<p>hi everyone. my public school only allows students to apply to 6 private universities, and i'm already applying to harvard, princeton, mit, and stanford for sure. i might apply to yale as well. in any case, i'm trying to find safety/match privates to apply to that are better than UC berkeley.</p>
<p>just a really brief stats sheet:
asian male
sat1: 2400
sat2: 800 math2 800physics + 1 more pending
rank: 1/600ish at top california public school
ECs are pretty solid too. nationally ranked (top10) & representing the US this summer in one of my activities, yearbook eic, speech and debate, church activities, graphic design, varsity volleyball + club volleyball, math competitions, and a buncha other things.</p>
<p>thanks for your help!</p>
<p>bump. it may help to know that i'm interested in majoring in either applied math, pure math, or physics</p>
<p>Harvey Mudd, although that's probably going to be more of a match than a safety. (Their median SAT score for math was 770.)</p>
<p>From their site:
We are the only undergraduate institution in the IPAM consortium, the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics (headquartered at UCLA) which is one of 3 mathematical institutes in the U.S. funded by the NSF.</p>
<p>Can you also apply to the UCs? If so, are you happy enough to just use them as a safety? (Not all of them can be safeties, but surely you can get into some of them based on your profile.) And some of the stuff they're doing over at UCLA's math department is really awesome. Good luck.</p>
<p>USC! USC!
They will offer you great gobs of money if you act sweet enough. They might offer enough money to plant you in L.A... it's happened to two one of my friends accepted to tippy-tippy-top schools.</p>
<p>hi gettinin, harvey mudd is actually amazing at math isnt it? i thought itd be more of a reach than anything b/c of the academic rigor of its math program.</p>
<p>furthermore, yeah i can apply to the UCs. i will apply to davis (i think i ELC'ed in there), sd, la, and berkeley, but to be honest they really are safeties if anything. i dont mean to sound pretentious, but my school sent 70 to SD, 51 to berkeley, and 29 to UCLA this year (plus, all of our 4.0 unweighted kids get into all three). moreover... i'd much rather attend a private university (thats still better than berkeley)</p>
<p>It all depends on what you mean by better. If you want decent housing, small classes, access to your professors, then there are a lot of LACs that are better than Berkeley even though they don't rank as high in USNews. If you define better as "ranks high" then UCB is your best safety. You can look at Rugg's recommendations for math and physics to get a good starting list.</p>