<p>marbles - My son who is a junior at Stanford was in a similar position to you as a h.s senior, in that he was very interested in CS, but also was aware that his interests might change and he might end up majoring in something else. That was the reason he chose not to apply to Carnegie Mellon. What about Johns Hopkins - it is ranked pretty high in engineering but I am not sure about CS specifically.</p>
<p>I'm considering Johns Hopkins as well; the only concern I have with the school is safety. However, I haven't done enough research whether safety at Johns Hopkins is a "real" concern or not.</p>
<p>In looking at various schools, the PR list of 'Toughest Schools To Get Into" might be a good place to see where a candidate fits in. The rating considers scores, gpa, rank and more.</p>
<p>The PR top 20 this year are:</p>
<p>1 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2 Princeton University
3 California Institute of Technology
4 Yale University
5 Harvard College
6 University of Pennsylvania
7 Stanford University
8 Swarthmore College
9 Duke University
10 Columbia University - Columbia College
11 Georgetown University
12 Brown University
13 Pomona College
14 Amherst College
15 Dartmouth College
16 University of California-Berkeley
17 Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering
18 Harvey Mudd College
19 Emory University
20 University of Virginia</p>
<p>My son had similar stats. We treated U Chicago as a match (correctly so) and NYU (he got into Stanford EA and did not apply to NYU) plus our state school for good measure.</p>
<p>Would I stand a good chance at Dartmouth (ED)?</p>