<p>I need help narrowing down my college search. I'm planning on majoring in either engineering or physics. These are the colleges I have on my list:</p>
<p>Arizona State U
U of Arizona
U of Connecticut
U of Delaware
George Mason
U of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
U of Maryland at College Park
Ohio State U
Penn State U
Purdue U
Virginia Tech</p>
<p>GPA: By the end of this year, about 3.5 - 3.6
SATs: 580 CR 650 Math 630 Writing</p>
<p>I sent my SAT scores to U or Maryland, U of Connecticut, U of Delaware, and George Mason. I'm gonna send my ACT (which I'm taking on June 14) scores to UIUC, Purdue, Penn State, and U of Maryland.</p>
<ul>
<li>Which colleges should I take off my list?</li>
<li>Do I have a good balance of safety/match/reach schools?</li>
<li>Should I take the SAT again?</li>
<li>Should I send my SAT score to some more colleges?</li>
</ul>
<p>You are in-state for Virginia Tech. That's a good engineering school and low cost for you. After that, I would say Maryland, great engineering school, lots of fun, close to home. The most recent winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics teaches at Maryland. If you want a more rural, then Penn State. The others don't offer advantages over these, considering distance from home, quality.</p>
<p>University of Arizona is good for physics and especially astronomy. If you have an interest in astronomy, I'd keep it on the list. Though you might want to spend your summers somewhere else. ;-)</p>
<p>My plan is to major in engineering but go to grad school for physics or astronomy. So I guess an engineering school is really what I'm looking for. I want to take off either ASU or U of A off my list; which should I take out? U of A is probably better, but ASU has a 92% acceptance rate, so it would make a good safety school...</p>
<p>-Bump- Please, help me narrow down my list.</p>
<p>Why do you want to narrow the list? Are you very concerned about application fees?</p>
<p>kenf1234: Applying to 11 schools tends to be bothersome; I applied to 8 schools and that alone was pretty hectic. </p>
<p>I'm not familiar with any of those schools you listed, so my only advice would be to pick two schools and then compare and contrast them. Then, with those in mind, ask yourself which one you'd rather go to. You might want to go to both, but the idea is to pick the one you'd rather go to, in order to shorten the list. Do that for two schools that are about equally selective and all. That helped me when I had a list of about 12 schools that I wanted to trim down. So split your list into a list of reach schools, good bet schools, and backup schools, then compare the schools and think about which one you'd rather go to, until you get 2-3 schools in each category.</p>