If she is applying to Drexel…what about Temple as a safety?
Temple University, if she likes Philly, my youngest attends, loves it and is doing great. The University of Delaware, not in a big city, but in a large town, with the main street of the town and many shops and restaurants running right through the center of the campus, which is lovely. There is a SEPTA Regional rail stop close to campus, that connects to Philly (about an hour away).
Case Western in Cleveland, more of a match.
Virginia Commonwealth U. Yes, in the South, but Richmond is full of transplants from all over, and the city has an artsy vibe these days, lots of great ethnic restaurants, 2 Amtrak stops, 2 hours from DC. VCU also has a guaranteed admission BS/MD program through their honors program, although that particular program is very competetive, many of VCU’s programs would be in safety range for your D, since she can major in anything as a premed.
http://www.honors.vcu.edu/guaranteed/index.html
Seeing @ShrimpBurrito posting reminded me that you could consider the big three Canadian universities: UBC, McGill and UToronto. They generally admit by SAT/ACT and UW GPA only. For McGill she is above the minimum cutoffs even for the most selective majors. EC’s, letters of rec etc. are irrelevant. Admission is fully transparent.
Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver meet her criteria.
She does need to look at Pitt and Temple. She really likes Philly a lot. We have NO family connections at all to Philly and do have NY and Boston connections (lots of family and friends.)
Hadn’t even thought of AZ – seems so conservative. She really wants urban, LGBTQ-friendly, politically liberal…basically Boston or Philly!
Where we live is very conservative and she is like, get me out of here!!!
In California??? 
Tom, she looked very hard at McGill BUT was told that they admit a lot then have a high stress freshman weed out year for premed. That really freaked her out.
And yes, California! We are in the bible belt of California. It’s very, very conservative here.
I see Drexel as a match and the other schools as reaches.
Some other matches might be Pitt, SUNY Buffalo might work as a safety. She would likely make honors.
Is financial aid a factor?
If Catholic schools are OK, Seattle University might work. It’s near “Pill Hill” so lots of hospital volunteer opportunities nearby.
Another UC to consider is Riverside – the medical school is there for research opportunities. Maybe not quite a safety, but easier than UCLA and Cal.
Not sure if it’s urban enough but UArizona would be a safety university with a medical school as well.
Safety schools often don’t check 100% of the boxes the student’s favorite school does. When looking at large universities, keep your eye out for honors programs. The honors students often get better class enrollment options.
Neither would be a safety, but University of Minnesota Twin Cities and UW-Madison are both large, LBGQT-friendly, and politically liberal.
https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/infocenter/ug-outcomes indicates that most UC frosh do graduate in four years. But there is variation by campus, mostly related to admission selectivity.
One thing that calendar time graduation rates conceal is that some students take gap quarters/semesters during college (probably working, whether co-op jobs or just jobs to help pay for school since UC enrolls many Pell grant students) rather than tuition-paying quarters/semesters. http://www.apb.ucla.edu/campus-statistics/graduation-ttd indicates that UCLA’s 4-year graduation rate is 71% while its 12-quarter graduation rate is 86%, indicating a significant percentage of students taking four years’ of course work in twelve quarters but with gap quarters.
There is a large LGBTQ population in the cities in AZ, especially Phoenix.
It sounds to me like you are on the right track, open to looking at lots of options. This is a fantastic approach.
Occidental has a unique study program with Columbia, so that might be something to check out. President Obama started at Oxy then went on to Columbia (or at least that’s what I recall from our Oxy tour).
The Claremont College consortium certainly gives a bigger school feel, and would provide her with lots of options for her major, but it sounds like she loves the East Coast, and Boston in particular!
Best of luck to you!
Yes, there are conservative parts of California, like there are in all states.
The Claremonts are not going to be safeties, admission to all has gotten pretty tough recently. Scripps might be a match, but even they have only a 24% acceptance rate these days (and Pitzer is down to 12%, it is nuts). I’d look to some state universities given that she likes the bigger urban universities, I guess. Maybe U of Oregon?
Any CSUs appeal?
If she is pre-med and looking for more grade inflation to help her get into medical school (A = acceptable, B = bad, C = catastrophic, D = disaster, F = forget it), she may want to look up the grade distributions by course at various colleges that have them. Unfortunately, these are not very commonly available.
Here are some colleges’ grade distribution information:
Berkeley: https://www.berkeleytime.com/grades/ ; some analysis here: http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/university-california-berkeley/2071932-grade-distributions-in-prerequisite-courses-for-gpa-based-goals.html
Maryland: http://www.ourumd.com/grades/
Minnesota: https://onestop.umn.edu/academics/class-search-resources
Texas - Austin: http://utcatalyst.org/grade-distributions
Wisconsin: https://registrar.wisc.edu/grade-reports/
various other colleges: http://gradetoday.com/
But note that pre-med is a competitive weed-out process everywhere. Most pre-meds get weeded out before applying, and fewer than half who apply to medical school get any admission at all. So she should choose a college and major that is acceptable in the event that she does not go to medical school. Note that no specific major is required to do pre-med, though biology is the most popular (and has relatively weak job and career prospects at the BA/BS level due to all of the failed pre-meds competing for biology-specific jobs).
Medical school is also very expensive. If she chooses a less expensive undergraduate school, will you contribute the leftover money for medical school costs so that she can start a medical career with less debt?
Drexel has an admittance rate of 79%; Temple has an admittance rate of 57%. Temple has become very popular in recent years. Stats of admitted students at the two schools are very similar and the OP’s daughter can probably consider both of them likelies (safeties), especially if applying Early Action to both.
Ex-Californian with Cal grad degree with a D at UCLA, my other D is considering UW Madison. A great public U, beautiful setting in a city, long history of liberal political activism. After the elite publics (Cal UCLA Mich etc), solidly in next tier (Washington, other UCs).
If she is pre-med and looking for more grade inflation to help her get into medical school (A = acceptable, B = bad, C = catastrophic, D = disaster, F = forget it), she may want to look up the grade distributions by course at various colleges that have them. Unfortunately, these are not very commonly available.
This is really funny @ucbalumnus!
I used to say that California has such great state schools I don’t know why any California resident would look elsewhere…until I saw the threads on them this year!
I would second the Pitt option! Great school and campus!
Tom is the go to guy for BU and Northeastern but I can add that my D got into both but many of her classmates did not that in previous years would have been a pretty good bet. This year was just crazy.