich and Georgia tech safeties almost? If so, then yeah i could drop VAtech and put carnegie mellon there. As for engineering specialty, i havent really decided. The only ones im pretty sure i do not want to do are agricultural, petroleum, and civil engineering. Anything else I might be interested in</p>
<p>I'd say Michigan is close to a safety for you. So is Cal since you are in-state. Cornell, Johns Hopkins and Rice are also pretty realistic matches. I would definitely drop VT for now because if you send in your application to Michigan this week (do it now), you will most likely get a positive response before Thanks Giving. If you do, you don't have to worry about VT or even GT. If you don't get a positive response by December 1, at that point, you can start worrying about VT. In the meanwhile, apply to the other schools. </p>
<p>I agree that CMU is worth looking into. But did you also consider Northwestern, which would be another good match for you? How about Harvey Mudd? It is in California and it is awesome in the Sciences? Finally, as far as true safeties go, I think UCSD might be worth checking out.</p>
<p>I say drop Va Tech b/c GA tech is a safety and UMich should be a good shot.</p>
<p>Add: if ya want</p>
<p>Carngie Mellon
RPI
Harvey Mudd
Olin</p>
<p>Look into the atmoshpere at these schools. Because Rice is totally different from Caltech in atmoshpere and totally different from MIT in location. Cornell is rural while Columbia is in the city. Try into these factors in order to narrow it down because ya might have a really hard time deciding in the crunch time of March, April.</p>
<p>Northwestern has every engineering discipline in the top 20 and is particularly strong in mat sci, industrial/management sci, mech, and biomed engg. It got a top-10 chem program also.</p>
<p>I wouldn't be so quick to drop Va Tech. While it might not have the prestige-factor of some of the others, you can get as good an education there as any of the others, and do so at far lower cost. Do well, and it will get you into any grad school you care to go to.</p>
<p>Yale and Harvard are in the top five in terms of engineering quality. A lot of people are biased against them because they have smaller programs (less quantity than the huge science "diploma mills" out there) but based on QUALITY, they are easily among the best. And quality is much more important for an undergraduate because it's per-student attention we're talking about here.</p>
<p>Overall, the best schools for sciences, by average rating across all departments, are Caltech, Harvard and Yale.</p>
<p>Caltech, Harvard and Yale also have incredibly high amounts of fellowship funding, research sponsorships, etc., that would pretty much put all the other schools on the OP's list to shame.</p>
<p>Furthermore, alumni of these schools do better at getting into the top science graduate schools than alumni of any other programs you have on your list.</p>
<p>I think Sciencewatch is really a rating of scientist research publication productivity and the number of times their articles are cited by other scientists.</p>
<p>I am somewhat confused as to why MIT is not on posterX's list of the best schools overall in the sciences.</p>
<p>MIT has a great deal of funding available for undergraduate research, not to mention a large number of laboratories in which undergrads may choose to research. Many of my fellow students at MIT were published during their undergraduate years in major journals.</p>
<p>MIT also does extremely well in placing its students in top grad programs -- I just entered a top 5 grad program in biology, and 10 of the 70 first-years in my program are MIT alums. (There are actually more MIT alums in my program than Harvard, Yale, and Caltech alums combined, although I don't personally think that means that MIT is "better" than those schools.)</p>
<p>Ahhh posterX. You see posterX is always talking about how great Yale is and pretty much puts down every other school. Harvard and Yale are not in the top 5 schools. MIT, Stanford, Caltech and Berkeley are. Don't believe me check out USNew's rankings of the top engineering porgrams.
Ask in the engineering forum if you don't believe me.</p>