Hey, I’ve been having some trouble narrowing down my college list to a manageable amount of schools. I’d like advice about what schools you think would and would not fit me, and/or about what I can do to narrow down a list. I can give more info or provide clarification if anyone wants. Thanks in advance to anyone who replies.
Background on me:
Academics) I was a straight-A student until my junior year, when depression hit me hard, and I got a lot of B’s and a couple C’s. My gpa’s around 3.7, I think, and I expect to do well in the first semester of senior year. My ACT’s a 32, by SAT’s pretty good, I can’t remember exactly what- certainly above 2000-, and I’m still waiting for my subject test scores. I’ve taken a lot of AP’s, including World History (4) in my sophomore year, Chemistry (3), Calc AB (5), Micro (4), Lang (3), Physics 1 (3 on the physics C mech test), US Gov (5) in my junior year, and, now, Bio, Calc BC, Lit, Euro, and Macro. I can write well.
Other) I love thinking and learning, but I don’t care much for school and for grades in and of themselves. I love listening, playing, and writing music. I read a lot, and I write. I’m not very social or athletic.
What I’m looking for (note that I don’t need all of these things in one school; these are just my preferences):
- I’ve got a pretty wide variety of interests, so I’m primarily looking for schools that are at least decent for a wide variety of subjects, although cognitive science, philosophy, and physics are most important to me right now.
- I don’t care much about reputation, outside of what that indicates about the school’s quality of education.
- Among the most important things to me is being able to find people I get along well with, and to that effect, I’m looking for schools with intellectual but unpretentious, preferably easy-going atmospheres/students; with good music scenes; with social scenes that put little importance on partying and sports.
- As far as the actual education, aside from looking for “quality,” in general, I’d prefer schools that have a lot of teacher-student interaction, for which discussions are a major part of most classes, that have relatively small class sizes, in which a lot of emphasis is placed on critical thinking and writing, and in which actual learning matters more than grades or preparation for a career.
- For size and location, I don’t care much about the size of the city/town, and I’d prefer schools that are in the pacific northwest (a place I love), Colorado, or the Midwest (near home), but I’d be fine with schools in New England or Cali- really, I just don’t want to go to the South, or anywhere that’s very conservative.
- I’m an atheist, and consequently, I don’t want to go anywhere with a religious affiliation, and I’d prefer to go somewhere that’s relatively areligious.
I’ve got a few schools that I’m pretty confident I want to apply to, including Reed, Sarah Lawrence, Hampshire, Bard, Grinnell, UW Madison, and UMN Twin Cities. Then, I’ve got a pretty big list of schools I’m considering applying to, over twenty in number. If it helps, I can post the list.