I hate to sound too judgemental on this but how do you like both of these?
“Dartmouth (Nature and fitness!) and Columbia (NYC, many opportunities, dual degree with university in France)”
I’ve been to both of these, surprising as that may be, and they’re really different wrt feel, culture, location. Once you get an idea what kind of campus you prefer and location, that will help narrow it down.
“Pomona (California)”
Again, if you like California because of the weather, you can eliminate more colleges that have pretty brutal weather, at least compared to California, but I won’t name them to protect the innocent.
As a junior you’re still in the blue sky, no horizon stage of dancing in the open fields of options. Revel in it for a while, because it’s fun and makes you feel alive and wonderful and full of potential. Seriously, this is the most fun part of picking colleges, so actually enjoy it.
BUT by the end of this summer you’re going to want to come back to earth, have visited a few campuses so you have some basis for a choice, and get cracking on apps. So get your parents into a car, drive to Madison and Chicago and start hitting schools. See a few types (UW-Mad, UChi, Northwestern, Loyola just for variety, maybe South Bend) so you know if they’ll work for you or not: eliminate huge or urban or little D3 sports or Greek or whatever, but get a real grip on what you value. You can go east or west to visit more places next year, as you get closer to a decision, but right now you don’t sound like you’ve got a concrete foundation for prioritizing this list.
Also, get your parents moving on setting a budget and dipping a toe into the NPC ocean. They need to stop seeing your education as this glorious journey of awesome and start looking at it as a serious monthly check to be written. They need to figure out your EFC and determine if it’s a payable number. (For many households it is not.) Be clear that many of those schools you listed get so many great applicants that merit aid can be preposterously competitive or utterly non-existent. If you’re going to face actual financial limits it’s far, far better to do it now than when you have a stack of acceptance letters in hand and no way to pay. That happens every spring and it’s heartbreaking to see when you know it could have been avoided.
You mention you want some rah-rah school spirit & basketball & football games. While the Ivy League schools (& U of Chicago/Carnegie-Mellon/Wash U/CalTech) might have teams in these sports, in general the arenas & stadia are nowhere near full, & the atmosphere at games is not very exciting. There are a few exceptions, especially in basketball (where Penn & Princeton can have generated considerable excitement in the past) & men’s ice hockey (in which some Ivies like Harvard & Yale might have nationally ranked teams). But in general, if you want your college experience to include some intense sports, you can drop the Ivies (& Chicago et. al.).
You could apply to University of Pittsburgh early next year, it’s great for neuroscience and in a fun city.
It’s possible that you would get merit there.
Other merit possibilities are Ohio State and Temple. These also have college sports and school spirit.
I would remove schools that don’t look affordable with either merit or need based aid, based on net price calculator results and with future med school in mind.
If you are spending so much out of your parent’s pocket, why bother with overcrowded out of state schools? Why go for Costco when you can go to an exclusive designer boutique?
I would drop Notre Dame, despite the recommendations, since it is fairly conservative and Catholic, and likely not the best place for a non-White woman.
It is noteworthy that Asians make up 5.3% of the student body, which is pretty low for any selective school (for comparison, U Michigan has 15%, and WashU has 19%).
I notice that you have both neuroscience and computer science as major interests, which makes me wonder if you are interested in the study of artificial intelligence.
I would suggest keeping Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, Harvard, Yale.
I would not recommend applying to every single Ivy League school. That just doesn’t seem like a good investment of your time and effort. Dartmouth and Brown–although amazing schools–seem a little less in keeping with your areas of interest than some of the other Ivies. And I don’t think you will have a hard time finding people who enjoy fitness at any school (as well as some people who most decidedly do not!) I would also nix WashU if your main reason for applying to it is that it is close to home, and Pomona if your main reason for applying to it is that it is in California. (Again, these are both great schools, but the reasons you listed for including them on your list seemed less well-defined than for some of your other choices.)
As an Asian full pay, interest in economics, politics, neuroscience and comp sci, just a dash of partying, Rice sounds like an ideal school for you. I would suggest Duke, CMU, U Chicago,Vandy, NW as well.
Odds at Ivies, Stanford, MIT are never high if your are an Asian coming from a competitive suburban public school and upper middle class and educated family. With your interest in economics you should be able to see that paying sticker price at out of state public schools or expensive LAC doesn’t give you a good value.
I think you are a good candidate for merit scholarships at elites schools who still offer it.
Although Rice plays in Division 1, Rice does not have a rah rah sports culture like some of the other schools on your list. Very few students attend the sporting events.
Top 20 rah rah school would obviously be Duke with the basketball team and the Cameron Crazies. Although I haven’t seen that many Asians among them when I watch the ESPN games.
Sports/school spirit and partying will not be seen at any Division 3 school, so Chicago (where fun goes to die) is off the list as well. CMU is not a school for that kind of atmosphere either. It’s no coincidence that Chicago, WashU, and CMU are in the same athletic conference for most major sports-the UAA (fondly known as the Egghead Eight since the original members were all top academic schools that didn’t care about sports).
Your goal is to go to a college where you get the best education possible and make use of the resources that are provided. School spirit/sports/party culture are tertiary to your goals.