Hoping for some help on developing my D20’s target list beyond top 20 schools (which is what she’s currently putting on the list).
We’re in Colorado and she has little interest in staying in Colorado - although she’ll apply to CU Boulder as a safety school. We’re full pay and understand the cost of private and OOS tuition.
She’s interested in pursuing biomedical science/engineering with medical research being her passion thus she may ultimately pursue a PhD instead of an MD. She fell in love with Johns Hopkins on a visit and that is currently her #1 school and unless something changes will apply ED.
She’s a high stats kid (4.0 UW/4/.7 W), her PSAT test indicates she’ll be 1500+ on SAT when she takes it next month. Full IB diploma with additional 6 AP courses. I understand any school with a <15% acceptance rate is a reach and right now her alternatives are as selective or more selective than JHU. I’m looking for 3-4 schools she’d love for matches.
Primary criteria:
Extremely strong biomedical program
Abundant research opportunities for ungrads
Cohesive/self contained campus
In/near a decent sized city
Thoughts? More information needed? Thanks for any ideas.
Does Pitt have a well defined campus? We did not tour it, but it seemed like it was pretty spread out and intermingled with city when we toured CMU. Which incidentally neither of my kids loved - but we did not have a great tour guide.
I’m not that familiar with Pitt’s campus. It’s just the first school that came to my mind based on your criteria. I do think it is more self-contained than some urban schools, like NYU and George Washington. Hopefully someone with more specific knowledge of the Pitt campus will chime in. Or you could ask on the Pitt subforum.
I’ve been looking at Case Western and RPI (WPI as well). I was worried Purdue would be too big if she really liked JHU. We toured UC Berkeley and she didn’t care for it at all - partly size, partly lack of self contained campus.
Thanks for the University of Rochester recommendation merc81 , I’ve spent a bit of time on their webpage and will send it on to my daughter to explore. It looks like it ticks a lot of boxes.
I see you’ve been looking at U Rochester. It gets my recommendation as well as it literally ticks off all of your boxes. Case Western is not as cohesive of a campus - neither is Pitt. Both are great schools, but U Roc wins when it comes to having a nice campus IMO.
JHU was high on D’s list early in her college search, too. And her list was horribly reach-heavy. (Tufts, Rice, Northwestern, Brown, and Vandy were also all contenders.)
Ironically, after visiting them all, URochester wound up as her number-one choice over all of those. She’s a double major in microbiology and public health and could not have made a better choice.
CWRU is particularly good in terms of having both flexibility among majors (in particular, students can move freely into engineering majors as well as out of them), and major options that span disciplines and leave doors open. For example, a biophysics major can be excellent for focusing on scienc-y research while leaving both biomedical engineering and medicine options open for grad school. (Duke has a biophysics major like this as well, fwiw, but you’re looking for non super-reaches.) And yes, Rochester, and Pitt (where she’d be in the honors college w/honors housing if standardized tests go as anticipated). Stevens is also strong in biomedical and right across the river from NYC.
Is Rice on the reach list? Great biomedical opportunities and lower sticker price than JHU et al… and definitely meets the self-contained campus in a city criterion.
Rice is definitely on the list. She’s toured and really liked it - but as you said a reach. It feels like the process last year has mostly resulted in her adding reach schools than anything else!
Emory – probably a low reach/high match. A bit less selective than JHU and Wash U (which are also great options). Big CDC connections, strong school overall.
As previously stated: URochester and Case Western, which would be more in the standard match range with that GPA and if SAT/ACT is high.