<p>Top choices:
Dartmouth
Yale </p>
<p>Rest of my list:
Amherst
Bates
Bowdoin
Brown
Bucknell
Colgate
Harvard
Princeton
Stanford
Swarthmore
UChicago
UPenn
Vassar
Wash U. in St. L
Wesleyan
Williams </p>
<p>ACT: 34
GPA: 3.7 UW/4.6 W
I have great extracurriculars and lots of leadership </p>
<p>What are your safeties? How much can your family afford?</p>
<p>Two problems: one is that all these schools are reaches except for a few medium-to-high matches. There are no safeties. This is more a fantasy than a list, regardless of any student’s stats. Second, you make no mention of whether or not your parents have told you that they will spill 60K per year for any of them or if you’ve run the net price calculators and shown them the results. Without some sense of affordability, there’s no list that’s worth beans. </p>
<p>I have a college fund which will allow me to go to a school that is 60k a year </p>
<p>Without finances being a concern you need to think about what major you’re interested in and what type of campus vibe you want. </p>
<p>Your list is heavily based on the northeast with top private schools. I assume you’ve visited some of these already to get a feel for them so I would look at schools similar to them that people often also consider. </p>
<p>For instance, a lot of people that like Bucknell also like Lafayette, people that like Vassar also like Hobart William Smith, and people that like Bates often like St Lawrence. </p>
<p>I would knock out most of the Ivies here unless you have truly truly remarkable ECs…tossing in Harvard,
Princeton, Stanford feels sort of random…they’re very different schools from each other. I’d put all of my energy into your top 2 schools…and then carefully select 5 or 6 from the 2nd tier…and then add 3 to 4 safeties…</p>
<p>Since your top choices are Dartmouth and Yale, why not apply to schools similar to those and then choose two safeties that you’d be happy attending? Or just apply to all of them, if $ isn’t an issue. </p>
<p>Similar schools to Dartmouth that have similar/slightly less prestige but may be easier to get into:
Amherst, Bowdoin, Williams. </p>
<p>Similar schools to Yale that have similar/slightly less prestige but easier rates of acceptance:
UChicago, Swarthmore, Vassar</p>
<p>All of these schools feel like reaches or high matches at best. So when I say they’re slightly less prestigious, it’s only relative to Yale or Dartmouth, not to most schools out there. </p>
<p>Then maybe apply to one or two safeties. Do you have a state school that you’d like to attend? I think you’d probably get into Bucknell, unless you presented yourself poorly in the application. </p>
<p>Finally - what is the ranking of your interest in schools other than your top two? Is WUSTL as interesting to you as Harvard? How would you rank your second choice schools? </p>
<p>Great, OP, you’re a rare bird. Now what about the fantasy component of the list? If you put your list together based on the average GPA of admitted students, there are some problems with doing so. One is that those averages are determined over the past x amount of years, but last year’s average GPA for admitted students will likely be higher. I was surprised to learn that a 3.7 at some of the lower-ranked schools is no guarantee of admission. For instance, Colgate, a good match for your stats, will expect you to demonstrate interest greater than visiting its remote campus, although they don’t list student interest as important. Then there are the differences between the campuses on your list: for instance, Bucknell has a very different feel from Amherst or Bowdoin, even tho they are small-town LACs. Third, except for Bucknell, Bates, Colgate, Vassar, and Wesleyan, all the schools on your list are apply-and-forget-about-them schools that are themselves very different from each other. Finally, I don’t see anything about this list that suggests that it’s designed to fit who YOU are; it looks like a list of prestigious northeastern schools that you might be able to get into; there’s not even any consideration in your post of what you want to major in and how that might determine where to apply. You have more work to do.</p>
<p>It all depends on what major you want to go to. For example, if premed, definitely Williams. They will carry you all the way into medical school and not leave a single student behind. Harvard is law, and Vassar liberal arts. Choose a major and cut down from there. </p>
<p>I am currently undecided for major. I am looking at LAC to give me until sophomore year to decide. </p>
<p>Total: 18 (14/4/0)</p>
<p>Reach: 14 (5/7/2)</p>
<p>High Reach: 5
Yale
Harvard
Princeton
Stanford
Williams</p>
<p>Mid-Reach: 7
Dartmouth
Amherst
Brown
Swarthmore
UChicago
Penn
Wesleyan</p>
<p>Low Reach: 2
Bowdoin
WUSTL</p>
<p>Match: 4 (2/2/0)</p>
<p>High Match: 2
Bates
Vassar</p>
<p>Mid-Match: 2
Bucknell
Colgate</p>
<p>Low Match: 0</p>
<p>Safety: 0 (0/0/0)</p>
<p>High Safety (no near-guarantees for money or major): 0</p>
<p>Mid-Safety (near-guarantees either money or major): 0</p>
<p>Low Safety (near-guarantees money and major): 0</p>
<p>You seem to be spamming Reaches in a very generic strategy. How much thought did you put into this? Work from the bottom instead. Get at least one Safety (if you’re telling the truth about those $60k/yr, then it doesn’t matter whether it’s High/Medium/Low)- two if you want to make sure you have a choice ot make in April. Then move up to Matches- right now, assuming your Safety would be a state school, your odds of getting into at least one school that’s better than your Safety are about 50-75%, so if you feel comfortable with that you could go on to Reaches.</p>
<p>For Reaches, you’re just spamming hard, honestly. Applying to 6/8 Ivies and Williams/Amherst/Swarthmore? Don’t just apply to a school because it’s an Ivy or a WASP; apply because you like the school. If you apply to Harvard-as-Harvard, you’ll have a much better understanding of what you’re doing (and much higher odds of acceptance) than someone apply to Harvard-as-just-another-Ivy. Unless you’ve seriously thought this through- which I doubt- you’re putting yourself in a bad position and making it very tough to do an adequate amount of homework for each of those 18 applications (every single one has to be excellent). All of these schools are very selective; spamming applications and a reach-heavy list isn’t how you get in- unless, of course, you match the profile of someone who got into all the Ivies without much of a fight (that is, someone who won Intel STS or founded and ran a national organization, etc.). Good luck!</p>
<p>I’d recommend starting your search over if you just threw this list out without doing much research- with a new thread that answers the questions from this “before you even ask” one: <a href=“Before you ask which colleges to apply to, please consider - College Search & Selection - College Confidential Forums”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1621234-before-you-ask-which-colleges-to-apply-to-please-consider-p1.html</a></p>
<p>One approach to narrowing your list is to think about why those top two schools are on top. What do you love about Dartmouth and Yale. Just at first glance, I can’t imagine that anyone who “fits” at Dartmouth would “fit” at U of Chicago. They are basically polar opposites. (perhaps thats the reason why this UofC graduate fell in love when visiting Dartmouth with my daughter - it was everything I didn’t get in college 
) </p>
<p>Once you define your preferences and priorities, you may be able to narrow this list yourself, or come back here and ask around “what other colleges have the same mix of academics and large greek system like Dartmouth” or “what other colleges have strong residential colleges like Yale”? You should be able to find schools in the safety and match zones that meet these same preferences. </p>
<p>hey @dividerofzero GREAT way to write a chance thread…just want to throw out kudos on that. one of the most thoughtful/logical presentations to doing this. </p>
<p>1) I agree with others that you have no 100% safety. I’d add in a school that is really a safety or at least one with EA or rolling admission so you know you are in by December 2) Your schools are all over the map – from large urban universities to small remote LACs. If you want to narrow things down think about what you really want in a school in terms of not only academics but also size, location etc. (ex. you say you want a LAC so you can knock out larger schools). And almost every school (be it a LAC or a university) will give you until the end of sophomore year to declare a major.</p>
<p>I agree with some other comments that the schools listed, while all elite colleges, are very different from each other. Bucknell is very button up and more conservative while Vassar is way more liberal and hipster. Seems you need to do some more comparing. WashU for example gets high marks for happiness of students, food and dorm rooms while Swarthmore students often complain about their food. Maybe those things don’t break ties for you. What about settings? Some are in cities and some small towns. Stanford has awesome weather all year long and the campus is amazingly beautiful. Some of those schools say that Early Decision does not increase your chance of admission, but some WILL say that it does. At Brown you can take every class pass/fail if you want. So many ways to narrow this down. Do sports matter? Some are D1 and other are D3. Do fraternities and sororities matter? Some have them and others not. Good luck!</p>
<p>I would also add that you really might want to add some safeties in there. Your unweighted GPA means lots of
Bs in there. Some choices for you that are perhaps a step down from those fine colleges:</p>
<p>Denison University
Gettysburg College
Lafayette College
Lehigh University
Connecticut College
Dickinson College
Franklin and Marshall
Washington and Jefferson
College of Wooster
Carnegie Mellon
Wake Forest
College of William and Mary
NYU</p>
<p>I would start to narrow down by finding out more about each of these colleges. You could start by making a list of the things your choice of school must have, things you would strongly prefer, and things you would slightly prefer. For example, maybe you say: A school that is a good fit for me must have my major, should have a liberal atmosphere, and it would be nice if they had greek life. You should be able to cross a few schools off your list immediately. Visit a few schools and add a few safeties. Then continue to narrow down until you have a manageable number of applications and, most importantly, you would be happy to spend the next four years of your life at all the schools you are applying to.</p>
<p>OP, not to call you out or anything, but I saw that you posted on another thread that you had a 33 ACT and a 3.6 UW. Is the newer score and GPA projected or is one a typo?</p>