<p>You’re applying to 5 Ivies + 4 schools that are just as selective as the Ivies. Have you researched them thoroughly? Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Penn, Stanford, MIT, and UChicago have different approaches to undergrad life, different undergrad:grad ratios, different levels of emphasis on research, and probably also prioritize different aspects of your major (Business?). Have you gone through and talked around about their academic/employer/alumni reputations (not just in terms of “good” and “bad” but in terms of what they focus on and how tough/rigorous they are- especially when it comes to the pre-professional programs you’re considering)? Have you checked out the course requirements for your major and seen how big the core curriculum is?</p>
<p>If so, just remember to be careful with your applications and expectations for each school- applying to Harvard-as-Harvard and Stanford-as-Stanford is probably a much more solid strategy (and indicates a better understanding) than applying to Harvard-as-an-Ivy and Stanford-as-a-HYPMS-school. Know the specifics of each school, because that’s the best way to narrow down your reach list.</p>
<p>15 schools aren’t too many, objectively speaking- but how many applications do you think you can reasonably finish a month early (or by your personal deadline- I suggest a month so you can adjust for anything that happens)? Start out with your safeties and they’ll take up two of those spots. Are you sure you need two safeties? If you’ll get into one of those based on just pure stats (on financially favorable terms + in the right program), then the other safety might be a waste of time.</p>
<p>Your number of matches should vary based on how strong/weak your safeties are. If you’ve identified a lot of shortcomings in your safeties (such as weak/mediocre job expectations, faculty issues, not enough funding for things you’re interested in, a student body you don’t like, etc.), then your match list should also be very risk-averse: you want to maximize your chances of not having to go to your safety school(s). So at that stage, you want to tier your matches (this is also a good idea for reaches) based on selectivity- have a school with a 35% admit rate, a 30% admit rate, 25% rate, 20% rate, etc.- especially if you’re worried about finances. I’d count Vanderbilt (13%), Northwestern (14%), UMich (53% IS, 30% OOS), and UVA (40.7% IS, 24.5% OOS) as matches- Duke (17%) might also be on here as a high-match… This looks pretty well-tiered: 30%, 25%, 17%, 14%, 13%. I’d maybe trim out one school in the teens- Northwestern or Vanderbilt- unless you’re really tied to it.</p>
<p>Then just order your reaches by how happy you’d be to get accepted (or I guess you can also focus on low-reaches if you want to maximize your odds of getting into at least one reach school, but there’s the risk of regret that you could’ve applied to a slightly better school and gotten in; of course, there’s the other regret that you could’ve applied to a slightly weaker reach and gotten in- so it depends on what you care about more) and add them until you run out of room.</p>
<p>I can’t really comment on the strength of these schools and difficulty of admission relative to the entire applicant pool for <em>all</em> of your possible majors (Electrical and Computer Engineering here) but I did look into some of these schools (applied: HYPSM + Penn and also considered Duke, Dartmouth, and UChicago) and for those:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Harvard is perfect if you want to go into research; they’ve got probably the most research-oriented faculty and their undergrad programs’ rankings rise significantly when you take the PhD rate and other research-related factors into account (for example, in CS they leap very high in ARWU rankings- beating Princeton and CMU and just trailing Berkeley/MIT/Stanford- and they produce the most Top 50 school professors after MIT). They’re obviously also solid for business. I don’t know about pre-med; there doesn’t seem to be absolute support for doing pre-med at an Ivy unless it’s cheap.</p></li>
<li><p>Stanford is the most undergrad-friendly and it’s got solid programs in both STEM and business- it’s trailing MIT as an engineering school and we all know how it fuels the spirit of innovation in Silicon Valley. I can’t comment on medicine, but I know it’s good for all of your other possible majors. Plus the campus is beautiful and so is the weather.</p></li>
<li><p>Yale is undergrad friendly and Yalies tend to like Yale more than Harvard alums like Harvard (just apocryphally speaking) but I’d be careful about choosing Yale if you’re considering STEM. Of course, if you’re thinking IBanking, an Ivy education doesn’t hurt.</p></li>
<li><p>MIT, imho, is actually a lot like Stanford in how it’s good at both are STEM-y and good at business/management and really entrepreneurial in nature. After all, they power Route 128 just like how Stanford powers Silicon Valley.</p></li>
<li><p>Princeton is the tough GPA deflator STEM program of the Ivies. I’d say they have the most rigor when it comes to STEM and definitely are a very respectable program. Ofc, they’re also very undergrad-friendly and allow for heavy opportunities in areas like research. Their high endowment/student makes debt less likely and FA very generous.</p></li>
<li><p>Duke is great for engineering (the research-oriented side, at least) but their core strength comes from BME which might be a very narrow major and possibly more research-oriented than you’d like.</p></li>
<li><p>UChicago is not somewhere you want to go for engineering; they don’t have a real engineering program. But their business school is very solid.</p></li>
<li><p>Dartmouth is undergrad-friendly but I wouldn’t consider them a research/STEM powerhouse.</p></li>
</ul>