<p>Hey. I will be graduating in 2010 and I am trying to get on top of college apps. </p>
<p>Stats.
-middle class white female from WV
-3rd in my class of 300 (might be 2nd by the time i graduate), AP magnet school
- weighted GPA= 4.7, unweighted = 3.9
-Excellent AP Scores, AP Scholar with Honors now, will be National AP Scholar by the time I apply (if everything goes well)
-National Merit Finalist (hasn't been confirmed, but I had a 221 and WV's cutoff has never been higher than 215)
-Excellent SAT II's
-mediocre SAT I- 2130, but I retook it in march so I'm still waiting to see how I did, hopefully better
-a ton of extra curriculars, mainly theatre/dance, but also a considerable amount of volunteering, president of 2 clubs at my high school
- admitted to highly selective summer research program
- planning on doing biomedical engineering, but if that doesn't work our probably a chem/cog sci double major</p>
<p>im planning on applying to UVA, UChi, UPenn, Columbia, Lehigh, and Swarthmore, but i need a couple of good safety schools since all of the aforementioned are very selective.</p>
<p>criteria for safety schools</p>
<p>-fairly good chance of getting in, but with peers i could stand to be around for 4 yrs
-not in WV, not WVU
-good merit aid, scholarships for national merit would be good
-early action
-good engineering/science program
-nice campus/location
-preferably on the east coast</p>
<p>id really appreciate any suggestions that meet most/some of these criteria. thank you!</p>
<p>Not sure if you like this, as it’s midwest, but U of Notre Dame has a pretty high Early Action acceptance rate, is a top 25 school, and has great programs and one of the most beautiful campuses out there</p>
<p>Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland (yeah…not east coast, but not a bad drive from WV). They have some affiliation with a music conservatory, if I’m remembering correctly, and an active theater department (so our tour guide said).</p>
<p>ok thank you everyone for all of the suggestions!
i visited georgetown and didn’t really care for it. i haven’t looked into the others yet, but plan to do so. thank you!</p>
<p>yeah. i was mainly looking for schools that i can be 70-80% sure i can get into, but would still like to attend. a good example school would be elon. good school, preppy, pretty, but with ‘middle 50% stats’ significantly lower than mine.
that said i appreciate all suggestions!</p>
<p>also i just checked out ursinus, that looks exactly like what im looking for.
too bad i didnt figure that out earlier tho, i visited swarthmore, upenn, and lehigh over spring break. eh oh well</p>
<p>IMO a great semi-safety would be the University of Miami (the one in Florida). The good thing about having a safety early action is that even if you somehow get deferred or even rejected, you have a few weeks to find a REAL safety and it alerts you to potential unforeseen problems with your aplication.</p>
<p>1) They actually have early action.
2) Awesome location.
3) Give tons of merit aid. “26.5% of freshmen without need, average amount $16,910” (from collegedata).
4) Merit aid means that other top students can be found.</p>
<p>
A binding admission to a safety school doesn’t sound like a great idea.</p>
<p>I think U Miami would be a good semi-safety as well. But a true safety is the one that you can definitely afford without merit scholarships (unless automatic) and you are certain you’ll be accepted to. Generally, big state U’s.</p>
<p>thanks smarteeangel101. i wouldn’t consider it mediocre, except that according to CC standards everything below 2250 is unacceptable. </p>
<p>and yes, definitely non-binding. applying ED to a safety makes zero sense.</p>
<p>while ursinus doesn’t have engineering, they do have (according to their website & a couple of college books) very good biology and chemistry departments, so i think that might work.</p>
<p>i’m pretty equally divided between BME and chemistry/cog sci. As a girl its easier to get into a school through the engineering department usually, and for many schools its easier to transfer out of engineering as opposed to in. so as of right now i am planning to apply though BME and see for the first year or so if i like engineering. partly because of this, i would apply to a safety even if it doesnt have engineering, but has a strong natural science department.</p>
<p>ill look into U Miami & UGA.
Unfortunately the only big state school in WV is WVU, which is an intellectual (and visual) wasteland. It’s my understanding that most state schools do not give good financial aid to out-of state applicants, so i havent really considered them. I might qualify for in-state tuition for UVA tho. I lived in Charlottesville for 10 yrs, both of my parents are alumni, and i have 4 generations of legacy on my moms side. I know other kids of alumni who have gotten in-state tuition (not sure if they were treated as in state for admissions), but i dont really want to count on that.</p>
<p>I aslo need to start looking at safeties, as I will not have a 4.0 3rd marking period like I did my other semesters ( due to some of my teachers, etc…). I think I probably should add one of the two ( there are other good universities as well)University of Colorado- Boulder, Arizona State University to a must apply to. You should also look into these universities.</p>
<p>I visited Boulder a couple years ago and absolutely loved it. Beautiful, clean, great parks and restaurants, but I didn’t think that U of Colorado- Boulder was that prestigious, that said I will still look into it. My dad wants me to apply to Arizona State because they automatically give all national merit scholars full rides, but I wasn’t that enthralled with it when i looked at their website, so idk.</p>