<p>Right now I am looking at Rice, JHU, Penn and Cornell</p>
<p>Uni's: Case Western, Syracuse, U Rochester (more of a very safe match), American, Penn State Honors.</p>
<p>Good suggestions but keep in mind that Penn State Honors is extremely competetive with an average SAT slightly higher than Penn. The application is a bear with very intense questions.</p>
<p>The four you list, Josh, look good except I think you said you were not interested in Penn. For additional sure bets how about NYU, BU, GWU?</p>
<p>Michigan...apply in Sept, hear in Oct. Then dont worry about safeties.</p>
<p>is it BU or BC that is extremely republican ?</p>
<p>conservative... wow, did not just type that.......</p>
<p>"Good suggestions but keep in mind that Penn State Honors is extremely competetive with an average SAT slightly higher than Penn. The application is a bear with very intense questions."</p>
<p>Also keep in mind that PSU Honors is PSU with only slightly smaller classes. And it's very incorrect to presume (if you indeed did) that PSU Honors is more difficult to get into than Penn is. I, along with many of my classmates, was accepted to PSU Honors. They like high SATs (I'd say around 1400 and you're good...or whatever the new 1400 is) and good grades. Other stuff is apparently superfluous as I know at least 20 people that got into PSU Honors that were dinged at many, many other schools (like JHU, Tufts, various ivies, etc.). </p>
<p>Schreyer prides itself on its high SAT average. But most of my friends that decided to go there realized that it is really not all that seperated from regular old PSU. So if you aren't into a "drunken jockocracy" (to steal a Simpsons line) PSU Honors might not be for you.</p>
<p>BC is probably more conservative--a ton of prep school kids</p>
<p>okay, don't want to go there then. I know Rice and Johns Hopkins are both very similar academically, but i am getting the vibe that JHU is slightly "easier" to get into. Is this accurate or no?</p>
<p>I think they're both pretty hard to get in to. Where are you from? I've noticed that an east coast school would probably be more difficult to get into if you're from the east coast. Either way, Baltimore's kinda sketchy..</p>
<p>Baltimore is more than sketchy...even though JHU's campus is pretty nice. Houston is hot as crap and Rice is hellishly hard to get into out-of-state (at least that's what I've noticed). Over 50% come from TX.</p>
<p>"Don't apply to Vanderbilt..
It sucks...
Most people like Bush there"</p>
<p>Not true. It was actually skewed Kerry in the last election (check election results in Davidson county). You should have seen the graffitti all over campus imploring everyone to "stop Bush". There was no "go Bush" graffitti.</p>
<p>Well, about half of my family lives in TX, so i dont mind them much, and my uncle can pretty much get me in Rice if i really want to go there.. but i think the reason they have so many Texans is that hardly anyone up here has heard of Rice. Everyone has heard of Rice in TX, and TX is huge, so they probably have a ton of applicants-- i dont think Rice is like Virginia where being in-state makes all the difference, but maybe im wrong.</p>
<p>if i apply interim to rice, can i apply ED to Hopkins ?</p>
<p>Being from Texas isn't an advantage when applying to Rice.....it is private. A good portion of the quality applicatants come from Texas.....thus the 50% figure.</p>
<p>I can't believe everyone is saying how "you don't need safeties" or your safeties are "Wellesley, Cornell, JHU..."</p>
<p>These people don't have a clue as to what they're talking about.</p>
<p>You should definately apply to at least 2 or 3 SAFETY schools. Don't let the CC forum give you a disilllusion. I would recommend something like Boston University...not Vanderbilt, JHU...etc Sorry but those aren't safeties for anyone (and even if you're big-headed enough to think they are, you might be rejected to preserve yield)</p>
<p>Sorry but the previous posters are all misinformed...since when did Cornell become a safety school?!</p>
<p>Safeties are where students need to truly do the research and ask themselves what they want in a school. When you cherry pick those reach schools, it often doesn't matter what your interests are, the geographics, the particulars, since you are going primarily for the school name and reputation, and if they have some of your areas of interest. Not so with a safety. You can look at some of your state schools and see if any have rolling admissions, and can be a bird in hand. Perhaps also apply to Tulane EA if you can and see if that works. If you have a safety accept early in the process, you can go to town with your other choices. If those two choices do not pan out, then you know that you need to start looking at some less selective schools that can give you what you want as backups.</p>