Junior: I have no idea what college I want to attend...

College Search & Selection
1

<p>I have a 34 on the ACT, and a 2330 on the SAT. My class rank is borderline 10% with a huge upward trend of 3.15->3.85->4.22->probably 4.3+</p>

<p>GPA: 3.81W 3.7UW 9-12 (approx)
4.1W 3.9UW 10-12(approx)</p>

<p>College hopefully has:
-Definitely east coast/CA/Chicago
-Private
-2000 to 10000 undergrads
-urban/suburban/rural, don't care..
-very strong Philosophy/Politics/Physics/Mathematics departments
-Being close or within driving distance of a body of water</p>

<p>That's really all I know... can any of you suggest any questions to me that I could answer to narrow down the list?</p>

2

<p>How good is top 10% at your school? At some schools 10% of the class go to Ivies, other schools very few do...</p>

<p>Anyway, given what you've said I'd definitely have:</p>

<p>Stanford
Dartmouth
Pomona
Brown
Northwestern
Amherst</p>

3

<p>Consider at schools that don't look at freshman grades--Anne Arbor might be a good choice.</p>

4

<p>Have you taken subject tests? Many of the top schools require them.</p>

5

<p>Lucky you, as you have a LOT of options open. You have good stats compared to the rest of the applicant pool. Have you taken any AP tests to clue you in to your strengths. Definitely take the SAT IIs; I bet that you're going to do okay on those.</p>

6

<p>Oh, and if those stats only get you top 10% at your school, I'm guessing you go to a challenging school that a lot of colleges will be familiar with.</p>

7

<p>No, I just did very poorly in my freshmen year. I took subject tests already. Biology 770 US History 780 MathIIC 800</p>

8

<p>Many schools will ignore 9th (Princeton and Middlebury are two). You should be okay.</p>

9

<p>Have you considered the PPE major (Philosophy, Politics, and Economics)? If so, Claremont McKenna, Penn, and Pomona are top programs.</p>

10

<p>Oh wow, I've never heard of PPE before. Do any other colleges have this program??</p>

11

<p>You should go out to the web sites for any schools you are thinking about and compare the courses offered in each department. Also, look at the required curriculum. Some have a more set core than others (Columbia, for example). You also need to go visit. Some schools have a very different feel. Other than that I can't think of anything that will narrow it down further. A friend of mine has a daughter who sounds similar to you and she is very happy at Claremont McKenna.</p>

12

<p>How about UVA? It's not private but it's GREAT school!</p>

13

<p>Claremont McKenna has too few students; I wouldn't like that.
UVA I think has too many... heh</p>

14

<p>uva has about 15,000 undergrads. is that too many for you??</p>

15

<p>I would feel that would be too many students. I really want to keep it between 2 and 10 thousand. I was considering Columbia, UPenn, Stanford, UChicago, and Northwestern.</p>

<p>Does Brown or Dartmouth offer strong political programs?</p>

16

<p>might want to add Georgetown</p>

17

<p>I was going to recommend Chicago, too, but I see you have it on your list already. If you have any questions about the school, feel free to PM me.</p>

18

<p>Yes, Dartmouth has a strong political science major, as well as the Dickey Center:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.dartmouth.edu/%7Edickey/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.dartmouth.edu/~dickey/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Incidentally, when I went onto the Dartmouth home page to get that link, this popped up, so I thought I'd put it up as an example:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.dartmouth.edu/%7Edickey/calendar_events.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.dartmouth.edu/~dickey/calendar_events.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Also, I would add UChicago to Slipper's list.</p>

19

<p>Just FYI, Pomona and Claremont McKenna are part of the Claremont Consortium along with Harvey Mudd, Pitzer, and Scripps, and have 6,000 undergrads under the same geographic "bubble", so it definitely feels like a larger school. Students can take courses in the adjacent schools or eat in any of the dining halls with the same meal card. See campus map <a href="http://www.kgi.edu/documents/ccmap2002.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.kgi.edu/documents/ccmap2002.pdf&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p>

20

<p><a href="http://apps.collegeboard.com/search/index.jsp%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://apps.collegeboard.com/search/index.jsp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>