Help with choosing which colleges to apply to. *personal*

<p>Hi, I just need a bit of advice on which colleges I should apply to.
My GPA is at about 3.8 weighted, 2110 satI w/ satII: 700 ushistory, 720mathIIc, 740 korean language, 650 biology-E. My extracurriculars are as average as my grades and scores. jv tennis, volunteer at local hospital, etc. I'm korean btw. All these scores/grades are up to junior year and I am currently working on trying to grab a few extra points here and there like on my sats and stuff.. I'm going to be retaking some come october and november.</p>

<p>I'm just starting to look at colleges and start the application process as I'm starting a few of my essays, etc. I just want to know what colleges I should and should not be looking at. College campus&environment wise.. I can adapt to mostly anywhere, but I'm more comfortable with a mid-size to big campus, probably suburban or urban, but then again I don't see how a small campus in a rural community could hurt TOO much.. I'm planning on a visit to the east coast (I live in a suburban town near LA btw) to see/compare.</p>

<p>So far I'm thinking about applying to places like UCLA, UCSD, UCI, USC, NYU, BC, UMICH only based on what I've heard and almost as a tradition in my school because "everyone" applies to places like these. I've done minimal actual first person research on these schools and what I really need is help on colleges that I've never heard of before that are relatively in my league... reach/goal schools as well as safety schools. Can someone help me through the first step of actually choosing which schools to apply to and consider? and I would really appreciate it if you gave me a bit of background info on the schools that you suggest for me as in difficulty, location, etc, etc. Much Thanks to everyone at CC.com</p>